Dawal Beach Resort

My family and I wanted to check out Potipot Island and decided to stay at Dawal Beach Resort since it is just a 5 minute boat ride away. The website of Dawal is inviting and seemingly that one will have a pleasant and comfortable stay here. Well, it turned out to be untrue. A month before going there I already made reservations and even paid 50% of the accomodation at a dorm room. Ms. Weng, the one I talked with on the phone handled our reservation. I specifically told her we consist of 2 babies, 3 kids, and 10 adults. I even txted her to give us the best dorm room since we have small kids with us. In the website, it was never stated there that dorm rooms are on a building, meaning there are 3 floors.

When we arrived at Dawal it was 2 pm. The room is not ready yet. They gave us a dorm room on the 3rd floor. I went to the check in lounge and told them nobody informed us that we are at the third floor. This really made us agitated. I pleaded with them the safety of the kids that will go up and down the steep slippery stairs and we have 2 pregnant women with us. We asked them to give us a better room with this consideration. Sadly, since it was a peak season we ended up on the third floor anyway despite their so called effort to resolve the matter. Point is, before the booking they should have informed us that the available dorm room is at the third floor. We could have looked for another resort that is more comfortable.

We were able to get in the room at 2:45 pm. We were all sweating and tired from a 7 hours drive from Cavite to Candelaria. When we got to the room it seemed clean. Then hell started again. There is NO WATER! There were 4 showers but they are useless because there is no water. When water came it comes and goes. Staff from Dawal placed drums with water on the bathroom. Oh my Gosh, and this is supposed to be a resort!!! We had to use pails and dippers to take a bath and lo and behold the drains are clooged, let there be flood! How un-resort like can that be? We are a big group so taking a shower after swimming was hard because of the lack of water. The little kids had colds because of long waiting for water to come back and they are wet and naked. Other family members took shower at the pool side, gosh how inconvenient! Really, what can be harder than not having water during a vacation???

The cabinets smell cockroach because there are cockroaches! There were no towels. They just provided tissues and small soaps. The 2airconditions can not make the room cool enough for 15 people because upon inspection windows are ajar and cannot be closed. It was just the curtains that keep the cool air inside and of course we had forseen mosquitos in the night. We had to request for an electric fan to alleviate our condition which they granted.

When we had dinner at the restaurant, the food takes 45 minutes to be prepare. A woman/customer was screaming at the waiters because her order is already 2 hours late!! Our food was so-so. The Crispy Pata is just pata without the "crisp". The steamed lapu-lapu became fried. The other menu was fine. The restaurant lacks ventilation.

The only good thing here in Dawal is that the boat reservation to Potipot Island was thank God organized for a change!

We paid 11,000 pesos for 2 nights stay and what we got are stress, discomfort and a hell of a time!