I think I died and went to heaven—Margot Robbie
A year before the 2016 release of her DC movie Suicide Squad, Australian star Margot Robbie posted a snap of herself basking in emerald waters on Instagram and captioned it: “I think I died and went to heaven.”
She was in El Nido, which she obviously saw as more than another beach, at least five years before mainstream travel guides like Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast, and Big 7 Travel gave this cluster of 45 islands on Bacuit Bay in Palawan a pat on the back, putting it on the league—if not in some years on top—of such dream islands as Mílos in Greece, Andaman Islands in India, or the Galápagos in Ecuador.
On this trip to the Philippines, mostly to work on her film The Legend of Tarzan where, opposite Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan she played Jane, swinging on a vine and throwing herself gracefully into a green river in a rainforest in Bohol.
Aside from Palawan and Bohol, she was also in Cebu where, together with Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara, and Sophia Kerr, her co-founders at her production company LuckyChap Entertainment, she took part in a cookout for the benefit of less fortunate kids organized by the non-profit Rise Above Foundation in Cebu. The Legend of Tarzan was also released in 2016.
Palawan, and not just El Nido, is heaven for sure. In honoring the province as among the best in the world, Travel + Leisure said of it, “Though it’s difficult to reach from many parts of the world, once travelers get there they can dive in World War II wrecks, explore old-growth rain forests, and paddle one of the world’s longest subterranean rivers at Puerto Princesa.”
But Margot Robbie has not been the only one to have been to heaven. Before her, in 2012, to shoot some scenes for The Bourne Legacy, Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz also went to El Nido.
‘Though it’s difficult to reach from many parts of the world, once travelers get there they can dive in World War II wrecks, explore old–growth rain forests, and paddle one of the world’s longest subterranean rivers at Puerto Princesa.’
Much earlier, in 2003, after her Manila stop in the Asian leg of her fifth worldwide concert tour Charmbracelet, Mariah Carey took a brief break in Amanpulo in the Cuyo Archipelago in northern Palawan. So did Madonna, though she took it before her two-day sold-out “Rebel Heart” concert at the Arena in 2016.
Other celebrities spotted in Palawan over the years were American tycoon Bill Gates, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Glee’s Darren Criss, Pretty Little Liar’s Shay Mitchell and Troian Bellisario who both stayed at El Nido Resorts, but on separate occasions, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Beyonce, and who knows who else because most of them, if they could, would have wanted to keep the islands and their visits a secret?