What is the color of paradise? I bet it’s white, the better to set off all other colors, like ruby and sapphire, or maize and sunshine yellow, or the green of young leaves with dewdrops sliding off them, or the sparkle in your lover’s eyes.

But white is the color of paradise in Cebu’s long-kept secret, the Pacific Cebu Resort on the eastern coast of Mactan Island, which boasts of the longest, widest beach, all of 230 meters of its private beach, in Lapu Lapu City.

It was a destination so secret only Japanese divers knew about it. To them, for decades, it has been a jumpoff point to many National Geographic-worthy sites in Cebu. A highlight among its features is the resort’s private pier jutting out a hundred meters into Hilutungan Channel, perfect for afternoon strolls in the cool breeze. From the pier, its outrigger canoe is launched to bring guests out on diving expeditions and water tours, including a swim or picnic on the sandbar, a huge tidal island nearby, just a few minutes from the dock. Recreation facilities include a diving center with a crew of PADI dive instructors, as well as a tennis court, a basketball court, and a souvenir shop.

Pacific Cebu Resort i s sprawled on nearly nine hectares of beachfront, two of which remain undeveloped, still thickly forested, perhaps the only remaining forest in the city. It belongs to consummate hosts Philip and Ching Cruz. Right on the beachfront is La Terrazza, a multi-cuisine restaurant open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as to sea, sky, sand, in which you can spend all day just watching the scenery, with shoyu ramen or nasi goreng or bangsilog on the side.

Like Philip on the daily, from head to toe, Pacific Cebu Resort is dressed in all white, all 133 rooms, including 10 white duplex villas shimmering in the sun. The walls are white. The mosquiteros, gossamer sheets of mosquito netting so light they appear to be floating over the canopies, hang on the four poster beds of some of the more premium rooms. Each bed is a fair-weather cloud come down to earth, soft and smooth as its sheets, plush and fluffy as its pillows. Bleached too is the balcony at every duplex villa and so are the recliners in it, each with a foot rest for good measure.

There are four large pools on the property, two of which are dive pools, with a pool bar in white, sunloungers under white umbrellas, pool chaise lounge chairs in white, white hammocks, gazebos painted in white that are so designer in oval or square. Everything was dazzling white when I was there, including the girl in the string bikini and me with the white froth of a whisky sour on my lips.

Against all this white, the sky is bluer, the sunset more golden, the sunrise more rousing, the air cooler, the water warmer, and my body, heart, and soul calmer, more at peace, less burdened by heartaches and toils. No wonder, in his book A Piece of Chalk, G. K. Chesterton wrote, “White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.”

I had too little time in white paradise, but white is expansive. White, as novelist Andy Weir put it in Project Holy Mary, “is all frequencies equally reflected.” Pure and unadulterated, like freshly fallen snow, like a blank sheet of paper, like a virgin or a bride, or a white tux evening, it is the color of infinitude. Resplendent in the promises of a clean slate, white fills you, as Pacific Cebu Resort filled me, with hope (for a return).

Pacific Cebu Resort, only 45 minutes away from Mactan International Airport, is at Barangay Subabasbas, Lapu Lapu City, Cebu. pacificceburesort.com