Caluwayan Palm Island Resort & Restaurant — Hotel in Marabut

Visited in October 2016 with family.

The place where the resort is situated is amazing. Not too far away, you'll see a couple of boulders or islands, as the locals call them, the sand is fine and black, the water is shallow and not foamy, and there's not too much of a wave. Jellyfishes, however, are definitely having a party there. They got the warning sign put up so you should know. You just have to pay attention and watch the kids since those little friends are just having a swim in the shallow part of sea.

The room we took was the nipa-like one at the far end. Its really quite small, with one shower room, a terrace and a veranda. Has two queen-sized beds and in the upper deck of the room is the single bed. The AC wont reach the upper deck (cold air flows downward, remember?) so it'll be a bit nasty up there once the sun is up. They have electric fan though. Fridge is there, towels, I liked their duvets and all, very comfortable but watch out for frass! They fall from the wood above the beds. Lots of insects but understandable, I'd say. You're in the province for sweet's sake. I've had my fair share of tons of insect bites!!! Real itchy, those sad things!😅 Bring OFF lotion.

The food is just fine. I'd say nothing extra ordinary. The service crew could use a little pat on their backs but maybe they haven't been given one for sometime now because there's no reason. They do seem uninterested. Not welcoming, no smiling faces. Pft. So unhappy with them.

Pool is right over the other side of the resort. One is for kids. Nice pool. You have to bring the stubs though. A personnel will check if you've paid to use the facility.

We rented a boat to give us a ride to look around. We went to see the islands around and made a stop at one of them to have a swim. Fishes are just swimming in the shallow waters. Bring goggles and snorkles- it'll be fun seeing them! Just please don't step on the plants, they're all over the shallow seabed and lots of fishes are there. I hope they'll all nip on your skin if you do. Bring swim shoes. The water is great but the shores nearby are rocky.

No other activities aside from this. Told manong it'll be fun if they have snorkling activities where you get to hang by boat and see underwater while it moves around the sea. He said they'll try to buy the equipments. These guys- not the resorts service crew-...

A place with great potential! This place doesn’t as far as I know really have any competition in its segment anywhere in the area around Tacloban and their prices reflect this. We stayed there for 10 days and that was probably twice as long as the place merits, as there really isn’t a lot to do apart from relaxing at the pool/beach. There is some underwhelming boat trip and a quite nice cave but both are covered in about two hours. You can rent some canoe/kayaks but I found them overpriced, as most services offered there. There is no WiFi and as good as no mobile data unless You have a dedicated mobile router with discrete antennas and a Globe sim so it’s a good place for some digital detox. We stayed half the time in a double deluxe room in the hotel building and half the time in a garden villa bungalow.

I would recommend the room over the bungalow unless you’re really into mosquitoes, ants, spiders, geckos and cockroaches as they were plentiful in the bungalow, not helped by the prime breeding grounds that was the brackish water ponds behind the bungalows.

The grounds and pool are well maintained and clean. The beach is great and surprisingly little trash and plastics to be seen.

The food from the menu was mostly well prepared and tasteful, but the menu is quite small and for a ten day stay fast became repetitive since there really isn’t any easily available food or restaurants available in the area around the resort. You will need a car or hope to flag down a tricycle and go half an hour for somewhere else to eat. Breakfast was complimentary and if there is few people staying in the resort you can choose breakfast from the menu, if there is enough people staying there there will be a rather disappointing common fixed menu /amount of breakfast in the restaurant without any flexibility.

Staff was great, always helpful, polite and cheerful, they all...

Overall it's a pleasant resort, but with room for improvement. The key attraction here is the large pool with amazing ocean views and a well laid out tropical garden. But... if that wasn't there I probably wouldn't stay here. I booked a cheaper (but still 2500 pesos) old room, which was smallish and could use a bit of love and tender. No hot shower (as informed in advance). Check-in took much too long, with lots of rules being explained. I suspect there is an accountant managing this resort.... The quality and portions of food in the restaurant were good, albeit a bit pricey. It's easy to reach the resort by one of the many vans plying the Tacloban to Guiuan route. However, once you are there, you really are a bit stuck. Why doesn't the resort offer any motorcycles for rent? The rock formations in the ocean are nice for a little kayaking trip, but the paddles are so extremely heavy that it turns into a weightlifting exercise (i did dozens of kayaking trips and never ever were the paddles this heavy). Last but not least, there is practically no mobile phone or internet reception at the resort. On their website they advertise big "wifi now available", but there is no wifi at all. When asked about it they said they couldn't offer it because the signal wasn't strong enough. Hello!! That's precisly the reason that you need to offer it to your customers as a service. Clearly a frugal mindset is in charge of the resort. If you are dependent on phone/internet access for work or further trip planning then better skip...