Soooo, tired of the daily grinding and looking for a relaxing resort?
A place where you can relax and have a nice dip into infinity pool? Or if you want to try snorkelling and see the underwater world beneath you?
As a Singaporean travel content writer, nothing makes me happier than venturing beyond our sunny shores, soaking in the wanders of a new environment, and writing blog posts to share my experiences with others.
This time, my wanderlust takes me to Grand Lagoi Village Resort where I tried out a variety of activities.
In this piece, I will be reviewing my stay the Grand Lagoi Village Resort, the snorkelling activity that I did, and other activities that I did at Treasure Bay Bintan.
Off we go to Grand Lagoi Village Resort, where I stayed for 2D1N (14 Oct – 15 Oct) at Bintan!
Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal
I didn’t want to use any of my leave hence we decided to take the earliest ferry on Saturday morning, 8.15am.
You can book the ferry on the website.
We reached Bintan on the dot around 8.15am Indonesian time. Then after the usual custom clearance, it was around 9am. We went to look for the staff who wear holding placards, took our attendance and proceeded to the shuttle bus.
It was a short 5-10minutes ride and we reached Grand Lagoi Village Resort.
Grand Lagoi Village Resort
It looked majestic. I like our room a lot!
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We decided to try the Treasure Bay Bintan rides as it looked pretty cool
Treasure Bay Bintan
Taxi to Treasure Bay Bintan (to and fro): 300,000 IDR (i felt it was a major rip off)
We bought our Chill Cove Experience Package on their website, it was SGD 20.80.
There were no other dining outlets available so we went to their one and only restaurant (The Patio Bar and Restaurant) to have our lunch.
After our lunch, we went to the Admission Counter to redeem our tickets and were ushered to the activities centre. The staff did not seem to know what to do. But we could see that they were trying their best to give personalised service. But it was very inefficient. As our package only entitles us to 1 ride for the solar boat and classic car respectively, we had to report back to the Activities centre to wait for their staff to bring us for each for those rides.
First, we went for the solar boat, we thought that it would be a boat in the lagoon. I had imagined it to be like what I experienced at Kenting, playing the water sports in the sea.
What we realised: a boat in a large man-made pool.
After the solar boat ride, we were ushered back to the activities centre where we had to wait for the classic car to arrive. When it arrived, we had to wait for the driver to come. After seeing the solar boat ride, I adjusted my expectation and didn’t expect much for the car ride so it was okay.
When the car ride ended, we went to do slip and slide.
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That was fun and worth it. I did like the yellow, orange and red and orange again, so it was about 4 slides. Leon kept going for orange and red.
After the rides and swimming around in the pool, we washed up and our taxi came to fetch us back to our hotel to catch the sunset at the level 7 infinity pool.
Unfortunately, it was too cloudy, so we couldn’t really catch the sunset. But it was nice and peaceful. There weren’t many swimmers and the water was rather shallow. But I was shivering from the cold.
The shopping mall beside our hotel … its like the 1st floor is occupied but the second floor is completely empty.
It felt like the mall was constructed just solely for the people at the hotel. It is like our miniature open-air mall. The open-air concept reminds me of Star Vista back home.
Snorkelling
The next day, we went for our snorkelling trip. We booked our snorkelling package at the lobby of our resort.
450,000 IDR per pax (includes transportation, mineral water, guide tour, insurance coverage)
From the jetty, I changed at the makeshift toilet as the tour guide advised me that there isn’t any toilet at the snorkelling island.
After changing then we took a small boat to get to the snorkelling location. It was about 25 minutes ride. With blazing sun and strong breeze, it made my eyes very dry but very shiok with the wind whipping through our hair.
Then we reached our snorkelling spot that was designated with floating bottles around it, apparently, the bottles are tied to the seabed so they act as the anchor for the boat to anchor to.
Then our tour guide handed us our snorkelling gear to use, passed us our goggles. I was like how to wear it?
Then our tour guide told us to spit into the goggles then use our spit to clean the lens part, dip into the sea water to wash it and wear.
After that, with our life jackets (we wore it at jetty before boarding the boat) and gears, we jumped into the sea. Leon went in with his usual diving style. I flopped like Magikarp into the sea.
It was GORGEOUS. OMgawd so many fishes. I really liked it. At times I forget that I have to breathe through my mouth and I breathe through my nose and suddenly remember to breathe through my mouth. So some water went into my tube, I don’t know how they got in, So I took off my gear and wore it back again.
It was really really nice snorkelling, we saw all kinds of small and medium size fishes. Crabs also. And somehow the fishes were attracted to my rubber band and kept nibbling at me. But when I tried to touch them they swam away like the bullet. Regret, never take any photos with my phone. Note to self, buy a waterproof bag to ziplock handphone in it.
All too soon, we had to return to our boat. First, we took off our flippers, then I sat down, forgetting that I no longer need my snorkelling breathing gear. I continued to breathe through it until I took off my mouthpiece, spoke to Leon and put the mouthpiece back on. Then they asked,’ you still want to breathe from your mouthpiece ?’
LOLOLOL
This concludes our last meal before the shuttle bus drove us to the ferry terminal to take our ferry back to Singapore.
Overall Rating
Accommodation at Grand Lagoi Village Resort:
(5/5) I LOVE IT!!!
Snorkelling:
(4/5) the gears were quite dirty. I’m not sure if we were ripped off, it was quite expensive to me though i really enjoyed it.
TreasureBay:
(3/5) I wouldn’t recommend taking the transport to the resort as it is really expensive. If you are looking to see real sea and fishes, then I wouldn’t recommend. But if you want to see something like Wild Wild Wet, a miniature Wild Wild Wet then you could check it out. Maybe stay at Canopi Resort that is located beside it. Not worth taking taxi to travel to TreasureBay.
Food: (3/5) Not many choices available but the food is not bad. Pricey though.
Conclusion: Accommodation is cheap but the activities and food at Bintan are really expensive. The prices are equivalent to Singapore or it is more expensive.
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