Putatan Holidays

Room was clean, location was convenient.

We had an amazing time at Gaya Island Resort. It is a luxury resort with great food and drinks, comfortable rooms, and incredible views/proximity to the ocean. Worth noting is that this is in a nature reserve, surrounded by jungle and ocean, and the resort embraces and supports this, which means coexisting with wildlife. You can walk out from the resort beach to their own protected reef and swim with dozens of species of beautiful fish (equipment is available for free). We didn’t see any snakes, though we watched for them constantly over 5 days and participated intently in multiple jungle walks. The activities were an absolute highlight - a deeper snorkeling excursion, walks, mangrove kayaking, and more available. I had booked it confident that the family members who prefer to lounge by the pool would be well-served, but they ended up coming on the excursions and having a great time. Definitely worth 4-5 days if you can swing it.

Absolutely lovely resort - the resort is beautiful and feels like paradise. The staff are all amazing, great service everywhere. The restaurants are reasonably priced (a bit more expensive than the mainland but seems reasonable given the location) and all the meals we had were really nice - we stayed for a week and had tried most dishes by the end , there isn’t a huge variety and only a few Malaysian options. Our room was up a steep hill but you can ask for a ride up on the buggy if you don’t fancy the walk. Everything does close up quite early (last order for a drink 10pm) but can see why as we were always the only people still around at this time - everyone seems to disappear about 8:30 so it can feel a bit of a weird atmosphere if you’re an evening person. There are lots of biting insects around so do take some decent insect repellent as the oil the resort provides didn’t seem effective at all. They light insight repellent coils outside each villa in the evening - it would be good if the resort could add these at the bar area at the Pantai restaurant too. A few things. The rooms just aren’t insect proof at all - eg there’s gaps in the door so we got bitten a lot. Each day we had to brush ants off our bed. When we first arrived there was a large number of ants (dead and alive) on the bed. We stayed for a week and the bedding wasn’t changed at all during this time, which was surprising especially as I had a couple insect bites which left a bit of blood on the bedding.