Sand & Sandals Resort & Spa Desaru Beach

As I've promised in my previous entry, here's my review on Sand & Sandals Resort & Spa. This is purely my own honest opinion and I did not get any paid for this. You might have other comments and opinions, you may leave it on the comment box below 😄

Sand & Sandals Resort & Spa Desaru Beach

I just realized that I did not snap a picture of the resort main entrance, so hereby I post a picture with two men who completed their 113 Triathlon !! (hope they are not angry with me posting their pic hahaha)

The guys who completed their 113 Triathlon from 7am !

Once we reached the lobby, we were welcomed with long queue (I didn't snap a pic on it as I was just too tired after the long journey from Sg) to check-in and it took them almost 30mins to settle per room check-in. We just need the room to put our stuff and settle down as the participants of the 113 Triathlon (read the reason why I visited Desaru on my previous blog here 😃) needed to attend their briefing and collect their race pack as well.

The long check-in at least paid off ! The resort has quite nice view and landscaping =) Below is the view before we enter the lift. There is one lift and total of 5 floors only (we gotten the top floor yay !)

Morning and Night comparison view =)

The room we booked is Deluxe Garden View and it is super spacious that I can just jump or dance around and my boyfriend can put his bicycle as well. We booked the room from Agoda, S$303.70 for 3 days and 2 nights =)

Room View

Room View (other perspectives)

My beloved boyfriend stuffs preparation for the 113 Triathlon 

The room has fridge (totally empty), coffee and tea set with 2 bottles of water. If you want to have additional coffee or tea, please top up RM3 or if you want additional bottle of water, please pay another RM1 😲

Left - Coffee and Tea set
Right - Shower amenities

The bathtub is located outside of the room, at the balcony ! They have three panels to close the surrounding that you can move around. If you worry that people might be able to peep on you, don't fret, as they actually make the side balcony with fixed panels that you can't move around =)

Bathtub ~

Room service is 24 hours. Menu is per below =)

Good stuff in the resort for those arcade game lovers. They have their own game room, from the Initial D, Time Crisis, to Basketball. They have 2 pools table as well 😁

Game room for kids and adult =)

The pool is amazing too as they have small pool for kids, pool for the adults, separate pool whereby they have one slide for the kids to play (located separately from the small pool) also best part LAP POOL !! They created the pool as if it's beach-like unlike the usual pool =)

Pool Side ~

Leaving my sandals before going into water ~

Lap pool !

The gym is so so not so amazing but I'm impressed they are using good quality machine (Life Fitness if I'm not mistaken). It's overseeing the lap pool area ~

Gym ~

The beach is pretty usual and not much wow-ing. They are quite a number of big rocks in the middle that it will be dangerous if you go swim. The water temperature was cooling but the sands is crazy hot as it was quite sunny (it was around 9+ actually)

Us capturing the evidence that we've been here ~ 😆

Nice morning vitamin-sea ~

View at night of the beach from rooftop bar

Overall experience? I would say it's decent and it's really suitable for couples and also family with kids =) Oh, and for breakfast, don't expect too much. It is just so so too. Haha.

Worth to go back? Hmm, I would say not really as I believe there are more awesome place that yet to be explored and compared =) Well unless you don't want to travel that far (if driving for 2hrs+ not consider far) and still want beach life haha.

Hope this can help you to make decision to stay at Sand & Sandals resort or not =)
Ps: all pictures taken Huawei P20 Pro =)

Resort Details -
Sands & Sandals Resorts & Spa
Address : Bandar Penawar, 81930 Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia
Phone    : +607 822 2222
Website : http://www.sandandsandals.com/

Have a good day ahead peeps !!

Out from Singapore for 3 Days 2 Nights ! Desaru, Malaysia !!

Finally I gotten the chance to visit Desaru ! This visit is special for me as I am not exploring to the famous Desaru fruit farm or Ostrich farm or to see fireflies at night. It's a 3 days 2 nights trip, what did I do if I didn't visited those places which a lot people recommend?

Basically, first day when we reached Desaru, we just chilled. The second day is race day (scroll below to read more on this) with seafood night and the last day is purely chill, shopping at JB and went for a cafe tasting 😋

So, let's begin the journey !!

I shall start with what we did when we reached Johor. We decided to have lunch at Hwa Mei Bak Kut Teh (华美) which is located around 10mins from the Johor Custom. It's bit tricky though as the shop is located in a very small corner of the road.

The BKT shop)

I thought it will be those traditional served BKT (in one big hot pot with all the meat inside), but I was wrong. To be honest, I'm quite a bit disappointed as this is not as what I expected, but it's okay as the taste is still the herbal BKT that I miss so much. Three of us ordered one big bowl of pork ribs, small bowl of organs (I did not touch any of it)

Food that we ordered on for our lunch

For three rice and three drinks with all the food we ordered total spent was RM50.00 (inclusive of 6% GST), in SGD it's around $17 (conversion rate of 2.95). Below is the snap of the dish individually, see if you are tempted by them. If yes, then give it a try. No harm in trying eh =p

Big portion of Pork Ribs cost RM18.00

Preserved vege (Mei Cai) small size - RM7.00

The organs (😨) small bowl - RM12.00

After the lunch, we headed to Desaru straight away. It was quite smooth journey and it took us around 1 hour 15mins following Google maps (distance at 76.4km). Weather was good as well !

Looks cloudy on the beginning of the journey =(

The cloud decided to spread out and giving me nice view to take pic =)

So how did we end up choosing Desaru for our weekend getaway?

I decided to join my boyfriend for Desaru trip as I am rooting for him and his friend as they joined 113 Desaru Johor - 113 Triathlon (2km Swim, 90km Cycle, 21km Run) held at Lotus Desaru Beach Resort on the 5th May. I never see him in the race and decided to give it a try =) Plus I never visited Desaru, so why not !

Few pictures taken using Huawei P20 Pro.

I've labelled the picture so you can read each description below 😊

1. The banner spotted on the road before turning in to the resort
2. The start line of 113 Triathlon, the Elite (approx. 5 persons only) will get to start first
3. The beach to swim
4. 113 Triathlon route map
5. Route map for three categories (113 Triathlon, 113 Sprint, and 113 Mini)
6. Finishing line !

Although the race is at Lotus, we decided to stay at Sand & Sandals Resort & Spa as suggested by my boyfriend's cousin. It's also because I saw the room pictures from the cousin and fall in love with it. Lotus was quite an old establishment and the room might not be that clean as well, hence we decided to top up few dollars more.

After the race, the guys totally knocked out and rest for another few hours before we went to have our seafood night at Sengat Seafood Restaurant, which is 30mins (31.1km) drive from the place we stayed. Good food however location wise is totally unpredictable (we thought we were LOST!) but all in all, it's worth the experience =)

And on the very final day, we just chill at the beach/pool and checked out at 1pm and went for shopping at JB ~

Instagram worthy? 😂

I'll wrap up my stories on this entry. There are quite few stories that I will write more linking up to this trip and I'll update all the links here, so stay tuned !

»»—— To see the review for the place we stay, you can click here 😄

»»—— To see the review for the seafood place, you can click here 😄

»»—— To see the review for the cafe we visited this time at Johor, you can click here 😄

»»—— To see the review during the race of the 113 Triathlon by my boyfriend, you can click here 😄