Review #5: Hotel H2O, Manila

The Hotel H2O Aqua rooms

The Manila Ocean Park is a must visit for all of you aquarium and sea creature lovers if you happened to be in the manila bay area. If you want to maximize your time visiting the oceanarium, then you should consider staying at the adjacent hotel, Hotel H2O. The hotel is best known for their interesting "Aqua Rooms" which feature a marine aquarium as one of the walls. The room may not have any windows overlooking the outside world but the nice underwater view more than makes up for that. There's a schedule for the aquarium lights so you won't feel confused whether it is nighttime or daytime outside. For those of you who might feel kinda weird thinking of the fishes watching you while you sleep, there's a remote controlled privacy curtain that pulls down with a touch of a button, and also for those cases when you're feeling a little shy if you are going to change clothes in the room. The aquarium actually spans several rooms so the fishes will come and go as they please (presumably to go look at something more interesting happening in the adjacent rooms). There's also scheduled maintenance activities so don't be surprised if there's a long tube extending to the bottom siphoning off accumulated debris from the sand at certain times of the day. Any maintenance activity more intrusive than that will automatically trigger the privacy curtains to come down.

The Aqua rooms are only available with a single Queen sized bed

I seem to have a recurring issue with some of the hotels that I have recently stayed at. I think most of these hotels assume that you are booked with a spouse or a significant other since privacy at the toilet and bath area does not leave much to the imagination so to speak. In this particular case, there's a common glass door for the whole toilet/shower area and the shower cubicle itself. So you will need to close the door in the shower cubicle if you don't want water to be splashing all over the sink and toilet area, which leaves these areas open for whoever is with you in the room to just waltz right in. While seeing a silhouette of a person taking a shower may seem sexy for couples, it is not so much so for a grown man traveling with his mom. :s

Toilet and shower area

The room was nice and clean with the usual amenities you would expect for a hotel at this price point (mini ref, daily turn down services, wireless internet connectivity, availability of room service etc.) the complimentary beverage and snacks in the mini bar was a pleasant surprise. It is also good to note that all power sockets are universal so there's no need for an adaptor (220 volts only though).

If you did not get the hotel + ocean park package, then you get a discounted rate for the adjacent oceanarium as a guest of the hotel. The staff were all very friendly from the concierge that took care of our luggage to the front desk and cleaning staff.

Desk area (really comfortable chairs)

If there's one thing that I can complain about is the limited dining options around the area especially for dinner. Of course there's always the hotel restaurant, but based on our experience on the first night, we were turned down because they were full and we didn't secure a reservation. The bar overlooking Manila Bay looked like a nice place to hang out but they weren't really serving heavy meal items on their menu. Most of the restaurants at the oceanarium itself closed early (coinciding with the closing hours of the park) so while it is possible to grab an early dinner, you have that feeling of being rushed since they are about to close.

There's no bidet. A good info for all of you bidet loving folks out there.

Overall, the stay at the Hotel H2O was a very nice and memorable experience. There is a "Jellies Room" for a slightly higher price point but I'm pretty sure that staring at them for a few hours will quickly lose the novelty so I am not quite convinced that the upgrade is worth the extra cost. If you are planning to book, do consider checking out their packages for those wanting to go to the Manila Ocean Park too.