Archives for October 2018

Since life will never be the same again in a couple of months, the hubs and I decided to go on a babymoon. The concept of babymooning isn’t popular here in the tropics as say, honeymooning. Essentially, a babymoon is the last getaway before the birth of a baby. Usually, the babymoon is held once the pregnancy reaches the second trimester. But since we were focusing our finances on getting the nursery ready, we decided to hold off the babymoon until the third trimester.

I’m heavily preggers (7 1/2 months) at this point and was not in the mood to travel to a remote beach. Well, I was not in the mood to travel throughout my pregnancy, to be honest. I was too paranoid. That’s why we decided on a staycation at a nice hotel. The pace is more relaxing and we could spend lots of quality time together before the baby comes.

There were loads of luxury hotels to choose from but we chose Raffles Makati for several reasons. First, it’s not your average hotel with 100+ rooms. Raffles offers a total of 32 suites, each elegantly designed suite provides the utmost comfort and luxury. I swear, our room is the swankiest we’ve been in. The package is quite pricey for what it is but our stay was inclusive of high teas in the afternoons and cocktails at night, apart from the breakfast buffet. Sounds good to me!

Before we checked in, I went shopping for bubble bath bombs and fizzies. I heard Raffles’ bathroom is massive and I wanted to take full advantage of the tub! I bought a total of four bubble baths bombs and fizzies but I forgot to take pics. I got an orange bubble bath one that smelled like fresh orange, another in lavender/floral mix, one with the glitter and honey, and another with a fresh ocean fragrance. I thought about reviewing each of these but something about being in the third trimester made me lazy as fuck. I will continue with the beauty reviews once this whole pregnancy thing blows over.

Who doesn’t love Lush’s stacks o’ soaps? And because a video is worth a million words, here’s a clip of our suite:

It’s overwhelming how massive the room was. To be quite honest, I was expecting a medium-sized room because we got the Junior suite. But this is by far the largest room we stayed in a luxury hotel. It was its own walk-in closet, which was set parallel to the bathroom.

I didn’t film the closet in full because it was quite messy with our stuff but above is a tiny portion of it! I requested a room with a view and Raffles Makati truly delivered:

The room was so huge, there were a total of 5 seating areas excluding the work desk. One is by the window, near the bed. This seating area puts the breathtaking cityscapes front and center.

The other is set farther from the bed, near the work desk (image below). Not pictured is the study, which is set near my husband’s bedside:

Another is a living room-esque seating area with its own TV. The mini bar is also hidden beside the sofa. Not pictured is the work desk, which was set opposite the bed, near the TV console table.

Incredibly, there is also a seating area at the foot of the bed so you can watch the TV comfortably. The TV was so far from our bed so I guess that’s what the lounging area is for. I didn’t take a picture of the bed BTW, the arrangement was ruined by the time I remembered to snap a pic, argh! But you can check out the clip for a quick glimpse of the bed!

Here’s the dining room, beside it, is the coffee maker.

Now behold, the bathroom:

It was so frackin’ huge! The toilet and the shower area are set away from the tub. The tub is set near the giant windows so you can see the gorgeous view while languishing in a fragrant bubble bath!

The marble sink (his and hers) dominated half of the bathroom but there’s ample room for the bath area. The toiletries and amenities were equally luxurious. The shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and soap came in FULL SIZE. We never experienced this from other hotels before.

For the bath essentials, a shower cap, loofah, and seemingly unlimited packs of bath salts were provided. There is also a pretty organizer set on the tub so you can read a book while taking a long soak! After checking in, we spent a huge chunk of our day enjoying the massive bed. The hubs was busy watching the game and I was busy enjoying the fast wifi.

Since we checked in late, we didn’t make it to the high tea. But we freshened up just in time for dinner. We had a dinner reservation at Spectrum, a resto buffet shared by Raffles and Fairmont guests. Here’s my first plate:

… and the second plate. Obviously, I was not able to eat a lot. We had lunch at Italiannis and was still full come dinner time, jujuju!

We also received a congratulatory cake. We said we were celebrating our babymoon and early anniversary:

The next day, we enjoyed the buffet breakfast. I loved the selection, it was better than the dinner buffet. We also made it to high tea!

Didn’t realize that they offer tons of munchies. We entertained my hubs’ relatives and ordered two high tea sets but we never finished any of the sets. Too many stuff but the quality of the treats was amazing! The high tea comes with free-flowing coffee, btw.

I made the “mistake” of ordering a cheese plate thinking that the treats won’t be enough for five peeps. Love the cheese selection and we ended up taking most of these home to munch on. So, yeah, not much of a mistake, after all!

After spending the rest of the day entertaining the oldies, the hubs and I finally had the night to ourselves. We had a reservation at Mamou, which was in Rockwell. Since we were still sorta full, we were not able to order all the other dishes that we wanted previously and limited our order to the Dry Aged USDA Prime Grade Bone-In Rib-Eye Steak (twin size for sharing) and the Lorenzo Truffle Cream Pasta. We also ordered the steak rice and creamed spinach to go with the steak.

Both dishes were divine. The pasta is rich, flavorful, and creamy while the steak, well, there’s just no words. I cannot articulate how good the steak was, the mouthfeel of the meat is springy yet soft. The flavor is robust and rich. It was perfectly cooked medium rare. We love our meat rare to medium rare, no medium well for these piglets.

I didn’t add any seasoning to the meat. No salt, no pepper or pepper flakes, nada. I never use steak sauce, even gravy. I prefer my steak lightly seasoned with whatever seasoning the chef added and that’s it. This steak was divine. Perfect in every way. My husband found the steak too rich though. Well, our entire meal was too rich with the truffle pasta, steak rice, and steak so he was a bit “nasuya” with the meat fat. But the steak, he loved it as well.

We spent the rest of the night swimming at the hotel pool. There are two pool areas at Raffles, one that’s exclusive to Raffles guests and another for Raffles and Fairmont guests. We went to the exclusive pool and it was wonderful, we had the place to ourselves!

We also used the gym to sweat all the guilt away. I didn’t take pictures because there were other peeps in the gym but even the gym was so nice. The equipment and machines were brand-spankin’ new and hi-tech. The view is so gorgeous. You’ll get lost in the nice view while working out. Lemon water, towels, and other niceties were provided for gym goers. After working out, we basically spent the rest of the day lounging around, taking long soaks and eating. It was amazing!

So yeah, that’s basically what went down during our babymoon. I felt so spoiled, Raffles Makati is something else, guys. The staff members are not only friendly and warm, they were efficient as hell too.

We love how the staff members put a personal touch on their service. We received a couple of these handwritten greetings, which we thought was so thoughtful. They really put more effort into making their guests feel right at home. We are planning to go back to Raffles Makati because we enjoyed our stay immensely! Perhaps next year to celebrate Damy’s arrival or on my birthday.