Mindoro Island is an unspoiled island that's within easy reach from Manila. The town of Puerto Galera in Oriental Mindoro province is a popular tourist destination with many beach and entertainment facilities.
: Sabang, lively but somewhat sleazy; it sometimes feels as if half of the population is working girls. Sabang is also the dive center of northern Mindoro. : White Beach, exactly what its name suggests, with excellent swimming, and somewhat less wild than Sabang. There are ferries from Batangas City to Puerto Galera.
Mindoro has two administrative halves. The north-east part is called Oriental Mindoro; the south-west part is called Occidental Mindoro. The boundary of the two provinces roughly follows the mountain range that bisects the island from southeast to northwest.
All towns of any significance are at or near the coast. On Oriental Mindoro you find, driving from the far north-west to the deep south-east, the following towns: Puerto Galera; San Teodoro; Baco; Calapan; Naujan; Victoria; Socorro (of the road: Pola); Pinamalayan; Roxas; Mansalay; Bulalacao. After Bulalacao the road continues to Occidental Mindoro where San Jose is the main town.
The original inhabitants of Mindoro were the people now known as Mangyan. They once held the whole island and were quite populous and prosperous, but today there are only a few hundred thousand left, mostly as isolated highland tribes. Locals are called Mindoreños (or Mindoreñas), and are mostly of Batangas heritage.
Mindoro is a Tagalog-speaking area, with the varieties spoken here generally the same as in the provinces of Batangas, Quezon, and Marinduque, but the most commonly encountered variety spoken throughout the island is the Batangas dialect.
There are also indigenous languages spoken in the island, many endangered to near extinct; some of those are Hanuno'o, with 14,000 native speakers, and Iraya (not to be confused with the Visayan language Karay-a), with 10,000.
The island of Mindoro is accessed by ship from Batangas City to Calapan and Puerto Galera or from Caticlan (Aklan) to Roxas (Oriental Mindoro). Fares in 2016 range from about . The shipping service from Batangas is Ro-Ro (about 3 hours) or fast ferry (about 1.5 hours) with at least one service departing hourly, all day. From Caticlan, there is only a Ro-Ro service to Roxas. The bus from Manila to Batangas takes about 2 hours with a fare in 2016 being about .
There is also an irregular shipping service between San Jose (Occidental Mindoro) and the northern islands of Palawan.
There are also regular flights from Manila to San Jose (Occidental Mindoro) with Cebu Pacific.
There is a coastal highway that rings the island and connects all the main towns. Most of it is a good road by the standards of provincial areas of the Philippines, well-paved and with good signs for both routes and hazards. By the standards of more developed places it is not great, narrow and often quite hilly and winding. Passing is quite dangerous on much of it and there are quite a few slow vehicles.
There are jeepney and bus services between most of the main towns; the jeepneys are usually cheaper and the buses more comfortable.
The easiest place to reach is Batangas City, accessible by ferry from either Puerto Galera or Calapan. From there, anywhere on Luzon can be reached by road. Both Batangas and Calapan also have ferries to other places; see the city articles for details.
2nd-order administrative division
Primary administrative division