Sipadan Mangrove Resort

Comentarios destacados

• wulfenide

  11 diciembre 2018
  Unhelpful staff, No amenities

  Where to begin? Wheres the negative stars button? Ill just start at the beginning: Sipadan Mangrove Resort is the absolute worst place with a bed I have ever had the misfortune of staying at, to say nothing of the worst resort. They advertise online to pick guests up from the airport for double the price they offer on site (50 MYR/person rather than 25 MYR/person). Our driver never greeted us or welcomed us to Borneo, introduced himself, or engaged in conversation on the drive to the resort. The road from the resort turn-off to the resort is in profound disrepair from the heavy trucks hauling palm oil fruit from the tens of thousands of acres of oil palms in the vicinity. Entering the premises everything appears to be unfinished and non-operational eg, dusty, brown, non-landscaped property, many empty abandoned aquaculture ponds, and a tiny playground set and torn above ground pool in a large baking hot, sterile gravel lot making up the entirety of the theme park. Inside the main lobby was cool and well decorated, and the clerk was friendly enough although several other staff members, especially Matteus, wouldnt look at us or welcome us to their resort. Check in was quick and easy, but for reasons that became abundantly clear shortly, we appeared to be the only guests at the resort. Despite this, there was no offer made to upgrade our room like a high-end hotel or resort would do. When we were taken to our room, we found it to be a very long way from the rest of the resort, even by golf cart, with the only window looking directly at another room across a small, barren, courtyard. The building placement was terrible because we were unable to see the river, palm trees, or mangroves, which was disappointing, but that was soon to be the least of our concerns. Trying to get online to confirm our first dive of the next day we discovered that there was a problem logging on, and because there was no phone in the room and no transportation for guest use I had to walk a very long way back to the resort lobby to ask for assistance. Here I was told that the resort WiFi had been non-operational for the past month for some unknown reason and there was no end in sight! Flabbergasted by this revelation, and by the additional facts that no notices had been placed on their website or hotel booking sights and no effort had been made to alert our travel agent of this development, and that when we arrived the staff hadnt immediately informed us of the problem and offered available options for dealing with it, we decided to leave. We were then informed that a refund would not be possible due to the lateness of the cancellation, and we informed the front desk clerk that we could not be forced to stay in a subpar resort with subpar service and services without some type of remuneration, which they were unwilling to offer. This began a completely wasted afternoon of trying to resolve the problem, which ended with us being forced to spend one night due to the procrastination and delay tactics of the office staff and management, with the rest of our stay being refunded. The manager Sabril is either impotently helpless or shrewdly clever because though he was courteous and appeared anxious to help, he never offered any useful suggestions or compensation for our lost time and immense frustration with a discount, room upgrade, or other perks. The resort wouldnt even give us a free ride into Semporna as a small gesture of apology. I cannot un-recommend Sipadan Mangrove Resort enough to prospective vacationers to Sabah who are looking for a relaxing, hassle and stress free place to base your diving and other adventures from. Takeaway Tips: 1. This resort is Not on the coast. Do not stay here if you want to be able to see the ocean or even be able to walk to the beach on your own; impenetrable mangrove swamps stand in your way and the use of resort kayaks and other guest-use water toys are confined to a small drainage ditch/dead-end canal as a precaution to help avoid tempting the local salt water crocodiles. 2. Other than the above mentioned ditch kayaking, the only other activities advertised on site by the resort are snorkeling trips and a spa. There is also a privately owned dive center located here which offers exorbitantly priced diving (350 MYR for 3 dives excluding Sipadan island plus an additional 100 MYR for SCUBA equipment rental). 3. To restate the above point, this resort is an hour and a half from Semporna, which means that if you are not planning to engage in the extremely limited activities offered on site, and are not coming here for the express purpose of peace, quiet, and getting away from Everything, you are going to be stuck in the middle of vast tracts of oil palms and mangroves a very long way from anywhere. Complementary rides to town are not offered by the resort. 4. Staff are either unfriendly, unhelpful, or just plain unengaged and dont care about their guests or resolving guest problems. The one exception is the kitchen and dining room staff, who did a good job and made lots of delicious, well presented food fresh for us at each meal.

  

• Narmatha

  12 marzo 2019
  Two Hours from Semporna

  Sipadan Mangrove Resort is located near to the airport. To reach the main road from the resort it takes one hour. From the main road to the airport it takes 15 minutes, 40 minutes to Tawau Town and 1 Hour to Semporna. The resort is really nice. Located in the middle of coconut plantation and Mangrove Trees. Fully build by woods. All the meals provided were delicious. They have a Spa too. They have packages to the famous islands price less than 250 ringgit Malaysia. They also have river cruise to view fireflies and kayaking. If you are taking the packages from them, then its a convenient place for u to stay. But if u r planning to travel Semporna from this resort then its too far! This resort ideal as a one night stopover since its near to airport. The resort do provide airport transfers.

  

• EmilyW3954

  20 abril 2019
  Fun Natural wildlife Experience for families

  The resort is 40min drive from the airport as the staff picked us up from Tawau airport. Once reached, we were served with chilling passion fruits and wonderful seafood lunch. We booked one night at Lake Mangrove Villa which they transported us with buggy. At 4pm, we went for the river cruise which lasted for 2.5 hours. Highly recommended this for family as you get to see different wildlives and the beautiful sunset on your way back. That evening we also went for fireflies cruise which we saw fireflies, crocodile and beautiful starry night. The tour guide also sing and play guitars for us. The best is the fishing boat experience which started at 8am. The boat captain is very experienced and helpful too. We really had lot of fun on the fishing trip. After that, the resort kitchen offered to cook your fishes for your lunch.

  

• chokin85

  02 junio 2019
  One of the worst resorts i had ever been to..

  Poor services, facilities are in awful condition and the worst of all, everything was so run-down and the staffs were totally disinterested in what they were doing !! Resorts Restaurant were lacking of food, they charged SST on the bills but never provide receipt of any form, WIFI is not available and most telecommunications service are unavailable too, absolutely shocking to say the least !! Staffs were ignorant except the receptionist, would not even consider going back to the place even if it's for free, let alone paying for it.

  

• SWERT88

  29 mayo 2019
  Weird place

  We based ourselves here as we knew we wanted to do some snorkelling but not diving around Mabul island (and had heard accommodation on such wasnt great). Got to admit this place made us quite sad - its built for an army but we were the only ones there at one point in our stay over 3 nights. The WiFi was having issues (didnt work at all, I suspect that had been the case for months - expect no signal at all either!), the bar was just Tiger beer and the food was nice although very repetitive. Whats really odd is the cleaner didnt even come to our room after the first night even though we were only ones in resort at that time. It takes a good 45 mins to get here off the beaten path from Sipadan airport- make sure you book transport with the hotel. Its very much in the middle of nowhere so unless youre doing trips every day (they dont come cheap either, at £40 a pop per person per day) there isnt much to do (especially if no WiFi). They need to give this place some TLC and they have room for an Olympic swimming pool so they should at least have a small one somewhere... A strange experience and feel awful for saying it as whoever built it had great expectations but dont think we will be heading back. If you do one thing Mangrove, sort the WiFi out.