wackodacko
Guest
"P8,600 including buffet meals, 3 days & 2 nights accommodation in an Aplaya Cottage, 4 boat dives including gear rental, and boat transfers. Extra dives are 850 each," Sheila the agent quoted. It sounded like a good deal but really, it was the entree to a horrendous weekend affair.
RESERVATIONS
Chrissie and Anson signed up for a cottage. They paid 8,600 each. Then they asked if they could bring moi, and Sheila said YES, for an additional 8,600. That was a bit surprising since triple sharing should be cheaper... they were gonna sardine-pack us into the room! Sheila said too bad, thats what the price is. It is also 8,600 if I have my own cottage by myself. When we heard this, I quickly agreed and cancelled my Boracay trip since the plane scheduling interfered with my Tubbataha trip anyways. The next day, when I'm ready to make my deposit at Equitable Bank, Sheila calls and says.. OOPS.. Jade has to pay an extra 1,200 per day pala! WHAT!? I already cancelled Boracay you incompetent fool! She says that having a cottage alone will cost more, and what she said yesterday was a mistake. Well tough ... Chrissie went ape**** and screamed at her for making me cancel Boracay and giving me wrong rates. After arguing and playing phone tag for a whole day, the manager Cathy finally and rightfully gave in. This landed me in cottage #104 by myself, for 8,600. Chrissie and Anson were in #101. I paid the deposit at Equitable and that was that. The next day, Mary Ann decided that she wanted that extra bed in my solo cottage, so she paid 8,600 (after clearing it with the manager Cathy) and on Thursday morning the four of us headed to Lea Beach, Tabangao, Batangas.
IN TRANSIT
We were supposed to be there by 9AM. At around 8AM, Sheila calls and says "oh..11AM pala yun departure".. OK.. fine.. we go buko pie shopping and eat breakfast.. At 1030AM, we arrive and the dusty nasty nipa hut waiting shed at Lea Beach. We wait til 11AM and board the boat, which by the way, has a capacity of 42 people. The captain said the water was pretty rocky and we could only take 35 people. Sheila said "NO! You promised 42 so here are 42!" I did a quick headcount and there were actually 48 people. Liar. So we were super-overloaded on this dinky boat, and a lot of unlucky guests had to wait an extra 2 hours at Lea Beach to catch the next boat. (For those of you that don't know.. Lea beach is a disgusting trash-infested beach where vendors bug you every 5 minutes to buy overpriced crap like "pearl" necklaces, etc)
When we got to Verde Island an hour later, it was nice. We had the best rooms on the waterfront and the welcome drink (pineapple juice) tasted like a rusty can. Anyway, it was lunchtime and we ate fish..lots of fish. The food was mediocre and the tables were assigned seating. This means during meal time, we can only sit with our own group and are not allowed to eat and mingle with other people. We were assigned really close to the buffet table. The trade off was that 4 of us were assigned to a table good for 2! Well... that definitely beat getting assigned to a table outside the roof in the heat. That group was complaining like crazy...Sad.
FOOD
Now, let me explain the so-called BUFFET rules and regulations. Breakfast is from 7AM -9AM. Lunch from 12-2PM and dinner from 7-9PM. The next morning, our dive buddy Francis and some other people came to breakfast at 830 and there was only rice and egg left. Not even garlic fried rice. Plain rice and sunny side up egg! GROSS! A buffet costs 340 bucks. To top it off, the waiter told them to come earlier next time. Then, during dinner time, the waiter told me "maam...4 pieces lang fish maximum per person." The fish pieces were smaller than 2x2 squares! The soup tasted like MSG, the vegetables were dead and overcooked, and I don't eat rice. He wanted me to get only 4 pieces of fish? What kind of BUFFET is this!?!?!? Oh yeah, lets not forget about dessert. Every meal its fruits.. watermelon and mango. The watermelon slices were tasteless, and the mango slices were yellow, but hella sour and totally unripe! They had arroz caldo on Friday morning and it tasted like the burned black stuff at the bottom of a pot. Sick sick sick! If you think I'm crazy for taking Verde Island's god forsaken buffet package.. let me give ya a sample of ala carte menu prices:
"cock" or sprite in can = 60 (exact spelling from their menu)
mango shake = 185 (ripe mango daw but it was really sour and nasty tasting)
halo halo = 185 (not available cuz they didn't have ice)
tiny tuna sandwich with cheese = 105 (stale bread with a THIN layer of tuna and tons of mayo, NO fries)
Wow.. the 25 peso small bottle of Sprite I bought at Galera's floating bar in Sabang last weekend is now considered cheap!
DIVING
Ok, now lets go to the diving part... nice lil twin engine boat.. i wish i brought a wakeboard.
The DM gave me a headache. There was only 1 DM there by the way.. He brought us to San Agapito at around 3PM on Thursday.. OMG.. the surface was rocking the boat like crazy and he knew we were with 3 inexperienced divers. He said we should all go down at the same time, ya know.. negative descent. The 3 of them were looking at me like wha? how can we go down right away? OK, whatever, the DM was nuts and I was looking at the water like this could be an experience and it was.. a 4 minute dive! I went down to 29 feet and was waiting while 4 of them were up there struggling to get down.. so finally we aborted the dive that shouldn't have even started and headed over to Nonie's Blue instead. There, we saw nothing. HA HA HA.
Next morning 7AM we decided to check out San Agapito again. No current daw its gonna be an easy dive. OK, so this dive was awesome! I saw a huge ass cobia and biiiig groupers! Big school of jacks and a banded sea snake swimming around us. Lots of scorpion fish and nudibranchs for my cam to feast on. (my fave subjects cuz they hardly move HAHAHA!) I was in a buddy trio with Chrissie and Mary Ann.. they both ran out of air and Chrissie was mooching air off my octo while grabbing onto my tank and making me tow her through the current. What a workout! Mary Ann ran out of air and the DM grabbed her and told her to do a CESA because he was too busy towing Anson around, who was low on air! When we got to the surface, Anson was coughing out blood and had a bloody nose. Everyone blew their safety stops except Chrissie and moi cuz I was following what my computer said and she was latched onto my damn tank so she had no choice. Anyway, my max depth was 97feet. I asked the DM why he blew off his safety stop even if he had 50 bar of air left.. he said cuz they didn't go that deep so it didn't matter. ("mababaw lang kami eh! mga 90 ft!") WHAT-ever!!!! Next day the DM says we should go to washing machine when the current isn't strong.. like around 3PM. (sounds familiar, eh?) Well.. 3PM comes around and the washing machine is swirling like its on SUPER WASH! He says, "o well.. we shall go to DJ's Corner instead". DJ's corner, unsurprisingly.. offers NOTHING to see. Another dive down the drain. The next day, he says since current is so strong around Verde we should check out Hole in the Wall, Galera at 9AM. OK.. so we head over to hole in the wall, a 10 min boat ride. We get there and the current is like washing machine times 2. We couldn't find a good place for an entry so the boat man circled around and around til finally we found one. So here is another drift dive and we saw... NOTHING! yay.. When we surfaced, the DM said "wow,..did you see that 4ft shark inside the hole in the wall? I saw it! it was awesome!" Yeah, sure... no one else saw it. And I don't think sharks go into the hole in the wall..
So, we get back to the resort and try to rinse off at the dive-area showers. NO WATER!! "sorry maam, water interruption!" Yes, in the middle of the day, peak hours, and they don't have water for a rinse. OK, well our consolation is they let us ride the "pinut" boat for 20 minutes instead of 15 minutes. (1,000 pesos for 15 minutes!) The pinut boat is a mini banana boat, its good for two kids or one adult. I think its supposed to be PEANUT, but they just can't spell right. But I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. While we're on the topic of water, let me tell you about the quality of it.
WATER
1. The water cups they give out are SMALL..its twice the size of a shot glass. If you ask me, it promotes dehydration cuz you lose the water you just drank by walking back to the water cooler.
2. The 5 gallon purified water jug in the dining area had a bug in it. I told them and they changed the bottle. The second day, I saw white stuff floating around in it and thats the last I drank from that water cooler.
3. The water cooler didn't even "cool" the water. It was all warm even from the blue spout. They gave us ice. But the ice was salty. Like tap water. So whats the point of drinking purified water if the ice is from the tap?
4. ALL the tap water is salty. The room, bathroom, shower, and YESSSSSS even the swimming pool! Its like brushing your teeth in the ocean. Yuck!
ELECTRICITY
There was a power outage! It was only about 20 minutes long. "Sorry about da brown out maam.. our generator is being stressed kasi eh too many people using aircon at the same time".. But thats not the bad part. The bad part is their electricity is supplied by generator alone. So when the resort is fully booked, the air compressor to fill dive tanks can't get enough power. This means using 60s instead of 72 or 80s. This means shorter dive times for the same price as a regular one.
ROOM
The aircon goes off at 6AM everyday. Why? I don't know... so you're forced to get up and switch it back on? Or if you're too lazy then you have to suffer in the heat. Apparently, we weren't the only ones with a weird airconditioner. Maintenance accidentally showed up at our room and said they were there to fix our A/C which wasn't cooling. But we never reported anything, it was next door. We paid for an aircon room, so we want aircon when we want aircon! Not when the overcrowded resort's generator feels like supplying aircon. Dammit.. I'm paying 8,600! What we did report was a tuckoo/tukoo lizard in our room that "alarmed" every fifteen minutes throughout the night. It was really loud and I slept with pillows on my face cuz it felt like the darn lizard would fall on my face any minute. They couldn't do anything about it cuz its some natural thing. Again, we weren't the only ones with the tukoo in our room, cuz someone from another cottage reported a noisy "baby crocodile" the next morning, and it turned out to be the tuko. Since I wanted a pillow for on my head and under my head, I phoned housekeeping for extra pillows. They never answered. I then called the front desk and after 5 calls (10 rings each) they finally answered. Pillows came 3 hours later. Housekeeping cleaned our rooms the next day and turned down our beds so hard that we couldn't find our comforters. We called front desk and they brought it to us within 15 minutes. Good job. Mary Ann's brand new slipper broke so they epoxied it for free. Another plus. Oh, but all good things come to an end. Read on for the checkout.
CHECKING OUT
Ahhh.. Finally Saturday, we get to go home! But not hassle-free! They were charging 1,250 per extra dive for the people without gear. This was so wrong, because it was quoted at 850 including gear rental. After haggling for 2 hours with the dive shop, front desk, and batangas office, they finally gave in to 850. Also, we had to carry our own bags to the front cuz all the porters were busy with this mass checkout. I guess everyone wanted to check out already. Finally, we got onto this boat to take us back to Lea Beach. The boat was so big it couldn't dock at the shore, and we rode mini transit boats from there. Such a hassle cuz you have to balance standing up! Weirdness. Then for people who couldn't jump off the mini boat, they had to wade in the bacteria-ized black water to get to the shore. So, that was the end of the Verde Island weekend from Hell, April 17-19, 2003.
CONCLUSION
Do I really have to say anything more? Don't go to Verde Island Resort! The service sucks, the food sucks, the room sucks, the water sucks, its grossly overpriced and overrated. If you want to dive around San Agapito or Washing Machine, just stay at Oceana or somewhere in Galera and deal with the 30-40min-boat ride to the dive site.
RESERVATIONS
Chrissie and Anson signed up for a cottage. They paid 8,600 each. Then they asked if they could bring moi, and Sheila said YES, for an additional 8,600. That was a bit surprising since triple sharing should be cheaper... they were gonna sardine-pack us into the room! Sheila said too bad, thats what the price is. It is also 8,600 if I have my own cottage by myself. When we heard this, I quickly agreed and cancelled my Boracay trip since the plane scheduling interfered with my Tubbataha trip anyways. The next day, when I'm ready to make my deposit at Equitable Bank, Sheila calls and says.. OOPS.. Jade has to pay an extra 1,200 per day pala! WHAT!? I already cancelled Boracay you incompetent fool! She says that having a cottage alone will cost more, and what she said yesterday was a mistake. Well tough ... Chrissie went ape**** and screamed at her for making me cancel Boracay and giving me wrong rates. After arguing and playing phone tag for a whole day, the manager Cathy finally and rightfully gave in. This landed me in cottage #104 by myself, for 8,600. Chrissie and Anson were in #101. I paid the deposit at Equitable and that was that. The next day, Mary Ann decided that she wanted that extra bed in my solo cottage, so she paid 8,600 (after clearing it with the manager Cathy) and on Thursday morning the four of us headed to Lea Beach, Tabangao, Batangas.
IN TRANSIT
We were supposed to be there by 9AM. At around 8AM, Sheila calls and says "oh..11AM pala yun departure".. OK.. fine.. we go buko pie shopping and eat breakfast.. At 1030AM, we arrive and the dusty nasty nipa hut waiting shed at Lea Beach. We wait til 11AM and board the boat, which by the way, has a capacity of 42 people. The captain said the water was pretty rocky and we could only take 35 people. Sheila said "NO! You promised 42 so here are 42!" I did a quick headcount and there were actually 48 people. Liar. So we were super-overloaded on this dinky boat, and a lot of unlucky guests had to wait an extra 2 hours at Lea Beach to catch the next boat. (For those of you that don't know.. Lea beach is a disgusting trash-infested beach where vendors bug you every 5 minutes to buy overpriced crap like "pearl" necklaces, etc)
When we got to Verde Island an hour later, it was nice. We had the best rooms on the waterfront and the welcome drink (pineapple juice) tasted like a rusty can. Anyway, it was lunchtime and we ate fish..lots of fish. The food was mediocre and the tables were assigned seating. This means during meal time, we can only sit with our own group and are not allowed to eat and mingle with other people. We were assigned really close to the buffet table. The trade off was that 4 of us were assigned to a table good for 2! Well... that definitely beat getting assigned to a table outside the roof in the heat. That group was complaining like crazy...Sad.
FOOD
Now, let me explain the so-called BUFFET rules and regulations. Breakfast is from 7AM -9AM. Lunch from 12-2PM and dinner from 7-9PM. The next morning, our dive buddy Francis and some other people came to breakfast at 830 and there was only rice and egg left. Not even garlic fried rice. Plain rice and sunny side up egg! GROSS! A buffet costs 340 bucks. To top it off, the waiter told them to come earlier next time. Then, during dinner time, the waiter told me "maam...4 pieces lang fish maximum per person." The fish pieces were smaller than 2x2 squares! The soup tasted like MSG, the vegetables were dead and overcooked, and I don't eat rice. He wanted me to get only 4 pieces of fish? What kind of BUFFET is this!?!?!? Oh yeah, lets not forget about dessert. Every meal its fruits.. watermelon and mango. The watermelon slices were tasteless, and the mango slices were yellow, but hella sour and totally unripe! They had arroz caldo on Friday morning and it tasted like the burned black stuff at the bottom of a pot. Sick sick sick! If you think I'm crazy for taking Verde Island's god forsaken buffet package.. let me give ya a sample of ala carte menu prices:
"cock" or sprite in can = 60 (exact spelling from their menu)
mango shake = 185 (ripe mango daw but it was really sour and nasty tasting)
halo halo = 185 (not available cuz they didn't have ice)
tiny tuna sandwich with cheese = 105 (stale bread with a THIN layer of tuna and tons of mayo, NO fries)
Wow.. the 25 peso small bottle of Sprite I bought at Galera's floating bar in Sabang last weekend is now considered cheap!
DIVING
Ok, now lets go to the diving part... nice lil twin engine boat.. i wish i brought a wakeboard.
The DM gave me a headache. There was only 1 DM there by the way.. He brought us to San Agapito at around 3PM on Thursday.. OMG.. the surface was rocking the boat like crazy and he knew we were with 3 inexperienced divers. He said we should all go down at the same time, ya know.. negative descent. The 3 of them were looking at me like wha? how can we go down right away? OK, whatever, the DM was nuts and I was looking at the water like this could be an experience and it was.. a 4 minute dive! I went down to 29 feet and was waiting while 4 of them were up there struggling to get down.. so finally we aborted the dive that shouldn't have even started and headed over to Nonie's Blue instead. There, we saw nothing. HA HA HA.
Next morning 7AM we decided to check out San Agapito again. No current daw its gonna be an easy dive. OK, so this dive was awesome! I saw a huge ass cobia and biiiig groupers! Big school of jacks and a banded sea snake swimming around us. Lots of scorpion fish and nudibranchs for my cam to feast on. (my fave subjects cuz they hardly move HAHAHA!) I was in a buddy trio with Chrissie and Mary Ann.. they both ran out of air and Chrissie was mooching air off my octo while grabbing onto my tank and making me tow her through the current. What a workout! Mary Ann ran out of air and the DM grabbed her and told her to do a CESA because he was too busy towing Anson around, who was low on air! When we got to the surface, Anson was coughing out blood and had a bloody nose. Everyone blew their safety stops except Chrissie and moi cuz I was following what my computer said and she was latched onto my damn tank so she had no choice. Anyway, my max depth was 97feet. I asked the DM why he blew off his safety stop even if he had 50 bar of air left.. he said cuz they didn't go that deep so it didn't matter. ("mababaw lang kami eh! mga 90 ft!") WHAT-ever!!!! Next day the DM says we should go to washing machine when the current isn't strong.. like around 3PM. (sounds familiar, eh?) Well.. 3PM comes around and the washing machine is swirling like its on SUPER WASH! He says, "o well.. we shall go to DJ's Corner instead". DJ's corner, unsurprisingly.. offers NOTHING to see. Another dive down the drain. The next day, he says since current is so strong around Verde we should check out Hole in the Wall, Galera at 9AM. OK.. so we head over to hole in the wall, a 10 min boat ride. We get there and the current is like washing machine times 2. We couldn't find a good place for an entry so the boat man circled around and around til finally we found one. So here is another drift dive and we saw... NOTHING! yay.. When we surfaced, the DM said "wow,..did you see that 4ft shark inside the hole in the wall? I saw it! it was awesome!" Yeah, sure... no one else saw it. And I don't think sharks go into the hole in the wall..
So, we get back to the resort and try to rinse off at the dive-area showers. NO WATER!! "sorry maam, water interruption!" Yes, in the middle of the day, peak hours, and they don't have water for a rinse. OK, well our consolation is they let us ride the "pinut" boat for 20 minutes instead of 15 minutes. (1,000 pesos for 15 minutes!) The pinut boat is a mini banana boat, its good for two kids or one adult. I think its supposed to be PEANUT, but they just can't spell right. But I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. While we're on the topic of water, let me tell you about the quality of it.
WATER
1. The water cups they give out are SMALL..its twice the size of a shot glass. If you ask me, it promotes dehydration cuz you lose the water you just drank by walking back to the water cooler.
2. The 5 gallon purified water jug in the dining area had a bug in it. I told them and they changed the bottle. The second day, I saw white stuff floating around in it and thats the last I drank from that water cooler.
3. The water cooler didn't even "cool" the water. It was all warm even from the blue spout. They gave us ice. But the ice was salty. Like tap water. So whats the point of drinking purified water if the ice is from the tap?
4. ALL the tap water is salty. The room, bathroom, shower, and YESSSSSS even the swimming pool! Its like brushing your teeth in the ocean. Yuck!
ELECTRICITY
There was a power outage! It was only about 20 minutes long. "Sorry about da brown out maam.. our generator is being stressed kasi eh too many people using aircon at the same time".. But thats not the bad part. The bad part is their electricity is supplied by generator alone. So when the resort is fully booked, the air compressor to fill dive tanks can't get enough power. This means using 60s instead of 72 or 80s. This means shorter dive times for the same price as a regular one.
ROOM
The aircon goes off at 6AM everyday. Why? I don't know... so you're forced to get up and switch it back on? Or if you're too lazy then you have to suffer in the heat. Apparently, we weren't the only ones with a weird airconditioner. Maintenance accidentally showed up at our room and said they were there to fix our A/C which wasn't cooling. But we never reported anything, it was next door. We paid for an aircon room, so we want aircon when we want aircon! Not when the overcrowded resort's generator feels like supplying aircon. Dammit.. I'm paying 8,600! What we did report was a tuckoo/tukoo lizard in our room that "alarmed" every fifteen minutes throughout the night. It was really loud and I slept with pillows on my face cuz it felt like the darn lizard would fall on my face any minute. They couldn't do anything about it cuz its some natural thing. Again, we weren't the only ones with the tukoo in our room, cuz someone from another cottage reported a noisy "baby crocodile" the next morning, and it turned out to be the tuko. Since I wanted a pillow for on my head and under my head, I phoned housekeeping for extra pillows. They never answered. I then called the front desk and after 5 calls (10 rings each) they finally answered. Pillows came 3 hours later. Housekeeping cleaned our rooms the next day and turned down our beds so hard that we couldn't find our comforters. We called front desk and they brought it to us within 15 minutes. Good job. Mary Ann's brand new slipper broke so they epoxied it for free. Another plus. Oh, but all good things come to an end. Read on for the checkout.
CHECKING OUT
Ahhh.. Finally Saturday, we get to go home! But not hassle-free! They were charging 1,250 per extra dive for the people without gear. This was so wrong, because it was quoted at 850 including gear rental. After haggling for 2 hours with the dive shop, front desk, and batangas office, they finally gave in to 850. Also, we had to carry our own bags to the front cuz all the porters were busy with this mass checkout. I guess everyone wanted to check out already. Finally, we got onto this boat to take us back to Lea Beach. The boat was so big it couldn't dock at the shore, and we rode mini transit boats from there. Such a hassle cuz you have to balance standing up! Weirdness. Then for people who couldn't jump off the mini boat, they had to wade in the bacteria-ized black water to get to the shore. So, that was the end of the Verde Island weekend from Hell, April 17-19, 2003.
CONCLUSION
Do I really have to say anything more? Don't go to Verde Island Resort! The service sucks, the food sucks, the room sucks, the water sucks, its grossly overpriced and overrated. If you want to dive around San Agapito or Washing Machine, just stay at Oceana or somewhere in Galera and deal with the 30-40min-boat ride to the dive site.
the divers i'm supposed to dm cancelled 'coz of sars... 
