Siladen Resort & Spa — Hotel in Manado

I struggled to decide whether to book Siladen or the Bunaken Oasis Resort....they both looked amazing....Bunaken was more money and I was struggling to see why from the pictures. I decided on Siladen as I liked the idea of being on a small Island with access to sandy beach at our front door. I am so glad I made this decision as we absolutely loved this resort.||The beach front Villa: |Gorgeous, spacious, amazing outside bathroom and shower, loads of shelf space for all your toiletries, loads of storage to put away all your clothing, a UK adapter extension lead allowing to plug in multiple electronics. A large outside seating area on our deck, lounge chairs facing the beach and our own Hammock. Air conditioning and mosquito nets(I get eaten alive usually and did not get one bite at this resort, did not see a mosquito!)||Common area: |Bar with great drinks/cocktails, pool table around the pool, plenty of different seating areas covered and uncovered, A station with tea/coffee, fruit, cakes and sweets available all day and stocked up always(Not that you are ever hungry as the meals are plentiful and amazing) There is a tree house with seating looking out to the ocean and they offer yoga classes here. See my pictures of these common areas and pool.||Restaurant: |Well...just trust me...you will gain weight!! Food was amazing! All cooked fro scratch, loads of options...I could go on and on...just trust me you won't be disappointed. A lovely touch that most of the staff knew our names and would say good morning to us by our first names and they were all so lovely.||Spa: |Fantastic treatment options and at a great price too. We had a few treatments...a lovely space.||Dive Centre: |What a professional operation...was a bit blown away by it actually. They know what they are doing...50 people working there.....they have amazing equipment and can rent under water cameras and lights for your night dives. Loads of sizes to fit all of us and the kids...which we struggled with in our previous dive resort in Derawan Islands. Boats are large and spacious with tea/coffee/treats/hot and cold infused face towels offered when you come out of the water(my husband loved this) and plenty of hotel towels on the boat, the team deals with all your equipment so you just put it on and get in the water...they change over the tanks for your second dives, you do not have to do anything but enjoy the cruise and views. even a toilet on board. ||Dive sites:||We had four full days of diving and did 3 dives a day including 1 night dive. All the sites were teaming with loads of fish, loads of turtles and the coral was amazing. See some of my pictures. Definitely do the day trip to the Bangka Islands...they put on an impressive lunch on the beach after your second dive. Maybe even look to stay over at their sister resort the Coral Eye on Bangka Island! We felt that the Bunaken area of diving must be one of the top dive sites in the world, it was amazing. We would have stayed for another week if we could have! Our kids 12 and 15 never bored of the diving, they absolutely loved it too. Our night dive was incredible.||As a special treat we were there when the turtles hatched!! They collect the eggs and keep them protected to not eaten by any animals giving them a better chance of survival. see pictures||Getting there:||Once you get yourself to Manado(many flights from most of the different airports in Indonesia, or Jakarta or Singapore.) Siladen will arrange to collect you at the airport or your hotel in Manado and take you to one of the 2 ports their boats leave from and it is only 20 minutes from one port and 35 minutes from the other. An easy crossing from the mainland to the island.||On a side note...if you have a night in Manado...just stay at the Sheraton...I thought I had booked a lovely hotel in Manado based on what I saw in Booking.com and tripadvisor...it was awful...wish we had stayed at the Sheraton. ||We were a family of four boys aged 12 and 14 who have their PADI open water. Doing your courses here at Siladen would be a great idea if a family member did not already have their certification. You can take the Nitrox course, advanced course...any course offered by PADI and maybe even other dive governing bodies. This dive centre has everything on offer and the people there know what they are doing, extremely professional, you are in great hands here. Leah and Leo are fantastic. Try out their Olympus underwater camera! I had it with me for every dive...I am now sorting through over 1000 underwater pictures and videos that we transferred onto our laptop before we left.||Don't stay anywhere else in Bunaken! This place will not disappoint and the managers of the hotel and staff will take amazing care of you. Kerri and her husband are always around, they are lovely to talk to and could not be more helpful.||I will stop now...as I could go on and on as I loved this resort. It isn't often you stay somewhere where you struggle to come up with anything they could have done better. If we lived closer to Indonesia we would go here every year! We found a similar gem in Cyprus and we have been back every October for the...

I have known the resort for several years but we never came here. Finally we booked our second diving trip in north sulawesi region and chose this hotel. We have visited Indonesia now for the eighth time and I can say that among all the Indonesian diving Hotels that we visited so far, Siladen Resort served the best food regarding quality and variety! It was very, very good and we were always looking forward to go for lunch or dining.|But from the beginning:|We had a transfer to the jetty with the siladen bus for approx. 30 minutes and 15 minutes by boat. We got a cold towel and a water bottle. We arrived in the evening, got a very warm welcome and a super welcome drink. The staff was so friendly from the very beginning! |We booked a garden bungalow because there was no beach bungalow available (but I would recommed the beach bungalows, as you have a private „garden“ with sunbeds and beautiful views; the price would be worth it). There was everything you needed, an additional chair or small board would have been fine. There are plenty of sockets to charge batteries and a clothes rack on the terrace of the garden bungalows.|Breakfast: There is all you need! Fresh fruit, self baked good bread, an egg station, even home made fruit jam! There is also ovomaltime, every morning something different like eggs benedict, acocado toast with poached egg… unfortunately I could not eat so much for breakfast as we went diving shortly after breakfast every morning. Breakfast starts at 7:00 and meeting time for diving was 7:45. Because we had our bungalow at the other end of the resort, it was „a bit stressful“ to go back to the room to brush teeth and get your stuff and be on time for diving. Probably one of the few things that could be changed to move the meeting time to 8:00 in the morning (or start with breakfast „officially“ at 6:45 - lots of guests came before 7:00).||Diving:|We have already dived in Bunaken in 2016 and saw a lot of other areas in Indonesia since then. Bunaken is not the best of it, but still offers beautiful diving with lots of turtles and plenty of fish while enjoying the wall dives. We had some white tip reef sharks, hundreds of turtles, some really amazing top reefs full of healthy corals and also macro stuff. Our experienced Guide Stenly found lots of critters we would not have spotted without him. He wrote down the names of the animals we saw after every dive and knew even the latin names of the most nudibranches we saw. On the boat there was a hot face towel - how I loved that! I do not have to mention the tea, water, cookies and cakes and fruits….|One thing to improve for Diving: once we were 10 divers plus guides on the boat and that was too much. There was not even enough space for everyone to sit on the bench. That should be limited to 8 people max. ||Back after a two tank dive there was lunch (buffet) either on the beach (so beautiful below the trees) or in the restaurant, depending on the weather.|In the afternoon at 14:45 there was the third dive or you could go on a night dive (no additional charge! Nitrox is also free of charge) around 17:30. |For dinner there was either buffet or a menu served with enough options to choose (meat, fish, vegan/vegetarian). There was an Italian night with great pizza and an Indonesian night with people from the village playing music and singing. They even sang the maluku song I wished :-), so nice.|Bar: Supergood cocktails, our favourites were Passionita and Siladen Gin Tonic. Yes they have their price, but it was worth it! To „fill“ the bar with more people, they could think about make a happy hour maybe twice a week before dinner. |Snorkelling: Is recommended from the boat or from the old jetty, 5 minutes walk. You get a surface marker buoy from the Diving center. Be aware of currents and ask if you are not sure if its the right time.||For the staff we would like to name some of the persons we remember, especially for the Service in the Restaurant Diana, Lisner, Sintia (good yoga lessons!), Marlin, Lefti from the Bar and also Riri, and Monika from the reception. Lots of them helped me practising my Indonesian skills when speaking to me. There were so many others.. all of them are so friendly, really exceptional. And they know your name after the first day! |Spa: We enjoyed a 75 minutes massage for approximately 30€ - that was very good! Spa area beautiful with garden and fountain.|Pool: located next to reception and restaurant. Will be renovated next year, but still very nice. Water a bit warm on hot days ;-)|Beach: Beautiful white beach, enough sunbeds and shadow. beach shoes are recommended. |Evening program: two times per week yoga. At one evening there was a nudibranch presentation by Dimpy, in our opinion that could be a bit longer with more pictures.||In total we had a great time in Siladen and met nice people, ate very good food and enjoyed the beach and pool and the diving and the super service!|Besides the smaller points I mentioned there is not much to improve. |Thank you very much and we hope that Siladen and the dive sites will stay like this for a long time to come.|Angie and Joe...

We spent 9 nights in September at Siladen Resort. From the moment we were picked up until we waved goodbye at the airport everything was perfect. All the staff were genuinely thoughtful and helpful, and made us feel very welcomed.||It is okay to swim in the sea in front of the resort but be careful where you step because of sharp critters such as sea urchins hidden in the sea grass. There is a nice reef around the jetty for snorkeling about 10 minutes' walk along the beach. It is advisable to sign-in at the dive center and borrow a surface buoy to be visible as the jetty is in regular use. There are also paddle boards and kayaks for guest use.||The Luxury Villa we stayed in is very spacious and comfortable. It has direct access to the beach and an unobstructed view of the ocean. Attention to details in the room include a plugin mosquito repellent in the bedroom and bathroom. The only slight issue we had was sometimes there was no hot water in the shower, although it could be coincidence but turning the lever back and forth several times seemed to remedy it. ||Dinner was a la carte twice a week and buffet the rest of the time. Meals were served on the beach instead of in the restaurant weather permitting. Food was delicious and had enough varieties.||Once a week there was a singer and band providing entertainment before and during dinner. At the tree house there were yoga sessions twice a week and a weekly marine critters presentation.||The spa is large and very well appointed by dive resort standard and the therapists were very professional. ||We spend 7 days diving. The diving was very well organised, we did not see mixing of divers on air and Nitrox in the same group as mentioned in another review. We visited dive sites around Bunaken island as well as on the mainland side. When there were enough snorkelers there was a separate snorkeling boat. All the dive staff were super helpful, considerate and safety-conscious. Apart from drinks and snacks on the boat, the warm aromatherapy face towel provided after each dive was a really nice touch. Like all the dive guides our guide Abner was very keen-eyed and managed to find many of our favorite critters. We went on the Dolphin Tour one morning and were lucky enough to be treated to a show by the resident dolphin pod swimming around the bow and somersaulting.||We have had a very enjoyable diving holiday at Siladen Resort and would...