Our beach trip here at Munting Buhangin Resort in Nasugbu, Batangas is now a family tradition every year. Because it is the nearest best beach resort in Cavite and also in Manila with a travel time of 2 hours only, we first tried our summer beach day here last 2015, we stayed for a day trip only and our discovery of this lone beach resort is an accidental kind, we learned about the affordable rates after we stayed overnight at a nearby luxury beach resort.
And since the luxury life is also once in a while, we also hunt for the affordable ones, just like Munting Buhangin. I like to thank my wife for having the patience to walk the entire cove to check them out while I was taking a rest at the other resort. After our 2015 beach outing, we suggested that we should go back there again.
So the year came in, but we failed to get a booking for 2016, I think we are so busy that year, Or ako lang yata ang busy nun because my team #EATgetaway was formed and we're so busy with our travel projects. I can't seem to remember were we at during Summer 2016, but I know that me and my family took a summer break at home because 2015 is an all out travel with my family from summer to early Christmas.
But I thank again my wife for organizing our summer outing 2017, she organized our outing and booked an overnight stay at Munting Buhangin resort. We're a bit nervous because we read some not so good reviews about it, but we prepared ourselves already and have to avoid encounter some of those problems. The number one things to do is -- get to know the rules and booking regulation of the resort, because that was the reason why people rant about it, due to that they are not aware that staying at the resort room starts at 3pm.
January 28, 2017 - Summer outing day - we woke up at at around 4am and we travel going to Nasugbu, Batangas. Taking the route - Bacoor-Tanza-Naic-Maragondon-Ternate-Kaybiang Tunnel-Nasugbu route.
My family also invited our 3 housemates to join the summer trip and its great to introduce to them that we have nice beaches near Cavite and Manila.
Crossing Kaybiang Tunnel is the most fastest route going to Nasugbu. If you are coming from Manila, just go to coastal road and cross the Cavitex going to Kawit-Ternate area.
After crossing the Kaybiang Tunnel, its our first time to see this awesome landscape morning view on top of a mountain with over looking view of the entire Nasugbu mountains and beach cove.
People stop by here to take pictures and also if the sari sari store is open, you can buy some refreshments or eat your breakfast while enjoying the view.
Sympre my family will not miss this view..kaya selfie selfie din
See Also: Munting Buhangin Beach Resort VLOG series on Youtube
part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74PWNUPXXdg
part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwI3ePfQTUY
At 7am we arrived in front of the gates of Munting Buhangin, Resort.
My wife already booked a reservation 2 weeks before our summer beach day. She also send her 50% down payment via bank a week before just to confirm our overnight stay.
Then the guards expects us to arrive and my wife paid the entrance fee per head and also the remaining 50% payment for the beach house.
Here are the rates:
PHP 200 per head without lunch
PHP 8000 overnight stay at the air conditioned beach house with living room, kitchen, bathroom, with 2 bunk beds and one master's bed room
and if you book an overnight stay, each person will get FREE breakfast.
to book online go visit http://www.muntingbuhangin.ph
Take note that:
6AM - resort opens to all
5PM - beach closes to all day trip visitors
3PM - beach house accommodation opens
12PM - check out time
If you are booked overnight and already check out at 12PM, you can still use the FREE cottage tent for the entire day up to 5PM only.
Day trip visitors are also entitled for a free cottage tent.
Its a 4-5 minutes drive from the main gate going down to this main welcome arc of the resort
And the most hard part when you enter the resort is that this long stairs will test your patience hahaha. You need to carry your stuff from your car going down to your cottage tent.
There are some locals who are on stand by at the beach area, they will ask you if you need help in carrying your luggage, bags or picnic items. You can hire them to carry the things, just pay them PHP50-up. Also they can carry the things going back to your car, but make sure you walk with them so that they can drop the things at your preferred location, to prevent loss of items.
Here are the bamboo cottages that are FREE to use.
The tree house is one of the most popular cottage and overnight room.
There's also a sari sari store near the resort's restaurant. You can buy your food and some personal things you need. Im so glad that they have this store.
After eating our breakfast and some quick swim at around 8am, we went back to the cottage tent at around 11pm to prepare the food for our lunch.
Lace brought some pork belly and our mobile grill. Our family driver grilled the pork belly, I can say that Kuya B is the best guy to prepare grilled food.. sarap eh.
Then our housemates cooked rice
Ahahah, yeah we also brought our rice cooker, Im glad that there's electricity available in every cottage tent.
I also set up our tent from Lazada.com.ph
Im kinda upset that the tent poles broke to pieces, so we improvised to keep the tent from falling down. I use the tent to store our bag and valuables.
View from the beach area. That's our cottage tent behind the coconut tree at the far right
Also, they have a life guard on duty for the entire day. I can say that their life guard is sooooo strict. He always blows whistle whenever someone is trying to swim away from the perimeter line.
Swim time. Before you meet the sea and sun, you must first apply sun screen to protect you from the harmful UV rays.
Okay time to kiss the beach! haha
January is the best time to visit Munting Buhangin, the entire beach is not too crowded, its so quiet and clean. I think we should do this as an annual tradition that we go to the beach every January and February, just to avoid the summer season's crowd and peak season. Medyo disappointing kasi pag sobra crowded ang beach.
And since we arrived here early morning and with less crowd, we feel that we own the entire beach for a day because few people are there to play with the sand, sun and sea.
Our son Ashton enjoyed the most here at Munting Buhangin, he always got to have fun playing with the small waves and sand. He seemed so focus playing and didn't got to notice us when we call for him, so we learned here that kids are over focus in playing, so we always monitor and never losses him in our sight.
Really cute to see him run away whenever the small waves hit the sand.
His LEGO building skills showed up after he started to play with the beach sand, here he created a sand structure similar to a Great Wall of China
Of course, my fave activity here is to snorkel under the sea. I was planning to bring my skim board in order to practice riding it on the sand and small waves, but my mind skipped after being so focus on the camera gears that I need to bring, I just remembered that I forgot to bring the skim board with me.
Pero ok lang, I super enjoyed the snorkel adventure.
Im using the Tribord-clone snorkel face mask. I bought it in CHASER store in UP Town Center for PHP 1,250
Its the most comfortable snorkeling gear. But the only con is that you can't free dive with it because the entire face mask is filled with air, its heavy when you dive, but its light weight and it floats on water when you snorkel near the surface.
I did some experiment and I stayed for 45 minutes underwater.
For my wife Lace's activity is..... we did a photoshoot.ala FHM ahhahahah
Sorry, I was told not to post her bikini pics here.
Also we shoot some videos for her vlog.
Snorkeling and swimming at chest and neck deep water. Its the safest swimming area at Munting Buhangin, they have a perimeter rope that notify us swimmers that beyond that perimeter is over 10 feet. So its a precaution to all to avoid swimming near the perimeter rope.
For us, we just stayed at chest deep water, so that I can be with my wife who just dive around and me snorkeling watching her from under water.
As for me and son....nope, he still afraid to go in waist deep water to swim and play. But Im glad he prefers to stay at ankle deep water hahahaha. just to play with the small waves.
We took a break from swimming to eat our lunch and then after some rest, we transferred to our room accommodation.
We carried all our things from the cottage tent up to the family suite room.
Here's our Family Suite Room
PHP 8000 overnight stay for 10pax
The kitchen and dining
Living room
Living room
Rattan sofa chairs
Bathroom
Terrace (no view)
Outside, grilling station
Dining area.
Sorry, I wasn't able to take photos of our bed, there are two rooms available. 1 room for the master's bedroom, with one master's bed with extra pull out bed. And 1 room with two bunk beds.
The sunset view here is amazing. We didn't get to see the sun's set, but its awesome to absorb and feel the golden hour.
The sea stayed calm during sunset and the heat was repelled by cold wind, it means that we should stay indoors to freshen up and rest.
At around 9pm, we went out to see what's the beach can offer at night. But it was too dark and the light from the cottages and room suites are the only light available.
I took this night shot to try to capture the Milky Way, but there's still light pollution and its hard to capture it, also the full moon gave a lot of light to us that night.
We dont have anything to do at the night beach... (swimming at night is not allowed)
So I showed the light painting trick to my son, so help me click the shutter button while I perform the light painting.
He enjoyed the activity after he saw his name on the photo.
my name also.. haha
After a 30 minute stargazing, I took a photo of Ash in slow shutter mode.
Then after the activity, we went back to bed and sleep.
Me..I slept at around 12am, because I got hooked on editing some vlogs of our trip.
NEXT MORNING.
Its the same scene from our day 1. The beach's sand glows white because of the sun, the ocean's wave sound plays non stop and the chirping of birds on trees..ahhh the ambiance that I want to have every day.
I mentioned earlier that there's a FREE breakfast to all overnight stayers. So here's our tapsilog meal prepared by the kitchen of Munting Buhangin, we ate and occupied the vacant cottage tent that morning, it was available for all of us since few people arrive at the beach at around 7am.
We brought some 3 in 1 coffee and we use our water heater for our hot coffee.
Ayos! complete breakfast na!
During our breakfast, a Nasugbu local visited our tent and she said that her fisherman team got some fish and lobsters for sale. I told my wife to check it and ask for the price. My wife who always supports local vendors told the lady that she will buy one big tuna fish for our lunch and 3 live lobsters.
The vendor sold us one big tuna for PHP450, the original price of the fresh tuna fish is PHP350, the extra PHP 100 is for the cook grill charge.
For the lobsters, I can't remember the price, but I hear that she bought 3 big lobsters for only PHP1500 and she said that she will use it for our chowder soup at home.
After breakfast, I promised my son that I will take him at the end of the cove, its the rocky portion of the beach and you can spot some tide pools here.
It was a quick tour for us, because the rocky ground trek is a bit difficult for my son, I told him that we can stay here for a minute and observe if we can see some sea creatures nearby
Its great to see that my son wants to be adventurous too, he always see my travel photos on FB and now he wants to have his own travel photo too. He requested that I should take a solo pic of him at the rocky cove.
View from the far side of the beach. That building on top is part of a luxury resort nearby
At around 10am, we saw people jump into the water to play, my son just strolled up to half of the cove, I followed him to see how far he can walk, I got tired a bit because its hard to walk on the soft and fine beach sand.
at 11:30am our ordered grilled tuna arrived and here we ate our lunch first before we check out of the room. I think we check out at around 1pm, we transferred back to the beach area and occupying the bamboo cottages.
at around 2pm, my family went back to the water to play and swim, and then I took an exploration to the end of the cove.
I walked around and tried reaching the end. Its really hard to walk on big and small rocks, there's no path way so you need to walk through at your own risk. I've tried walking at the water area, its easier and quick, but I'm so scared that I might step on some sea creatures who are trapped at the low deep portion of the beach.
At the end of the cove, there are huge rocks that blocks the path way, its hard to pass through, so I quit my exploration and went back to our cottage tent. I also spotted lots of creatures at the tide pool.
Here's one of the sea creatures, there's this tentacle thing with spikes that moves in one area, Im not sure if its a a star brittle or the tentacle of a sea cucumber.
After the cove exploration, I continued my snorkeling activity at the far side of Munting Buhangin, I just did some observation under water and explored the rocky bottom and in search for us under water treasures. Sometimes beach goers lost their items and it fell under water, during my 1st day of snorkeling I pick up some items like rubber, plastic toys and even broken glass.
After I pick up some broken glass, I went to the beach area and dispose it properly to a garbage bin.
I have to removed it before it can hurt people.
We ended our beach stay there at around 5pm, wow!! talaga sinulit namin ang pag stay sa beach. We traveled again through the long road of Nasugbu going back to Ternate, Cavite.
All of us are tired, but happy that we enjoyed summer as early as January.
Along the way, we spotted signage of other beach resorts. Then we promised that we should check them out and see if they are good too.
No need to comment for Club Punta Fuego, they are the best luxurious beach resort here in Batangas. We are planning to go back there and bring our son with us.
Also spotted: Maya Maya White House Beach Resort in Nasugbu, Batangas.
We might check this soon.
Also on our list: Nasacosta Resorts
Ahh....felt so great that we started our summer adventure so early this year. We avoided the long lines, not so crowded beach and less stressful outing.
So next year uli. We might go back here again in Munting Buhangin, or maybe try these new beach resort in Nasugbu.
Thanks for reading my blog post, feel free to comment if you like to ask something.
