Family outing? A quick beach getaway near Manila? Batangas is the common answer for that. Plenty of beach resorts to choose from and stay with. For now, we will take you to San Juan, Batangas or commonly known as Laiya, so “Kaja let’s go!”.
We had a hassle free family trip for the holy week and my father’s birthday celebration. A 2-3 hours drive away from the metro and you’ll find the coastal town of San Juan, Batangas and from there, you can find Barangay Laiya.
As mentioned, plenty of beach resorts can be found there, with different price ranges. Laiya tends to be crowded during weekends and holidays, so it’s better to have a reservation prior your trip. There are also locals by the road offering cottages, private resorts (ala Pansol, Laguna style) but we recommend to directly transact with your chosen resort instead.
We walked in at One Laiya Beach Resort, day tour was our plan but since they are so accommodating, we booked a beachfront room for an overnight stay. Room rate starts at P5,000.00 with air-condition and own bathroom. The room is recommendable for family trips since you have privacy, no need to fall in line at the common CR.
Compared to other beach resorts, One Laiya has the affordable rates and good enough for a family overnight stay. They also charge a P100.00 entrance fee for adults, but senior citizens and children below 12 years old are free. You won’t get these offer from other known resorts. Bringing of own food is allowed, they don’t charge corkage fee, grill area can be used for free. You can max out the persons capacity on the room, you can bring your own mattress and pitching of tent is allowed free of charge too.
The resort is nice for your needed beach getaway. They don’t have a swimming pool but the beach will do, long shoreline to walk around, cottages to hang out, volleyball & water activities are also available. The beach is also child friendly since water is calm and shallow. Don’t expect a white sand and clear water at Laiya, but the place can make you feel relaxed enough for the weekend.
Day tour and weekday trips are recommendable at Laiya. Be it solo, couple, friends or with family, head on for just a quick chill and drive away from your stress. It’s also advisable to bring your own car, for own travel convenience and lessen fare expense, as going to Laiya via commuting can be a bit hard.
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By far, this is officially what we can call the fastest beach getaway we had thus explains the “quickie” in the title hehe. I’ve read a few blogs about Burot even years ago, but we got discouraged to visit it since they always mention that Henry Sy already bought the place and plans to develop it. Thanks to some of the updated blogs and a friend’s Facebook update, we found our Burot’s still open to the public. A week before I wrote this post, Burot’s also featured in Rappler’s list of beach that’s recommended to visit. Now, Burot really got us and our curiosity lead us in planning this trip overnight haha, ain’t it a quickie?! 🙂
There are no available resorts in Burot, your only choice is to do a day trip or spend a night under your tent like we did. You can rent a tent for P 300.00 but from what we observed some of the tents were old, but it can still provide you good shade. Also, there’s only a limited space where you can pitch tent since it’s just for rent (maybe it’s one of their tent rental policies). There are 2 comfort rooms on the beach but don’t expect much, the water supply varies, there’s no lights inside so bring your flashlight, prepare to fall in line too and be patient *lols* There are grills, tables, even a floating cottage available for rent too, they also have bonfire & torch services at a price.
The 3 hour drive and another 15-20 minutes tricycle bumpy & dusty ride, mangroves surrounding a small road leads you to a secret beach with a funny name 🙂 The sand is not so white as what the others mentioned, it’s beige when dry & turns brown when wet, not so fine and with a bit of small stones & shells in it. It looks white in photos since most of our photos were taken at noon time. The water’s calm & fine but not so clear, some part has many seaweeds & big stones, and literally it’s shallow..it’s like walking in a Metro Manila flooded road during rainy season hehe. 
The other part of the beach though is really the opposite..clearer water, a bit deeper and some waves are rushing since most fishermen and passenger boats passed by this portion. This is where we spent most of our time taking photos since it’s less crowded here, yep loners. 
There’s only one store and yes, it’s not overpriced compared to Puting Buhangin in Quezon. Other vendors also drop by selling ice cream, delicacies, accessories made from pearls & corals while others have a small table selling halo-halo & fruit shakes. 
There’s also this bridge like formation as what they call as the landmark of Burot Beach. It’s a nice place to hang out for a while, this part’s really breezy but be careful because there are toads, tadpoles in the stones & some are lurking in the water. We also heard some visitors shouting sea urchin and jelly fish haha. 
We haven’t explored the whole part of Burot due to the humid and soooo hot weather that made us stay in our tent for half day hahaha. What we enjoyed though is the sunset viewing, we liked it than the sunset in Boracay and then our camping under the stars.. our fave part, stargazing! 
If we are to visit Burot, we’d probably do the opposite of our schedule, we’ll go there during low season and arrive mid-day or in the afternoon instead to avoid the heat. Burot Beach to us is not so perfect, honestly. It’s a beach where we can say, we’d choose to camp for the night just to get away from the stress and all. It’s not a place where we look forward to soak under the sun and swim till we get tired compared to other beaches we’ve been to. Maybe it’s also because of the convenience in terms of location and the commuting part that still convinces us to visit again.
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Kaja let's go! 