Three Months Open, Then Odette: How Laaganan Came Back

Laaganan opened in September 2021.

We had three months.

On 16 December 2021, Super Typhoon Odette crossed Dinagat Islands. It was one of the first places the storm reached, and it did not pass over gently. When we came back up the ridge afterwards, most of what we had built was gone.

The long middle

Rebuilding took nearly four years. Not because the work itself takes four years, but because that is how long it takes when you are rebuilding a province at the same time as a business, and when everything has to come across on a ferry.

There were stretches where nothing moved. There were stretches where we were not certain it would reopen at all.

28 November 2025

We reopened on the same ridge, facing the same view.

Some things are better than they were. The rooftop is new. The kitchen is bigger. The lighting is something we had only sketched before the storm. Some things we deliberately kept the same, because they were the reason people came in the first place — the open sides, the railing tables, the fact that nothing stands between you and the sea.

Why we are telling you this

Because when guests write reviews saying the drive was worth it, or that it was the best way to spend their last night in Dinagat, it lands differently for us than it might elsewhere.

Four years ago there was nothing up here.

Thank you to everyone in Basilisa who kept asking when we were opening again. The answer turned out to be a long time. We got there.