In our travel bible, “100 Resorts In The Philippines”, the author gave only 4 resorts in the entire country her highest ratings: El Nido Lagen Resort, Isla Naburot, Pansukian, and Ravenala Resort in Moalboal. Not even Amanpulo got into the list. So when we got booked for a 3-day stay, I was really excited to see it.
It’s not your typical 5-star resort, with fancy rooms and an infinity pool like El Nido Lagen, it’s more of the rustic island getaway type of resort. The resort is actually very bare, supplying only the minimum requirements for a guest’s stay.
Other than the cottages, the only other structure in the small resort is the eating area, where guests can opt to have their meals or maybe lounge around with a good book. It’s an open air area, so there’s a bit of competition with flies as far as food is concerned.
The package comes with free breakfast, and we always get the continental one, with bacon and bread and eggs and what seems like homemade marmalade (yum!). We chose not to eat at the resort, because it’s a bit pricey for budget travelers like us, because it’s a set meal, each meal costing the same, regardless of what your order.
The clientele is mostly european, since the owner is a Filipina married to a Dutchman. In fact, we were the only local guests there.
The rooms are comfortable, if a bit small, and it supplies the basic needs of a weary traveler. We opted for a room that has no airconditioning, mainly because the only 2 beachfront cottages had no airconditioning. Besides, we were lucky to have gone there when the nights were pretty cool. Since we did have aircon, we had to sleep with mosquito nets. I have a thing about kulambo, they get me pretty claustrophobic, but the ones here were rather flimsy and had bigger holes, so I didn’t mind it so much because a lot of the air was coming in.
The toilet was clean and everything worked, and even if we had no airconditioning, at least we had hot water!
This is our beachfront cottage:
Here is the view from our porch:
So overall, it was a really decent resort, which had a very quaint bucolic feel, and you really had a sense of being on a faraway island (even if you’re still actually in mainland Cebu). Loved the idea that the beach was right outside your door. On weekends though, it can get a bit noisy, because the resort is right next to a public beach, so sometimes the sound of the karaoke or the emcees in whatever activities they might have that need mics, would waft into every nook and cranny of the resort. Karaoke is like a virus in the bloodstream of any resort.
Thankfully, we didn’t hear of it again during the weekdays that we were there.
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