Villa 301 Bed & Breakfast

Villa 301 Bed & Breakfast: A Base in Bohol’s Oldest Church Town

Villa 301 Bed & Breakfast sits at 301 Bonifacio Street in Baclayon, about a minute’s drive or a four-minute walk from the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception — placing it inside the heritage core of a fifth-class municipality of roughly 46 square kilometres and 18,000 residents, six kilometres east of Tagbilaran City, rather than in Panglao’s beach-resort belt on the other side of the province. Baclayon’s tourism identity runs on history rather than reef access: nearly every organized Bohol day tour passes through the church on its way to Loboc, Bilar, and the Chocolate Hills in Carmen, and the municipality has historically offered little overnight accommodation of its own, which makes a dedicated bed and breakfast on the church’s own street a genuine, if modest, addition to the town’s tourist infrastructure.

The Accommodation

Room types include a Super Deluxe Suite with a king bed and two-bedroom units furnished with either double or queen beds, air-conditioned with private bathrooms opening onto garden views rather than street frontage. Breakfast runs to American, full English/Irish, and à la carte options, with fresh pastries, warm dishes, and fruit; the property also has an on-site gym, a garden, a restaurant, and free in-room Wi-Fi, plus a free shuttle service and bicycle parking for guests who want to explore the poblacion under their own power. On aggregated review data (Planet of Hotels), the property carries an 8.8 out of 10 score from 63 reviews, with guests specifically noting helpful staff and clean premises — a strong showing for a small B&B operating without the scale of a resort chain behind it.

What’s on the Church Street

The 1595 Jesuit-founded church a few minutes’ walk away is one of the oldest surviving church structures in the Philippines, its coral-stone fabric finished in 1727 from blocks cut out of the nearby reef. The belfry, completed in 1777 under the Recollects, was built clear of the nave specifically so it could double as a watchtower against Moro raiders; the earthquake of 15 October 2013 collapsed that belfry and damaged the nave and convent, and restoration — carried out by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines using salvaged coral block — finished in stages between 2015 and 2020, with the church reopening to the Diocese of Tagbilaran on 27 February 2018. The attached Museo Parroquial de Baclayon, itself only reopened in 2022 following a conservation partnership with the University of Santo Tomas, holds vestments, ivory santos, and mission-era records for a separate PHP 30–50 entry fee.

The same street carries the Villamor House, a late-19th-century bahay na bato built by Ciriaco Villamor and Agrifina Buhion, its ground floor historically used as storeroom and garage with living quarters kept upstairs, clear of flood and pests — the standard arrangement for houses of this type across the Visayas. It now operates as a homestay through the Baclayon Ancestral Homes Association, offering guests a second, older lens on the same heritage streetscape Villa 301 sits within.

Local Taste and Local Belief

Baclayon’s fishing barangays supply pagi — stingray — served as kinilaw, cured raw in vinegar and calamansi rather than cooked, a preparation more commonly found here than on Tagbilaran restaurant menus and dependent on a catch fresh enough to eat the same day it’s landed. Fiesta tables around the town’s 8 December patron feast add humba (braised pork belly with banana blossom) alongside bibingka and puto. Guests curious about the town’s older folk beliefs can walk to a century-old balite tree in Barangay Sta. Cruz, which local tradition holds as home to encantos, nature spirits — passersby customarily murmur “tabi-tabi po” (excuse me) before walking past, a courtesy extended to old, large balete trees generally across Visayan communities.

The Coast and Pamilacan Island

Baclayon’s waterfront promenade in front of the church plaza, known locally as the Baluarte, takes its name from an 18th-century Jesuit-era fortification whose remaining wall sections still stand behind the church; the promenade that replaced it is where residents swim, jog, and gather on Sunday mornings, with barbecue stalls opening in the evening. Further along the coast, the Baclayon ancient marine terraces — a geosite of the Bohol Island UNESCO Global Geopark — step up from the shore in three levels dated by uranium-thorium analysis to between roughly 129,000 and 310,000 years old, physical evidence of the same fault activity behind the 2013 earthquake.

An hour offshore by outrigger from Baclayon Pier, Pamilacan Island belongs to the same municipality and anchors its dolphin- and whale-watching trade: islanders hunted whales, manta rays, and dolphins with the pamilac harpoon from around 1939 until a 1997 national ban ended the practice, and the same families now guide wildlife tours, their inherited skill at reading the water repurposed from hunting to conservation. At least 13 cetacean species have been recorded in the surrounding channel, with the March–June window before the southwest monsoon the best time for Bryde’s and sperm whales.

Getting Around from Here

Jeepneys on the Tagbilaran–Loay and Tagbilaran–Loboc routes pass directly through Baclayon’s poblacion for PHP 10–15, a 15–20 minute ride from Tagbilaran. From Villa 301, the inland day-tour circuit is straightforward: the Chocolate Hills in Carmen and the tarsier sanctuary near Loboc are both standard half-day stops on the same road that runs past Baclayon, combinable with the Loboc River in a single day and leaving mornings free to see the church before the tour buses arrive. Baclayon itself is realistically a 30–60 minute stop for day-trippers rather than an overnight base for most visitors — which is exactly what makes a B&B on the church street useful for anyone who wants to see it without the crowds, staying over instead of passing through.

Getting There & Booking

Baclayon is about 15–20 minutes from Tagbilaran City by jeepney or tricycle, and roughly 30–40 minutes from Bohol-Panglao International Airport by car. Book on Stay22 or Booking.com for current availability and rates.