When we first arrived in El Nido, Philippines we thought it would be just like Thailand and that we would be able to book a hotel room once we arrived. We were wrong.

There was no cell service for most of the 6-hour van ride from Puerto Princesa to El Nido, so looking up a place to stay during the ride was not an option. When those bars finally popped up on our phone screen about 5 miles before arrival, we quickly began searching Hotels.com for somewhere to stay for the night. Almost every hotel was booked up and the likelihood of having to sleep in our hammocks began to seem more and more real… until we came across The Nest. Not only did we get incredibly lucky that there was a last-minute opening here, we hit the jackpot with the location of this resort.

THE AREA

The Nest Beach Resort is on Caalan Beach, a bit off the beaten path, which we seem to gravitate towards. If you enjoy peaceful evenings, quiet mornings, and watching the sun rise and set over an empty beach, this resort is for you. There is plenty of greenery and flowers around every corner and the roosters are far enough away from the resort that you should get to sleep in nice and late every morning. It takes about 5 minutes by tricycle or a 20-minute walk along the beach to get to main part of the town.

TRANSPORTATION

If you’re staying at The Nest, be sure to call or email them as soon as you have an arrival date and time set up. They will schedule a pickup in one of their complimentary tricycles. This is a very important step because there is a teeny, tiny alleyway that requires a skinnier-than-typical tricycle. If you grab a random tricycle at the bus terminal, you’ll likely end up getting dropped off at the alleyway and it’s a long walk from there to the resort with all your luggage. The resort also provides free transportation to and from the main part of town.

Once you get situated, my first suggestion would be to rent a scooter or motorbike in town. It is about 500PHP ($10USD) per day and eliminates any waiting around for tricycles. Depending on how often you’re riding around town or to different beaches, there’s a good chance you’d spend close to that or more in a day on tricycles, and a scooter is far more comfortable. Tricycles were not made for 6’2″ husbands and I’m pretty sure I have a permanent bruise on my hip from having to squeeze into a trike for extended periods of time.

THE ROOMS

Because we did not book our stay in advance, we had to wait each day for cancellations or no-shows, which meant we had to move rooms just about every night. If you’re thinking of staying at The Nest, be sure to book your stay as soon as you have purchased your flights. They told us that bookings are usually about 5 months out, but we simply got lucky.

 

Each room we stayed in was beautiful, clean, and definitely had the “high-end resort” feel to it. The beds were comfortable, which is a difficult thing to find in Southeast Asia, and every room opened up to a beautiful courtyard with its own private patio.

PRICE

We expected hotels to be far less expensive in the Philippines, but in comparison to other hotels in El Nido, the price was very reasonable for the quality and location of The Nest. Rooms were around 6000PHP ($120USD) per night and included a delicious sit-down made-to-order breakfast on the beach, as well as transportation to and from the town and bus terminal.

AMENITIES

If you are waiting for the perfect place to splurge on massages, this is the place for it. The massage tables are set up on the top deck of the restaurant, overlooking the ocean. Words cannot describe how peaceful and relaxing it is. The waves crashing on the shore, refreshingly cool breeze… it is all just so perfect.

The Nest also has plenty of comfy wicker beach chairs along the shore, both out in the open and in private areas. One of the highlights of our entire trip was waking up each morning around 4am (U.S. to Philippines time change will do that to you) and being able to sit out on the shore with our computers and work together while watching the sunrise.

If you’ll need fantastic wifi while you’re visiting, you may need to make lots of trips into town. Many of the hotels say they have wifi, but let’s be real for a second – wifi is almost non-existent in El Nido. We had decent wifi at The Nest early in the morning, but it rarely worked at any other time of the day and there was not much cell service at the resort. This was great for relaxation purposes but not so great for working. There is full LTE cell reception in town, so if you need to work, plan on taking a couple trips into town and hot spotting off your phone.

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Would I stay at The Nest again? In a heartbeat. If it’s within your budget, I honestly would not stay anywhere else while traveling to El Nido. We did stay at one other place for a couple of nights, which I will write about later, and although it was a nice place, The Nest takes the gold. The staff is friendly and helpful, the rooms are beautiful, and the views are breathtaking. I only regret not booking a room here sooner.