The cruise that will get you chased by the Chinese coastguard

My holiday to the Philippines started with a post I found on Facebook. “TRAVEL LIKE NO OTHER”, it exhorted. “The Kalayaan Island Group boasts the most unspoilt destinations in the country. Whether you are travelling for adventure or curiosity, the Spratlys will not disappoint.”

I was intrigued. The Spratly Islands are in the middle of the South China Sea, one of the most contested waterways in the world. Six governments have laid claim to this scattered, rocky archipelago and the surrounding sea. China has sought to intimidate its rivals by populating the region with navy, coastguard and militia vessels, as well as drones. The Philippines, the primary target of China’s aggression, lacks such military might and has taken a softer approach to asserting its own claims. It hopes to persuade the world that Pag-asa, known internationally as Thitu – one of the nine outcrops in the sea it considers its own, and the only Spratly with a civilian population – is capable of sustaining a thriving community. By subsidising the lives of Pag-asa’s residents, and developing the island’s nascent tourism industry, the Philippine government is trying to make it harder for the Chinese to muscle their country out of the South China Sea.

The Spratlys seemed like the perfect vantage point from which to view the geopolitical sparring between China and the Philippines. But though I could imagine a few hardy fishermen eking out a living on Pag-asa, or some patriotic naval officers being stationed on the remote island, the idea of tourists going there for a relaxing tropical getaway seemed absurd.

So I contacted the person behind the holiday advertisement. I heard back a few hours later: “We do not accept foreigners for the Pag-asa Summer tour as the boat is only a local vessel. Not very comfortable.” I asked if they could make an exception. Another speedy reply: “Sorry, we give priority to locals because that’s the tour that they can afford.”

In a follow-up message, I learned that foreigners like me could instead travel on a luxury boat for $3,000 (the holiday on the “not very comfortable” local vessel was a sixth of the price). The next luxury trip – which included dives on three islands, massages and a “premium” souvenir item – was scheduled for March, nine months away. I booked it with some excitement.

But eleven days before I was due to depart, I received an email: NOTICE OF POSTPONED TOUR. The yacht was broken. Would I like to join the tour on the local boat instead? An itinerary for the seven-day trip, which was billed as “voluntourism”, was attached. It detailed a variety of do-gooding activities on Pag-asa, including playing basketball with the residents, organising children’s party games and working on a community construction project. My stomach began to sink as I looked at the packing list, which suggested we bring multiple forms of insect repellent, a power bank, tent, sleeping bag, pillow and “mini fan for comfort (optional)”.

The journey began at midnight a few days before Easter, when a minibus picked up a few Filipinos and me at a petrol station in Palawan, the Philippine province closest to the Spratlys. At 7am we arrived, bleary-eyed, at port. As I got out of the van, I heard the sound of hammering. And drilling. I looked up: our boat, a cargo vessel, was still under construction.

The crew worked on the boat while our group loitered at the port, seeking out the scant shade as the sun beat down. The 40 or so tourists – mostly Filipinos who were in their 20s and 30s, dressed in sportswear and hauling backpacks – enthusiastically took photos in front of a banner welcoming us with mottoes like “help, explore, appreciate, love”. They came primarily from big cities like Manila, where they were young professionals; many spent their precious annual leave travelling across the country’s 82 provinces. A few were tour guides themselves, doing reconnaissance to decide if their companies should start offering similarly gonzo trips.

For many, the frisson of being on a geopolitical front line only added to the trip’s allure. The South China Sea’s immense strategic importance (nearly 60% of global maritime trade flows through it), as well as its abundant fish, have made it hot property. Over the past decade the Chinese have bolstered their presence in the sea by building artificial islands complete with military barracks, hangars, airstrips and anti-aircraft missile systems. Chinese ships frequently ram and blockade Philippine vessels, and have injured around a dozen Filipino sailors this year alone.

Flag-waving nationalists who are horrified – and intrigued – by China’s behaviour are exactly the sort of people that Ken Hupanda, the cheerful 35-year-old government official who is in charge of the push to promote tourism on Pag-asa and nearby islands, hopes to attract on his trips. Ours would be the fifth holiday he had led to Pag-asa (though his 25th visit to the island), and the first one completely funded by private individuals, rather than subsidised by the government. Political tension had been good for business.

After a seven-hour delay, we finally set off on the cargo boat, its hull filled with bags of rice for Pag-asa’s inhabitants. Our berths for the 32-hour journey were electric-blue fold-out beds that were spread out across two levels and largely exposed to the elements. The waters were so choppy that as the boat swayed, we sometimes couldn’t see the horizon. I figured out early on that the best way to go to the loo was to pin my hands and feet against the wall opposite the toilet and press my back against the wall above the bowl (the bathroom was the size of a telephone booth). Most of us passed the time sprawled on our beds, trying not to vomit. In the middle of the night, we were roused by shrieks as a few passengers were tossed out of their cots.

Though we all felt queasy, we gathered on deck in the morning to squint at the horizon. A few tourists had brought binoculars, through which they could make out two Chinese navy vessels trailing us, just to show us that they knew we were there. One person enthusiastically explained to me what we were looking at. We had crossed China’s notorious nine-dash line, which outlines its claim to almost the entire South China Sea. The tourists were delighted: this was what they had signed up to see.

We pulled into Pag-asa 14 hours behind schedule. Everyone smelled as if they needed a shower and looked like they needed a good night’s sleep. Contrary to the suggestion in promotional materials that Pag-asa was the “perfect venue” for a “family or corporate event”, there were no hotels on the island. Instead, for $10 a night, most of us opted to stay with one of the 250 or so residents. (The alternative was camping in your tent near the beach.)

My host, a friendly 36-year-old fisherman, picked me up at the wharf. A faint smell of livestock lingered on the warm night air. As he led me along the island’s only paved road to his hut, I scanned the village, softly lit by the full moon. It looked like so many I had visited in South-East Asia, with rows of ramshackle wooden and concrete shacks, their roofs made out of corrugated iron. The only noticeable difference was the bright lights from the Chinese coastguard and militia vessels that perpetually surround the island.

In the morning, we gathered for breakfast next to the campsite, a couple of metres away from turquoise-blue waters and fine white sand. Hupanda was distributing T-shirts that read “Pag-asa volunteer” and “Made in the Philippines”. (“Well, actually, these T-shirts are made in China,” he laughed.) Afterwards, the tourists headed to the island’s sole basketball court – which doubles as the town square – to play games with the local children.

Pag-asa’s first residents arrived in 2002, as part of the Philippine government’s efforts to buttress its territorial claim by settling families on the island. Back then, there were only a few households; now, there are almost 60. Residents receive land, rent-free, to build homes on, and the government provides every adult with 16kg of rice each month. Many are also offered jobs such as caring for the island’s chickens, ducks, goats and pigs; most fish for extra income.

Life for people on Pag-asa has changed substantially over the past few decades, albeit slowly. Last year, the government installed round-the-clock electricity. The main road had recently been paved – although the closest thing Pag-asa had to a car was a tricycle that a local fisherman drove me around on during his grand tour of the island’s other new amenities: a runway, dock, school and typhoon-evacuation centre. The government next plans to build a naval port and artificially extend the island farther into the sea, to expand its airport.

Pag-asa’s remoteness remains one of its biggest challenges. The sole Wi-Fi hotspot is at the school; locals and tourists hung around at all hours of the day, desperately searching for a signal. Lacking stable internet and even textbooks, teachers must rely on photocopies of the curriculum. The school has only enough teachers for the younger students; older ones must move to the Philippine mainland for senior high school. So must pregnant women: Pag-asa’s medical centre isn’t equipped to deliver babies. (This isolation presents more minor problems. The local nurse’s 9-year-old daughter informed me that her favourite food is pizza – but she can only eat it in Palawan’s capital, a day and a half away.)

The practical challenges of living on an outlying island can give some events a rough-hewn quality. While I was visiting, Pag-asa held its first-ever Mass on the basketball-court-cum-town-square – presided over by a Catholic priest who had flown in just for Easter Sunday. Hupanda, acting as tourism officer as well as (self-appointed) architect, hoped to establish a more permanent site for religious services. He decided to enlist us to break ground on a multi-faith centre (although most Filipinos are Catholic, there are a handful of other Christians and Muslims on Pag-asa).

One morning, as the more eager tourists began work on the multi-faith centre, I sat on a concrete slab in the shade to chat with Michael Ho, perhaps the most unexpected member of our group. He moved from Guangzhou in southern China to the Philippines 28 years ago and is married to a Filipino woman – but still has a Chinese passport. He and his wife sell financial software to local governments across the Philippines. A few weeks earlier, they had demonstrated their product to the mayor of the far-flung Kalayaan municipality (of which Pag-asa is a part) and wanted to show their support for him by joining the cruise.

The other tourists had initially seemed sceptical of Ho – a few had quietly expressed their disapproval to me, speculating that he and his wife were actually selling Chinese malware. I was eager to ask him about his experience on tour, but he got to the topic first. Within five minutes, Ho declared that one country should not claim the entire South China Sea. “We should share it,” he told me. If any of his fellow tourists’ suspicions had bothered him, he didn’t let on – except to reveal that, ultimately, his loyalty was to his wife: “I cannot fight against my wife so of course, I would automatically surrender to her and the Philippines.”

Everyone on the island had encountered China’s menace at some point. Several fishermen spoke of how they used to have their choice of ten reefs but now only dare to fish at two of them because the Chinese coastguard will harass them at the others. When I asked what might happen if a fisherman were snatched by a Chinese vessel, no one had a good answer.

Few of Pag-asa’s residents have more experience of China’s tactics than Larry Hugo, a wiry fisherman with a weather-beaten face. As a single dad supporting two school-aged daughters, Hugo works by himself every day from 4.30pm to 7.30am, when he returns home with perhaps 20kg of fish. Around 2012, he started seeing Chinese sailors near Subi Reef, a barren outcrop, who were pretending to be fishermen. Soon they were arriving in bigger boats, laden with construction materials to build huts on the reef; within two years, they were erecting concrete buildings.

Hugo reported the boats to the Philippine navy, but they told him to drop the subject. Then, one morning in 2021, as Hugo approached a cay near Pag-asa, a Chinese coastguard vessel cut him off and blasted its horn. “I had heard they were firing water cannons at some Filipino boats so I just retreated,” he told me. Hugo stopped fishing for a while, afraid that the next time he ran into the Chinese, they’d capture him.

He posted a video about the incident on Facebook. It went viral. “The Philippine government got angry with me and warned me not to speak to any local journalists,” he claimed. The country’s then-president, Rodrigo Duterte, wanted warmer ties with China, and stayed mostly silent about its aggression in the South China Sea – in part to attract Chinese investment.

The current president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, has been more combative. He has released videos of China’s harassment of Philippine ships and let the coastguard take journalists out to witness it. Marcos hopes that exposing China’s activities will lead to international pressure for it to back down. Yet there is little evidence that this approach is working. In March a group of Filipino marine biologists found neat piles of crushed coral on one of the sand cays near Pag-asa. The mayor of Kalayaan told me this could be a sign that China is beginning to build more artificial islands, creeping ever closer to Pag-asa itself.

China has also continued to bully the island’s fishermen. Now, Hugo said, the country blocks them from even coming close to Subi Reef, which has been turned into a militarised refuelling station, around 12 times the size of Pag-asa, for Chinese coastguard and militia boats. Hugo wondered if America, as the Philippines’ ally, could provide the coastguard and navy with faster, bigger boats so that they could face down the Chinese. “Right now, our boats are no match against the Chinese ones,” said Hugo. But such a move runs the risk of drawing America into a direct confrontation with China – and possibly triggering a global crisis.

One evening, two fishermen offered to take me, another journalist and a tourist out on their vessel. “We’ll show you what it’s like,” said Erad Devebar, one of the fishermen.

The sun was setting as we bobbed in the swell. I wiped spray from my eyes and tried to shield my phone as waves splashed into our metal boat, which was barely wide enough for me to sit down in. Soon, the only light would come from a dozen Chinese fishing boats guarded by several coastguard vessels, visible in every direction.

Then we came to a sudden stop. Oliver Lachica, our captain, was shouting in Tagalog at Devebar, who dashed nimbly to the back of the boat. They conferred, then slowly turned it so its bow faced Pag-asa.

Suddenly, our boat was illuminated by a bright light. Lachica yelled something. The tourist translated: “Turn off the light! Turn off the light!” The other journalist had accidentally turned on his phone’s torch. I barely had time to figure out what was going on before Lachica glanced over his shoulder and shouted for all of us to hold tight: one of the Chinese coastguard ships had dispatched a rubber boat to intercept us. I hunkered down in the hull and clung onto the railing, my heart racing as we sped away.

The Chinese coastguard didn’t manage to catch up with us. Once back on land, Lachica explained that we weren’t pursued because of the light from the phone’s torch; rather, it was because the Chinese boats are fitted out with the latest radars and drones. “They always know what we are doing,” he said.

I was rattled but impressed by the fishermen’s courage. My terrifying boat chase may have appealed to some of the tourists in my group. For these men, though, it was a typical day at work.

The Filipino tourists gathered in the town square to sing the national anthem on our final morning. Unlike many displays of patriotism, this felt heartfelt. Everyone knew the lyrics: “For my nation I will die”. Then they sang the Kalayaan municipality’s anthem, which lists the islands that the Philippines claims, including Pag-asa. (In Tagalog, Pag-asa means “hope” and Kalayaan means “freedom”.) One of the tourists led a prayer: “Guide every person on this island. Guide them with wisdom, with strength, with all their needs, Lord God, to protect the place that we own.” A Dutch documentary crew that missed the first rendition of the national anthem asked the tourists to repeat it. Everyone agreed, singing with even more gusto the second time around.

Some of the tourists wore T-shirts with slogans like “West Philippines Sea” – their preferred term for the South China Sea. Several brushed away tears. “I’m too old to fight but at least I can tell my grandchildren about their heritage, about how I visited Pag-asa, in case one day it isn’t part of the Philippines any more,” said Freddie Mendez Alcala, one of the misty-eyed tourists. Another was so moved by the morning’s events that he got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend.

We boarded our cargo boat at around 10pm. The journey back felt much faster than the trip to Pag-asa, perhaps because we all knew what to expect. Even so, Mariane Tagaca, an adventure tour guide, told me she was no longer interested in trying to offer this sort of trip to her customers: “We have to go on all the tours we take our guests on and I don’t ever want to ride this boat again.”

The following evening, a couple of us rested on the bow of the ship, looking at the stars. We were near Sabina Shoal, well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone but also within China’s nine-dash line. We saw two flashing lights. “Are those Chinese drones?” asked one of the tourists. One of the crew said it was an aeroplane – but the lights followed us as we ploughed through the waves.

Grace Pujalte, a software manager from Manila, was one of those on deck. Although she had previously told me that she wouldn’t recommend the holiday to her family and friends – her sister would “murder” her for proposing a trip on a boat that was in such terrible shape – she wasn’t quite ready for her own to end. It had been the adventure of a lifetime, we agreed. Pujalte was delighted to have been tailed by the Chinese on our way to Pag-asa. But she did have one regret: “I actually wanted to be on the receiving end of a Chinese water cannon.” ■

Sue-Lin Wong is a South-East Asia correspondent for The Economist