Kota Beach Resort Bantayan is where we stayed on our anniversary, reading through different kota beach resort reviews made me decide to book a beach front room. Since we were traveling on a budget, we opted not to stay in Sta.Fe Beach Club which is the most high end resort in ogtong beach. For less than 2000 pesos a night we already have a beachfront air-conditioned room.

Kota Beach resort hotel has arranged port transfers for us, it’s already included in our stay, and we were picked up by an L300 van when we arrived at Sta.Fe port an hour before noon. It took us less than 15mins to arrive at the resort, a driver from the resort and Kuya Dondon, a local “padyak” driver was there to assist us.

The room they provided was very simple, but clean, a bed with clean sheets, and the air-conditioning was fine. Their rooms are single detached units so it’s like us staying on our own beach house. We don’t have any worries with our belongings as we swim because we can always go back to our room to put and get our things as needed.

The food within the resort is just okay, I suggest it’s better to try out other restaurants nearby instead. One thing that surprised us however, is the prices of the food in the island. I thought we can have feast on seafood, but we were wrong, probably because most of the famous restaurants in the area are actually owned by foreigners and their customer base is foreigners as well.

If you’re adventurous and can speak Cebuano, you can probably ask around where you can eat on a budget, or ask the locals to cook for you. I heard they cook and eat blowfish here regularly, I don’t advise it though as it can kill you.

I’ll recommend this resort to anyone who are planning to stay in Bantayan Island, there are other cheaper resorts in the area but I think the location and the view alone are enough to justify the additional cost which is not that expensive anyway. Our room cost us 1800 a night while there are rooms a few meters away which is cheaper by 400 pesos.

This post belongs to our Cebu series, you may check these links for more information.

• Cebu travel itinerary
• Cebu city tour
• Bantayan Island Cebu