Laiya Batangas: South Chillin'

December 2008

December 2008, Christmas party. We are not the typical company, so it wasn’t the usual office party…we went away for an overnight stay in a resort in San Juan, Batangas. The place was called Balai sa Laiya. Balai means bahay in Tagalog and house in English (and that's your English-Tagalog 101 with Maui!) The place was about 3 hours drive away from Manila and well maybe it was only 2 for others, but it took us 5 hours to get there cause we got lost. Good thing, I was sharing the car with people who are cool enough to get lost or be late (my travel girls Pin, Regie and Jeff the driver)…we kept saying chill...we were lost…still...chill. We got there 7pm just in time for dinner. The place was nice, the rooms were built like Nipa huts and we stayed in seaside rooms. There were also rooms called Sampaloc house, its because the resort was full of Sampaloc trees…(sampaloc is tamarind in English). The rates are cheap, so I think for an overnight getaway, it is recommendable.
The overnight package we got has inclusive buffet meals, dinner, breakfast and lunch the next day. Dinner for that night was spaghetti, vegetable salad in vinaigrette dressing, baked mussels, rice and chicken barbeque and banana pudding for dessert. Sounds yummy but I wasn’t that all happy with what I ate. Maybe because I was so hungry after getting lost around Batangas for 5 hours and the mussels were not baked properly, the salad was lacking for something more…maybe walnuts or cherry tomatoes, the chicken was not marinated properly. I didn’t even fancy the dessert. Wine is always on our list, but the only wine available with them was red from one country only, Spain. I usually like chilled white wine (preferably Chile or Australian wines) unfortunately…that’s all they have.

my night shot at the 2nd floor of the resort

All of us got crazy with my new camera and tripod, we took pictures after pictures. It was fun! I used the no flash setting and it captured the natural light of every angle that night. We went around…took pictures in every corner of the resort. Finally the girls got tired smiling and we all went to our little nipa huts 30 minutes before midnight.

The next day…the boys were up earlier than the girls. As I pull our sliding door curtain to the side, I saw our guys fooling around and taking pictures already. Ina and I (we’re always roomies) went out and took pictures as well.

It was raining the day before so we were all excited to see the sun coming up that morning. We changed to our swimwear and went to join the rest. Few more minutes, coffee was ready…It was like kindergarten school scene where the teachers called for a recess! all of us raced each other on the 2nd second floor to get our first caffeine mix.

kayaking with Pin and Allan...do you see orange?

Breakfast was great, sunnyside up egg, scrambled egg, fried rice, corned beef, bread (with choices of butter, jam and you can toast it too), and fresh fruit platter.Since there was no plan or games or even a program, we enjoyed the resort after breakfast by just swimming, sun bathing, kayaking and taking more pictures. Before lunch time, me and the girls stayed in the cabanas and took more pictures…lay in the shade of the cabana until we were called for lunch. Now that’s life…*sigh*
Lunch was also delicious! They served kare-kare with really good bagoong, tilapia cooked in sweet and sour, pork barbeque and molo soup, we ordered iced cold coke to complete our yummy lunch. Dessert was sago salad which I also dig! All in all, meal buffet (except for dinner) was great!

I love this shot, my officemate Berna took this

We rested at the top of the tower for a couple minutes before deciding to get ready to head back to reality.We left Balai sa Laiya resort around 2:00 in the afternoon, refreshed, sleepy and with tons of pictures.On our way back we got lost….again.

resort info: http://www.balai-resort.com/