Dear Readers,
As you already know by now, I spent October 2017 traveling around the Philippines, focusing mainly on the islands of Palawan & Boracay. On my previous blog posts, I’ve introduced you some hotels in Palawan.
On this blog, I will tell you about my second visit to Astoria hotels, namely Astoria Current. On my next blog post, I'll introduce you to Astoria Boracay. All Astoria hotels have some common features like lovely, fresh colors in their rooms and amazing, high-quality service. However, since they all have a bit different locations, they also have special features that others don't. Each of these 3 hotels had something I found particularly intriguing.
Arriving to Caticlan and transfer to Boracay
After we flew from El Nido airport to Caticlan island, Astoria Current’s staff member was waiting for us with a sign right outside the airport’s exit doors, wonderful! No extra waiting time spent, no problem with having plenty of luggage, everything was taken care of.
For your information, it takes quite a while to get from plane to the exit point of the actual airport building as the runways are not right next to the building. Passengers are taken by bus through the village to the actual airport to collect their luggage. If you already have a hotel booked, transportation has been most likely arranged, thus, after you've gotten your luggage, they'll take you to the harbor, wherein they collect your passport details for the coast guard for security reasons. But it is all quite simple, just do what they tell you to do.
So, since we had our hotel’s representative there waiting for us, we got all the formalities sorted very quickly. Then a couple of men carried our (heavy!) luggage to our boat, which, by the way, was very comfortable one as it also had a roof above our heads, whereas so many boats didn’t so you get soaking wet if it rains. Ocean & those waves were quite rough, for which reason I was even happier for having that better boat underneath us. It only took about 5 minutes of boat ride from the island of Caticlan to Boracay island. When we got to the shore, someone from Astoria Current was already there to greet us, we were able to see Astoria Current's transportation van from the far. The transportation process had been made VERY easy for us. Considering of all the steps I guess it could be more complicated but I think it was because of our high-quality hotel that everything was so smooth.
There aren’t that many roads on the island of Boracay so those few main roads are quite busy so even though it’s only couple of km from the port it takes about 10-15 min to get to the hotel, and since I love seeing new areas, I found it to be a positive thing that it took a while to get there, as it gave me better understanding of the island's streets.Astoria Current is located at a back of the main road, which at first seems like a bad location, but it actually is a good thing as you can’t hear the traffic noise to your room, which is a great deal, at least for me.
When we arrived at the hotel, there were a couple of lovely staff members as well as hotel’s front office manager (now I think he is a GM), Butch to greet us along with "Ferdie" (that's how most people called this incredibly kind and caring man). We were offered welcome drinks and lovely shell necklaces. After that, they introduced us hotel’s areas and also we got to meet with the head chef, Chris so that we were able to share our dietary restrictions.
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| Ferdie & Chris |
About the hotel in general:
Astoria Current was designed to keep up with the trending style of today’s millennials, Gallego Architects and Interior Designers, Ivy and Cynthia Almario of Aterierl Almario delivered a resort that is appealing to pretty much everyone, in my opinion. It has very fun and playful vibes.
This over 7000 m2 resort is located at Station 3, but still has very quiet feel inside the rooms. However, since the location is in the middle of all the action, it provides hotel’s guests with an opportunity to try out all kinds of water activities. It is quite obvious that it is that one “must do” thing on the island.
Rooms
Astoria Current has 200+ luxurious, uniquely designed rooms. The style probably closest to avant-garde décor. All of the rooms and suites are fully equipped. They have A/C, cable TV & DVD players, safety deposit box, big enough to fit in your laptop (which I truly appreciate!), minibar, rain shower and complete bath amenities, I specifically enjoyed their complimentary skin & hair care products. Also, all hotel guests were given slippers as complimentary gifts that were waiting in the room - I loved the idea and the fact that complimentary items were actually useful!
So, after all the introductions and formalities, we got guided to our poolside room, which had the perfect location, easy access to the pool; about 5 steps from the door, easy access to the restaurant as well as to the beach. I specifically enjoyed the fact that you can’t hear any traffic noise in your room.
Here are photos of various rooms and room types at the resort:
Our room had great, fresh, bright colors, two large beds, kitchenette (tab, microwave, and a small fridge as well as tea and coffee making facilities). There was maybe slightly less storage space than I anticipated (well, I always travel with too much stuff, I admit), but we managed just fine.
The bathroom was clean, big enough for our purposes and I appreciated excellent water pressure as with long hair it can sometimes be a problem in some hotels.
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| This one was from our room |
Pool and the Whitebeach
The pool area is quite special, very luxurious with that beautiful 25-meter long pool and sunken sunloungers in it. There are also 8 built-in aqua seats with jet-massage nozzles. WOW!
Btw, there’s also 40 m2 children’s pool so easy to have fun with kids too.
We both enjoyed our workouts at hotel’s gym. There was a receptionist there who asked your room number and sign your visit to the gym for their records and that was it, so easy.
We both enjoyed our workouts at hotel’s gym. There was a receptionist there who asked your room number and sign your visit to the gym for their records and that was it, so easy.
(Unfortunately, we couldn’t try out the spa due to that cold we caught, after which no gym, no spa, just basically resting...)
On top of the fact that the pool was quite unique with all these sun loungers etc, we really enjoyed it because there were times we had the entire pool to ourselves, which meant: play time!
However, I do have to say that the location of the hotel was probably the best part of it all; it is situated right at the world famous Whitebeach, which really is worth exploring. It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen. For some reason, the ocean has amazing turquoise colors and shades and the sand is literally white. I could have watched the ocean all day long. Unfortunately, though, the weather gods were not on our side, as it was monsoon season and for about 4 days it was raining heavily so not much joy of the beach area then.
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| Sailboats |
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| Beach after the storm we had one night, it was unreal how much stuff got to the shore! |
Special mention for Chef Chris. My partner said that the meat dish along with the sauce on our first night was one of the best sauces he’s ever had in his entire life! I’m not that into the meat so I just say it was pretty good. But my partner in crime actually literally drank the sauce on the side, that was left after we ate the food! That for sure tells you something about its taste, right?!
Hotel restaurant a had pretty versatile menu but we only had our dinner at the restaurant maybe once or twice due to the cold we catch, so we ordered food into our room.
The main restaurant is called Parasol restaurant, it served breakfast, lunch, and dinners. It is very
open and you can feel that refreshing ocean breeze while sitting there. I have to say that the view from the breakfast area is one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time. Even now that I watch my photos from this trip I can feel the warmth and the salty, hot air with a sea breeze. It was just fantastic.
Outside of the main restaurant, there is a Parasol Beach Front restaurant. This entertaining beach lounge has one unique feature that not all hotel bars/lounges have: namely, people sitting here can watch the most incredible sunsets! They serve dinner here along with also selection of fruit juices, smoothies, and shakes. They also have fresh seafood grill right in front of the beach, food doesn’t get much fresher than that!
Inside the hotel area, there is also the Onyx bar lounge, which by the way has some pretty awesome smoothies along with cocktails and that cute ice cream booth.
What's around the hotel?
We needed to get ourselves some meds from the pharmacy, some daily items from the grocery store, an HDMI cable from a computer gear store, and no problem at all, they were all very close, all within 5 min walk. An excellent laundry service is right on the main road, 2 min from the hotel. I warmly recommend all of them, especially the laundry service if you stay longer. It’s super cheap, maybe 2-3 euros sports bag full of clothes!
On the beach area, there are quite many locals trying to tell you excursions, handcraft etc. but they are not too aggressive about it. If you are not interested, just kindly say so and they’ll leave you alone. However, I truly recommend hiring one of those interesting looking, fantastic local sailboats and take a trip around the island and maybe ask them to take you to nearby Crocodile island wherein, you can also go snorkeling, it’s only maybe 30 min trip there. Prices vary a bit so you might want to compare a couple of them before choosing one. Boats may seem unstable and small but those who are captains of the boats and sailors in them are extremely skilled, and most of them have been doing it ever since a young kid.
We truly enjoyed our stay at this fantastic hotel. Also, lovely Ms. Joy from the Astoria Palawan hotel came for a visit as she also manages this hotel. She actually took one of the staff members with her to the Palawan island to work there for the Astoria Palawan. I was truly happy to see Joy again and can’t wait for our reunion one day in the future. Astoria hotels really feel like people that work for them are one big happy family. It is so unique to see everyone so happy when working! Even the people, whether they were adults or kids - locals I mean, smiled at you when you met them for example on the beach. This really felt like a happy place and I'm sure it has a lot to do with the way this resort's wonderful managers lead their staff!
Lucky for us, this was not our last destination. We had 6 days left at Astoria Boracay, which is maybe 5 min walk and 15 min drive from the Astoria Current hotel. Astoria Boracay is much smaller and more intimate. Based on our wonderful experiences at Astoria Palawan and Astoria Current, we couldn’t wait for our next stay.
So, on my next blog, our third and final hotel of this trip, namely Astoria Boracay will be featured.
Thank you for reading. Hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction. Stay tuned, next blog post regarding another Astoria hotel will be posted in January/February.
Thank you for following and reading my stories.
Make sure you follow also
@AstoriaPalawan and
@AstoriaCurrent on social media!
To check out Astoria hotels’ latest special deals, click here:
Astoria Palawan's Promos:
ASTORIA PALAWAN hotel's promos: (click this to open the link)
Astoria Current's Promos:
ASTORIA CURRENT hotel's promos (click this to open the link)
Wishing you all lovelies
Prosperous and Happy New Year 2018!
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