Nicquee's Nook

It’s been a while since I last posted a blog. Hay, reports, reports, and more reports!

Anyway, we just came back from our mini teambuilding held at Club Manila East, Taytay Rizal and I will share with you our experience.

• Accommodations

  It was a an out-of-office activity for our team but since I don’t want to leave Ayex and Mon alone for 24 hours, I decided to tag them along. We didn’t book a room in advance since they (CME) told me over the phone that they have enough villas to accommodate us on the actual day.

  Mon told me to get the cheapest room since it’s just an overnight stay and we won’t be staying at the room that much. This is exactly what I planned, get the Don Renato villa. Its price is PhP3050 inclusive of complimentary breakfast, room for 2 with bathroom, cable TV, telephone line, and toiletries, use of the swimming pools including floaters for the beach waves pool and kayak. As I told the receptionist (they don’t really have a reception area by the way) our room of choice, she told me that their Don Renato Villas are still available but they have some technical problems – these villas don’t have cable TV and telephone lines. Of course we were disappointed and settled with Doña Luz Villa, priced at PhP3300, same inclusions as Don Renato. What’s their difference? Just the room size I suppose.

  The bigger disappointment struck us when we saw our room. It was big, yes but it had 2 twin beds! Haller, we’re a family! Mon called the front desk because the TV remote doesn’t have batteries. When the replacement was brought to us, I inquired if all their Doña Luz villas only have such setup and the lady said yes. Kaloka talaga! They have toiletries which include a bottle of lotion, a bottle of shampoo, one roll of tissue paper and two pieces of soap. I was disappointed again because I was expecting there would also be toothbrushes and toothpaste. But there’s none. There’s only one trashcan – the one inside the bathroom. They don’t have doorbells. The air-conditioning unit takes about 15 minutes before it becomes cold.

• Pools and Other Amenities

  Hmmmm, I can’t remember what other amenities they have aside from the pools. Okei, the pools first.

  They have quite a number of swimming pools: kiddie pool, adult pool, covered pool (adult), pool for kayaking, lap pool, beach waves pool and another that can be probably rented as private pool. Dami noh? The sad part is that all their pools are sort of de oras! Pools are not open until you like to swim. Some pools don’t even function as expected during a specified hour or hours. The best example was the beach waves pool. Good for us we we’re able to try it for 15 minutes, then it was turned off. Saya diba? The lap pool was closed according to Therese and Janelle. The pool that we enjoyed most was the kiddie pool. Yeah, you guess it right. We were with Ayex.

  Now I remember that we used this sort of function room and we rented a videoke machine – that falls on the other amenities. Ah, they also provide service to and from your villa.

• Food

  To be fair with CME, for me they have better food choices than Island Cove (that’s in another post). The taste is just right, except for that salty calamari. The serving is also satisfactory and the price, unbelievably cheaper than other resorts we’ve been to that doesn’t allow their guests to bring food inside.

Over-all, I would probably rate our stay with 2 out of 5 stars. Wait, since Ayex really enjoyed, let me make that 2.5 stars out of 5.