For this vacation, we decided to stay at Antulang Beach Resort located in Siaton, south of Dumaguete City. Their website states that the resort is about an hour’s drive from the Dumaguete airport.
I timed our trip and it did take us one hour and five minutes to get to the resort from the airport. The van that picked us up was cool and comfortable.
What we did not count on though was the rough, bumpy dirt road that one has to go through to get to the resort. From the main road, you get on to a small, winding, bumpy road which you traverse for about twenty minutes before you get to the resort. I am glad that my daughter Ali is now older. When she was younger, she would get car sick easily and would throw up on long, bumpy, winding road trips. Now, she enjoys them since she feels it’s like going on a ride in an amusement park.
The entrance or lobby to the resort is quite small and does not look that inviting. Upon check-in, I was immediately asked to sign a waiver that if anything should happen to us while engaging in activities in the resort, the resort owners would not be liable. I was also billed immediately for the balance of the room charges for the rest of our stay.
I don’t know about you (or about the resort owners) but doing all of this just upon arrival at the resort (after a bumpy ride) does not mark the start of a good vacation. Comparing the procedure with that of other domestic resorts I have visited, this is actually the first time I encountered such a process. I did express my negative feelings about the whole thing to the front desk staff.
We stayed at a Superior Suite which came with two big beds to accommodate the four of us. We took the Superior Suite on the ground floor as we had our 8-year old daughter with us. The room has a receiving area and a daybed but it does not have enough storage space or cabinets. The lay-out of the room is also such that when someone opens the door, he or she will see the beds right away and will have access to the luggages right away. When we arrived though, it was good to see that they had enough towels and pillows for four people which is isn’t usually the case in other resorts. Most of the time, even if they know that there are four people checking in, as evidenced from our reservation details, the room or bathroom is usually just set up for two people and then we would need to call housekeeping to ask for extra towels and/or pillows. So that was at least one less thing for us to do.
The resort is a quiet place and quite isolated that it is the perfect place if you truly want to get away from it all. In the coming weeks, we will write about the food, what you can do in Dumaguete City so do stay tuned.
To learn more about Antulang Beach Resort, you can visit their official website www.antulang.com