For our arrival to the Philippines we decided to stay 10 days at
Haruhay Dream Resort, Mactan Island, Philippines, mostly after advice from my mother, as the Norwegian Sailors Church has congregations here now and then. It's definitely a nice place, like an oasis of jungle among slums and plastic garbage. Not that I don't like slums,
I LOVE them, but dislike all the plastic garbage and sewer odor. These problems are a result of our industrial civilization though, which the slum dwellers cannot be hold responsible for.
There are some plastic garbage on the edges of Haruhay as well, this should have been cleaned. But it's not a problem. That is the standard of the bathrooms though. Our bathroom was a catastrophe, while the room itself was splendid. The bed was huge, no problem to hold a family of four.
The balcony is enjoyable, here you can sit in the evenings watching the bats and imaging you are in the middle of a jungle. Quite many birds as well. And the architecture of the place is fantastic, held in a traditional style.
The restaurant area is fantastic as well, well maintained and offering big and tasty meals. The manager use to sit here most of the time chatting with customers, I think this is why this is the best held place. I don't think she walks around the property so much anymore, and the staff mostly care about what the manager can see.
I encourage the manager to get up and walk around more, inspecting the rooms, especially the bathrooms, and look for garbage where it's not so easy to see. Just a little more engagement from the manager for the details and this can easily become a top ten place, offering a unique jungle experience!
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| Welcome to Haruhay! |
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| Beautiful pink house. |
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| Gorgeous vine cellar. |
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| Abseloutely charming architecture and garden. |
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| Our apartment block. |
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| Nice colors. |
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| A wonderful balcony to watch bats hunting in the jungle during evenings. |
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| Big and nice room with a huge bed, no problem with a family of four. No problem either to have our grandmother and cousin stay with us as well, but the manager didn't allow this. A harsh decision. |
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The bathroom might looks well but was a disaster. We had to borrow a bucket to flush the toilet manually, the gasket in the shower head was broken so that the water came out all the wrong directions, the water faucet almost fell off, the toothbrush glasses were not cleaned and there were lizard poo on the walls.
Too there were some huge cockroaches, and the kids enjoyed watching mamma hunting them with the broom. |
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| Lovely lush jungle. |
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| Very nice pools, the one in the background for small children. But again the toilet facilities and showers in the background were a disaster. For our ten days stay it was not cleaned once! Probably the manager never inspected it, so that the staff didn't find any reason to care for it. |
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| The baby pool. |
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| A tricycle trip to a the nearby resort beaches White Sands or Blue Waters costs 100, maximum 150 pesos, but this guy charged us for 200 pesos, more than the price of a superb taxi. |
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| Nearby Blue Waters. |
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| Extremely charming restaurant! To sit here in the evenings with a bottle of Austrian read vine is a pleasant experience. |
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| Fresh baked goods every day. |
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| A small selection of European foods and toppings. Even cloud berry jam from Northern Norway was to be found here. The Cebuanos didn't seem to value this delicatesse though. |
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| Stone oven baked pizza. |
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| The "wienerbrød" was just as tasty if not even better than in Vienna. |
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Haruhay, the jungle oasis at Mactan, with a rare autentic feeling!
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See more images at Wikimedia.
