Open Summer at Bantayan Island

By Jeanbeltran // Bantayan, bantayan island, Beach resorts, budyong, budyong beach resort, cebu beach, hagnaya to sta. fe, sta. fe // No Comments

It's officially summer! School days are over for now to students and beach escapades are now open for those who are up for their tan.

I had recently opened my summer too with my colleagues at Bantayan Island. This was my last team building event with my colleagues since we will be transferring to another account support by April this year.

This is a challenging summer because my supervisor assigned me to lead the getaway. I personally searched through the web on where to stay, whom to contact and where to go for the itinerary. This is my first time though to lead a big group since my travels would only include myself and James. Well, I am glad my supervisor is just nice enough to be assisting me on this endeavor.

The resort is just a few walks away from Sta. Fe's public market.

So we ended in Budyong Beach Resort, where the room rates were still as low as a thousand for four persons. We took the room good for 15 persons which is Php 5000 and another room for Php 1000. They need us to deposit Php 2500 to finalize our reservation; they have this first deposit first serve policy so we made to deposit it two weeks before the date.

Three o'clock was our departure time at North Bus Terminal, we rode a Ceres bus and we reached Hagnaya port five minutes before six. We immediately took the 6:30 am ferry boat bound to Sta. Fe Port. I was surprised when we reached the port because it was actually clean.

The resort had provided us free ride to the, a pink four wheel drive and most of us thought it was cute. A bit disappointed because our rooms were not yet ready when we reached the place, Jennifer from the front desk unhappily informed us that the big room has still customers inside and will be checking out at 12:00noon while the other room was still not ready, they were currently cleaning it. So we left our things in the front desk area and went out for breakfast. Check out the places and restaurants we found out later on another post.

free ride to Budyong Beach Resort

At 9:30am, we went out for island hopping after our rooms were finally ready. Will be posting a separate blog article about it. We were already at the Budyong beach resort shore at 4:00pm and were all dying to get a taste with Bantayan's special halo-halo.

It was a roasted dinner for us due to the all roasted viands we all took part of. Roasted chicken and pork were all served while everyone was having a humorous night because of our gay colleague, Zandro. He or shall I say she was enthusiastic while telling us in a joyful way how her life's journey went and how she is when it talks about her love life.

I was knocked out after the chika sessions at 9:00pm and at 4:00am, I was awakened by my colleagues talking about their early bound to go home. I decided not to go early since I still want to get to other places outside Sta. Fe. Ten of us were left yet we had a blast that day.

We had some challenges in cooking for our breakfast since we don’t have any cooking tools, reason was based on my research, the resort has elders who can cook for your food while all you do is pay for their service but unfortunately, there was no one available who can cook our food, instead we just borrowed some kitchen tools. It was nice to meet guests who were eager to share their things as well but sad to say, the free tools were defective so we ended up renting the good ones worth Php 50 each tool.

our ride!

We were still able to get our breakfast ready at eight and we went to Bantayan Municipality for our pasalubongs (gift for a relation or friend brought by a traveler returning from a trip). My friends were amazed by our ride, they call it antique pedicab (cycle rickshaw but with a motorcycle), all ten of us fit inside the cab. We merrily went in their public market and bought some dried fish, I realized that these dried fishes are very costly!

We had a few hours to roam around the town and have some photo sessions too! We checked out at 11 in the morning and were able to get the 11:30 ferry schedule bound to Hagnaya port.

All left were the ten of us, two are taking the photos...

For me, there was nothing much special about Bantayan Island, they have a long shore however the sand was not that fine, I guess the sands of Quinale Beach Bar were finer than of Budyong Beach. However, the Virgin Island was a good place for swimming. James who had time for snorkeling said there were big sizes of fishes freely swimming in the vicinity. Some of my friends who had been here said it’s better to visit Bantayan if there are events like the upcoming Holy Week than on normal days, however prices might double up so be ready about it.