[Review] Our Grand Hyatt Manila Experience

Had a delightful long weekend staycation at Grand Hyatt Manila in BGC, Taguig. Check out my room tour video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Jg8EoX4JA9c

Stayed two nights here with my husband from Sunday to Tuesday cos wala lang hehe we didn't have anything better to do to for the upcoming holiday so I look a leave last Monday to just enjoy the long weekend. I booked through Agoda cos may discount and they have an ongoing deal called The Grand Escape Offer where we get ₱2k dining credits per night, flexible check-in and check-out, plus some other things (I forgot cos we didn't avail every perk). We still paid almost ₱10k per night so it's not really that big of a deal (pun intented) haha. 

There's early check-in and check-out but it's not what I thought it was. Basically you're only allowed to check-out as late as you checked-in, giving you a full 24-hour stay. So if we checked in at 5pm which is late, we can check-out as late as 5pm din. Ganun sya.

Alright let's look around!

This is their lobby. It's pretty expansive but it feels very bare at the center where you approach the reception desks. The lounge area though is very elegant where all the seating areas are. 

They have these glass staircases connecting each level of the lounge and they're very nice to look at, except that sometimes they just strike me as fancy jalousie windows lol.

The pool is just one big lap pool. Maganda pa ata condo pool namin haha. There are lots of cabanas and seating areas, and there's also a pool side restaurant which serves really good food (we'll get into it next!). We didn't plan on swimming though.

So we had dining credits right? That gave us ₱4k to spend on food which I thought is more than enough, but it also means getting 4k off on this bigass lobster from the pool side restaurant!

So that's what we did. That marvelous sea creature is an ₱8,900 worth Live Australian Rock Lobster, which we complemented with a ₱2,000 worth meat platter to give us the most indulgent surf and turf yet.

We shared this. Just the two of us. And we finished it. It was super good. The lobster may be huge but the bulk of the meat is just enough for two. My favorite part of the meat platter would be the sausage cos it's so flavorful! 

They also served us this super delicious salad with lemon mustard dressing and greens groceries don't usually carry. We loved everything on this bowl so much we had two of it. Good thing it was free-flowing lol

This tomato soup is also very good. It's not creamy, sarap higupin habang mainit! I love it. The sourdough on the side is also very very good. I've always been curious about it so it's feels nice that I finally got to try it. ♥

Room

Let's go to our room!

We got 1 King Bed / Grand King from Agoda. It's 45sqm big and we loved it! Everything checks out as far as 5 star hotels are concerned (wait I'm not actually sure if this is 5 star haha). 

Bathroom has a bathtub which I love. It's kind of something I'm looking forward to now when it comes to hotels hehe. Dipping in a warm bubble bath is one of my new found luxuries, apart from hotel dining, and regular staycations hehe.

If there's one thing I'm waiting for every hotel to offer eventually, that would be SMART TV ACCESS. In this day and age of widespread digital streaming content, I don't know how it still makes sense to ONLY offer cable channels to your guests. We always have to bring our Xiaomi Mi TV Stick on hotel staycations just so we could watch Netflix or Youtube on their TVs. Okada has Netflix and Youtube access on top of their cable channels, hope it becomes a standard soon! Victoria Court nga may Netflix eh! Hahaha

Also! I hope they offer drip coffee instead of nespresso machines because honestly, people who use nespresso in their homes have an entire station of condiments that go along perfectly with flavor of the pods. Ako lang naman yata to. I prefer brewed coffee over espresso. Or if I'll drink espresso I prefer it to be in latte form. Coffee mate barely does anything haha.

In-room Dining

Obviously, we've maxed out our dining credits but that doesn't stop us from trying out their in-room dining (which isn't covered by the deal). It's kindof tradition now for us to try in-room dining whenever we're at hotels cos we know it's always good haha

This one kinda disappoints though. That's their Indian Butter Chicken and it's very bland and malabnaw. A far cry from any butter chicken we've tried. Okada has an unexpectedly amazing butter chicken so when we found this on Hyatt's menu I assumed it's a staple in-room dining dish and couldn't go wrong. Sadly it did.

We also ordered buttermilk fried chicken which is just okay. The fries however are perfectly cooked. Evenly sliced, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, and well seasoned. Love it!

The following night we ordered a burger and a sandwich. I got a Reuben Sandwich after seeing it uses sourdough bread and I loved it! It's got corned beef (not the usual kind), swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and some kind of dressing. Tastes very European. My husband got a bacon cheeseburger which tasted good, thankfully! The fries, as usual, are perfect! 

Gym

We also tried the gym cos we didn't wanna miss a lot of days in the week. Their gym is open 24 hours which is great and it's pretty well equipped too. It's got towels and drinking water for the guests and a good array of exercise equipment and free weights. They also have a private yoga room which they allowed us to use since we're doing routines and we're the only people in the gym hehe.

Breakfast

Breakfast is served daily at The Grand Kitchen between 6:30 and 10:30 in the morning. They don't offer buffet yet so you have to choose one set from their menu. There's Continental, American, Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese. The small portions you can order as much as you can; there's fresh fruits, bread basket, pancake, cheese and cold cuts, etc.

I got the Filipino breakfast (tapa) and loved it! The pancake I ordered on the side was weird though. They gave me honey instead of maple syrup and they don't go well together. 

And that's it!

Overall, I really enjoyed our staycation. Definitely got a much needed rest. You'd think I'd be all refreshed and ready to work hard, but here I am procrastinating yet again! 

You reached this part? Wow thanks! :D

Recovered!

Thank God! Will wait a while before getting boosted. Still on the fence though cos if Delta isn't around much anymore, and our current vaccines are obviously ineffective against the most prevalent variant right now (Omicron), what am I getting boosted for? Our stable vaccines are made for a strain that's already (almost) gone so I don't see the need for a boost yet. Unless of course a convincing study comes up OR a stupid mandate forces me. Whichever comes first hehe.

Okay, now back to work.

I'm not ready

Urgh I don't wanna go back to work yet but my work is piling and there's just so many things waiting for me to attend to, plus I don't want to finish up all my sick leaves because of this. Wish the company would give us more sick leave credits in light of this fucking mess, oh and also reimburse our test expenses, what with all the profits we earned last year right? Right. If it's not asking too much of course lol.

Truth is, I'm not feeling 100% yet. I still get bouts of headaches from time to time and it sucks because I'm out of pain medication. My throat still hurts and my cough and colds are still persisting. The meds I ordered from Southstar Drug last week is still currently being ignored, and they're totally unresponsive despite all the communication channels laid out. They even limited commenting across their socials. Hopefully they don't charge my card yet cos I dont' wanna deal with them anymore tbh. Urgh.

I wish we had a better HMO plan, one that's trully hassle free. Where we don't need to look for accredited this and that in order to get treated cos admittedly it's causing me more headaches dealing with Intellicare than my own fucking illness. Urgh.

And I also hope Southstar Drug would get their heads right and just disable their site altogether if they can't deal with the surge of online orders. It doesn't make sense for the shop to still be up when they haven't cleared their queue yet. Urgh.

Gosh I hate this week. It's bad enough we're all sick but then we can't recover in peace because we'd have to queue for tests, consulations, and we couldn't even get medicines. It's hard to get some groceries, hard to do the laundry. My gosh it's so hard to function when you're competing with the rest of the world to get attended to.

Dear God please help us!!!

gosh i'm so angry

After all the effort I put in looking for an RT-PCR lab that issues OR, Intellicare still ended up rejecting our test reimbursement because it was HOME SERVICE and apparently they don't reimburse home service lab. Which doesn't make sense to me because I don't see the difference between homeservice and onsite testing and more importantly, how the fuck do you expect a patient to go out get tested when they're isolated? This is so stupid and I'm crying about it because it's so frustrating. I shouldn't have bothered with the test at all. Gastos lang naman pwede namang palipasin lang. Who cares about this fucking virus we're all gonna die anyway urgh.

today

When I got sick this week I was hopeful it's just the common flu because I got all the symptoms, most specially vomiting which looks like a distinguishing one. But right now I'm almost sure I got Omicron because I just realized I've been having night sweats recently. I mean they don't really happen at night but I've been randomly sweating a lot lately haha. Also this is the worst case of sore throat I've ever had and I didn't even eat too much sweets. I heard Omicron likes to rest on the throat so maybe it's what's causing this much scratchiness and pain.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYIX1dls6Re/

Of course I wanna be wrong. We just got swabbed earlier and we're hoping for the best.

I wasn't able to get a good sleep last night cos it's hard to breathe when my nose is clogged and every time I breathe through my mouth my throat stings. Argh. Plus I'm sleeping with my head on the other end of the bed so that Jeckie and I are sleeping with our faces as far apart as possible in our one bedroom situation. It's hard, I couldn't get my head positioned right, I kept tossing and turning and changing pillows until a headache joined along. Also, I was busy securing a same day swab test for the both of us so I was kinda anxious too. 

I've been marked covid suspect at work and therefore unfit to work for the duration of time I needed to rest (which depends on me). Thank God I don't have anything pressing to attend to at work, and that my boss is very kind and supportive while I'm gone. I'm also being monitored by our company nurses and doctor through viber, just checking on my daily stats and general feeling.

Here at the condo I've notified our PMO about our state of isolation and I'm enjoying that they've been collecting our trash every day and dropping off our shopee and grabfood deliveries to our doorstep! Urgh, wish we could have this all the time - without being in isolation of course. Kulang na lang laundry and housekeeping and we're golden! Hahaha

Yeah I guess that's it for now. I've been tired the whole day. I cleaned a bit, worked a bit (despite being on sick leave), and now I have a headache. Whew. 

Praying for everyone's healing. 🙏

covid suspect

What a start of the year. Seems like everyone's got covid-like symptoms. Mine started two days ago with mild fevers and headache. Then followed sore throat, cough, colds, body pain, and some vomiting. Thank God we have a dedicated clinic available for teleconsult so I got my prescription and RT-PCR test recommendation immediately. My husband though, who's my HMO dependent, has to go through other channels. And man was it so hard to reach any telemed representative. Lines are either dead or busy. Intellicare, Medgate, Aventus, none of them are reachable. I'm suspecting they're all understaffed and super swamped. I feel like the whole country is in a fever frenzy right now, even doctors are sick.

Thank God though cos we were able to connect with a physician who's a neighbor, so Jeckie was able to teleconsult through him. And now that we both have our prescription and RT-PCR test endorsement, next step is to get our meds and get scheduled for a test. Easy peasy right? 

Oh my gosh no.

I've sent out our prescriptions to multiple Mercury Drugstore branches through viber and most of them are out of stock. Thank God though cos we still have enough Neozep and Bioflu for our Paracetamol needs, and we still have a lot of Kamillosan spray and a pack of Strepsils for our sore throat. Nothing urgent so far. But man was it such an ordeal navigating the internet for resources when you have a bad headache.

After a while, I finally got to ordering our meds online from Southstar Drug (appreciate the clean UI and how easy it is to navigate until checkout) but there's no telling when our meds will arrive cos they're also facing a surge of orders. Here's to hoping they arrive within a day or two at most. Or that we recover without needing to take our prescription meds at all.

Meds done, now the RT-PCR test. We wanted something urgent but all of the home service providers we've come in contact with only issue sales invoice, and we need an official receipt so we can reimburse it. Our doctor neighboor, who we teleconsulted with earlier, offers the same, and we had to cancel because we needed an OR. Now I'm in communication with Lab on the Run, who says they can issue OR and can schedule us later this evening, but nothing's final yet. They haven't returned to me when I said we'd like to continue with the booking. Which kinda makes me anxious because I already cancelled with our doctor neighbor. But oh well, worst case is we get tested on Thursday instead and get the results on Friday. 

We just really need to get the results before the weekend.

I'm feeling a lot better now compared to yesterday. I still took the week off because my body is still in all sorts of pain, and every word I utter threathens to split my throat open. Thankfully my annoying headache has gone away. I think it's after getting prayed over by my mom, taking a long hot shower, and drinking coffee. I don't know which one did the trick haha. Anyway, it's a good thing that I'm gradually feeling better (meaning I can work the kitchen now) because now it's my husband who feels awfully sick. I'm just glad we're not both down at the same time cos oh my goodness who's gonna do the dishes, whew!

If you're sick as well, praying we'll get better soon! 🙏

Today

I think I've always been someone who's easily stressed, but the pandemic just made me more aware of it. I'm still twirling my hair compulsively like a madman and while it drives me crazy knowing there's something mentally wrong with me, I haven't even taken the first step into identifying what the fuck is causing me to break my hair so much. I'm pretty sure it's stress related, more specifically, work related. I got a promotion this year and it only feels more damning knowing I have to perform much better, right when I was already okay with my performance level and would like to keep it that way for my sanity's sake. The promotion was surreal though, and I'm grateful for it, as it finally placed me on my dream income bracket. It's a dream come true, but it's also fucking fleeting. Like wow I'm finally here huh? So this is it? What changed though? Cos it's not like I got a big leap, I was already inching towards that number, slowly but surely closing the gap. And when it finally came, somehow it didn't strike me as much. Like I said it's not a big leap and it wasn't such a big jump that would afford us to move to a bigger apartment, so somehow it didn't feel like such an achievement. Which is actually a good thing. Slow progress like this allowed me to focus on my growth. Instead of running after a number, I've learned to work towards increasing my worth, so the number just came naturally.

I thank God for a lot of things this year, despite all the work stresses, I consider 2021 quite a fruitful one. I got a promotion, I'm getting a good annual increase next year (my biggest yet), so far I've read 12 books, watched 42 movies, finished 50 seasons (I'll try to make a roundup post for this list), got monetized on Youtube, reached my set threshold in less than a year, and never got hospitalized. I also started going to the gym.

Today...

...is the 28th day of December and we're currently in an airbnb in a private subdivision in Tagaytay. It's extremely cold, the wind has been howling violently for hours, and it's freaking stressing me out. I think it's mostly because our car is parked outside by the gutter and for some reason I'm afraid it would get flown away lol. Well last night it didn't so I guess I have to dial down on the anxiety. But still, it's been shuddering the windows that this house is unfortunately so full of so I don't think I'm sleeping well tonight.

Speaking of anxiety. My husband knows how much I despise being with a lot of people, and for the whole of December we've been meeting people non-stop every weekend. I wanted to take a break from socialising and maybe finish a 13th book this year, but I also wanna give it to him cos he likes being around people. It's just one month anyway and after the festivities are over I could go back to cowering under the sheets with my Kindle and lo-fi jazz playlist. As an introvert with a self-diagnosed high functioning anxiety, I think I've done pretty well managing my awkwardness this season. Well, my hair has been the receiving end of all my stress lately but thank God it's not balding yet. I should be worried.

Time jump!

I was writing all of the above earlier when we were still in Tagaytay. Now we've driven out and I'm back at my desk, marveling at my new set of keycaps.

Hopefully I don't replace this anymore but who knows. As a mechanical keyboard fan I'm just not too deep into the hobby yet to try other types of mods. I'm fine with just switching the keycaps. It's already troublesome enough having to pull out the caps one by one lol haha and I think that's the best effort I could give my keyboards for now.

Alright that's it! See you next year! :)