Culion Museum & Archives

In 1906 the American colonial government made Culion an isolation colony for people with leprosy, and for half a century the island was legally cut off from the world. At its peak, thousands of patients lived here, building a town, a currency, a society of their own. The museum, housed in the old colony buildings, holds the laboratories, medical records, and photographs of that century. It is heavier and far better curated than you expect at the end of a two-hour boat ride. Walk uphill afterwards to La Inmaculada Concepcion church, built into the walls of a Spanish fort, with a wide view over the sea. The whole town moves at a pace Coron forgot years ago.