Balai saDecember 2008, Christmas party. Not the typical company, so it wasn’t the usual office party…we went away for an overnight stay in a resort in San Juan, Batangas. The place was called Balai sa Laiya. Balai means bahay in Tagalog and house in English (and that’s your English-Tagalog 101 with Maui!) The place was about 3 hours drive away from Manila and well maybe it was only 2 for others, but it took us 5 hours to get there cause we got lost. By 7pm just in time for dinner, we finally arrived. The place was nice, the rooms were built like Nipa huts and Ina and I shared a room called Seaside. There were also rooms called Sampaloc house, its because the resort was full of Sampaloc trees…(sampaloc is tamarind). The rates were cheap, so I think for an overnight getaway, it is recommendable.
The overnight package we got was inclusive of full board meal. Dinner for that night was spaghetti, vegetable salad in vinaigrette dressing, baked mussels, rice and chicken barbeque and banana pudding for dessert. Sounds yummy but I wasn’t that all happy with what I ate. Maybe because I was so hungry after getting lost around Batangas for 5 hours and the mussels were not baked properly, the salad was lacking for something more…maybe walnuts or cherry tomatoes, the chicken was not marinated properly. I didn’t even fancy the dessert.
Night shot of the resort
It was raining the day before so we were all excited to see the sun coming up that morning. We changed to our swimwear and went to join the rest. Few more minutes, coffee was ready…It was like kindergarten school scene where the teachers called for a recess! all of us raced each other on the 2nd second floor to get our first caffeine mix.
Breakfast was great, sunnyside up egg, scrambled egg, fried rice, corned beef, bread (with choices of butter, jam and you can toast it too), and fresh fruit platter.Since there was no plan or games or even a program, we enjoyed the resort after breakfast by just swimming, sun bathing, kayaking and taking more pictures. Before lunch time, me and the girls stayed in the cabanas and took more pictures…lay in the shade of the cabana until we were called for lunch. Now that’s life…*sigh*
Good morning girls!
For lunch, we enjoyed their kare-kare with a really good bagoong (shrimp paste), tilapia cooked in sweet and sour, pork barbeque and molo soup, we ordered iced cold coke to complete our yummy lunch. Dessert was sago salad which I also dig! All in all, meal buffet (except for dinner) was great!
Balai sa Laiya, Batangas
We stayed at the top of the tower for a couple minutes before deciding to get ready and head back to reality.We left Balai sa Laiya resort around 2:00 in the afternoon, refreshed, sleepy and with tons of pictures. On our way back we got lost….again, but it’s all good.
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