As a family traveling with 3 young children and their grandparents, I spent months trying to find a good "fit" for us. We've traveled enough to know what works for a young family and what doesn't. We needed something quiet, clean, big, with a pool, a place to play, conveniences, transportation, etc. Having a beach front was just a HUGE plus! After several months of looking online for the perfect place, I booked Villa Vidas with Angie. It seemed our best option. But I was still worried that we'd be too remote, or wouldn't have good transportation or access to a good place to eat, and I wasn't planning on having a great private beach. Unlike Boracay and other places, Bohol doesn't have the greatest beaches as far as white sandy shores. (It's mostly coral. Which makes for amazing diving and snorkeling.) Angie's website online doesn't do the place justice. We arrived and I immediately decided that for the first time ever, I would write a review on Trip Advisor. Her villas are large, spacious, clean, well made, and pretty. The property is gorgeous. And it just happens to be the best piece of beach that we saw the whole 10 days we were in the Philippines. There are hammocks and a swing that my kids loved. There's beach chairs, beach front tables, lots of trees with shade, a bar and patio and the restaurant patio with music and TV. We enjoyed the pool table and I saw other people enjoying the ping pong table. The swimming pool has a diving board and a kiddie pool. Every morning someone was out cleaning the pool. The garden area and pathways are swept several times a day. Daily housekeeping did an excellent job. They kept the beach area clean. There is a large size area of nice soft sand under the trees. The shore area is so shallow, when the tide goes out, there's several meters of sandy "ocean bottom" with crabs, sea snakes, small tide pools with starfish, fish and other creatures to go explore. When the tide is in, it makes for a shallow, warm, clear and clean swimming area. The area in front of her hotel seems to be one of the only spots free of lots of sea weed and too many rocks. After walking all down the beach and seeing the other resorts/hostels/hotels along that stretch of beach, I was SO glad we booked at Panglao Tropical Villas. We also went walking all along Alona Beach and checked out lots of the places along Alona and that made us even more glad we booked where we did. Alona beach is definitely geared towards backpackers and divers. The beachfront at Alona beach wasn't near as nice as the little private beach at Panglao Tropical Villas. Alona beach did have lots of fun little restaurants all along the beach. But not great shopping. It also looked like a great place to go barter for a tour or island hopping boat ride since there were lots of "drivers" just waiting around to offer their services. We just used Angie's staff for all of our transportation and boat trips and tours. Her prices seemed very fair to us???? And her boat guys and van guy were SO nice and helpful and patient and knowledgeable. (Philippinos are also just about the nicest people ever.) The menu on offer at the resort is quite decent. Most of the stuff we tried we quite liked. And they would bring our food to the beachfront, the restaurant patio area or our villa. At whatever time we requested it. The staff at the resort were awesome. Friendly and helpful. I was surprised the villa didn't have a microwave. But the staff just let us use the one in their kitchen. The living room furniture in Villa Vidas is our one complaint. Super uncomfortable. We would have liked to relax in the living room, visiting, playing games and watching movies. We didn't use it once. (besides our children sitting on cushions on the floor to watch cartoons). It was just too uncomfortable. I checked out the other villas and they both had nice comfortable living rooms. There were also tons of mosquitoes. We went through 3 bottles of repellent. We put it on faithfully morning, afternoon and before bed. We also went around at night trying to kill as many as we could see. So we didn't get mosquito bites like other reviewers had mentioned. But we would have if I hadn't read those reviews and prepared us to use tons of repellent. Both my almost 2 year old and my 3 1/2 year old could stand in the kiddie pool and were thrilled with it. My 7 year old was thrilled to have a diving board. Panglao Tropical Villas isn't that far from Alona Beach. It was not even a 10 minute drive in the van to get there. It was about 30 minutes to get to Tagbilaran where we went to a mall to do some good grocery shopping. We went out to Nalusuan island which has a huge, flat, white soft sandbar when the tide is out. As the tide came in my kids splashed and played in the "warm nice shallow pool" that was created. Once the tide was all the way in, the water all along the sandbar was about 1 meter deep, which my kids enjoyed in their floaties, but I had to hold on to them cuz there was quite a current. Once the tide was in, the island has no nice sandy beach. However there are stairs up to the big flat rock of an island, where there is a good restaurant and some hammocks and lots of shade. On the other side of the island (about 20 meters across) there are lots of corals and some fun snorkeling. Bright blue starfish, squid, puffer fish and other bright colored fish. It was easy snorkeling for my 7 year old. We also went out to Balicasag island at 6am to go dolphin watching. We drove around on the boat until my kids could hardly stand it anymore, when we finally spotted dolphins. Lots of them. All over the place. It was awesome. And flying fish. Then we headed to the island where we thought the grandparents and 2 small kids could sit on a sandy beach under palm trees and play. the island is ALL coral. There is no beach. And the food offered on the island wasn't that great. Prices seemed quite high and the people a little pushy. (relatively speaking. Everywhere else had been so inexpensive.) I suddenly felt like I was in Thailand instead of the Philippines. It was the first time there we encountered anyone pushy or irritated. So the island was NOT a good place for the elderly or small children. It was dirty and crowded and mostly just rock and a small forest. But I didn't know that such snorkeling even existed. Right from the shore, there is a huge flat coral bed, all along the island, that stretches out to sea about 100 meters and then there's a big coral drop off. You can rent the boat to take you out to the drop off where most of the people are, to just spend an hour or two snorkeling all along the edge of the drop off and along the deeper parts of the coral bed. Most of the coral bed is quite shallow and clear far out, we could still stand. There were fish everywhere the eye could see. It was amazing. I wish I could have gone back a few more times, with just my husband and older son, to spend a few hours snorkeling. The land tours to Bohol, were more fun than we expected also. Another thing about the resort: It had nice bedding. Good quality sheets and towels and nicer pillows and beds than I expected. The beds and pillows were comfortable. The air conditioners worked well. They are just in the bedrooms. The living area got a little hot one afternoon, but mostly the temperature on the island is always quite nice. I was especially impressed to constantly see the staff out cleaning everywhere. Definitely value for the money. When we got our total bill (we ordered most meals and ate whatever we wanted, did whatever tours and traveling we wanted, etc.) we figured it cost us around $30 USD a night/person. There were 7 of us. We thought that was a great deal for what we got. It was SO nice to stay in a big villla, all together. And especially one as nice as what Angie has to offer at Panglao Tropical Villas. It is even nicer and better than the pictures and descriptions portray.
One other thing: the hot water in the tub upstairs was just a trickle. My mother-in-law hated it. We like cooler baths/showers so it didn't bother us, just her. If the water was cooler, it came out plenty strong for a bath or shower. If you want a really hot shower, you won't get it. The bathroom downstairs is just a toilet and shower. Which actually worked really well for rinsing off from the beach and pool.
It would have been nice to have a few little rugs around the house. Like by the beds or right inside the living room door. Just walking around the house, when you are on a beach, gets your feet all sandy. Even if the floor seems really clean. And makes it hard to climb in bed with sandy feet. We kept towels on the floors to wipe our feet on a lot.
Also, when we were checking out, the staff pulled out a bunch of information about their tours and other things on offer. If I had known there was babysitting, and for such a great price, and massages, also for a great price, we would have USED them! I wish they would have had that information sitting on the check-in desk the whole time. Instead of putting it down and out of the way.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
