SSVETLANA DAMDINOVAI was incredibly lucky with this hotel room booking. I stumbled upon it on Trip.com while zooming in on the map showing different hotels and their prices. Originally, the room was around 1600 rubles, but with my discount and bonus points, the final booking price came down to 614 rubles. Meanwhile, other hotels were charging around 1500 rubles for rooms that were only 8 square meters.
The hotel is a 20-minute walk from the airport and a 22-minute walk from the promenade (pier), though there's no beach here. There are plenty of shops, cafes, restaurants, markets, and a McDonald's nearby. I specifically chose this hotel for its proximity to the airport and a large shopping center (a 10-minute walk from the hotel) to exchange pesos for dollars. Unfortunately, you can only exchange for dollars at the airport; shopping centers and currency exchange booths only convert dollars to pesos. I couldn't find any exchange offices in El Nido and didn't have time to visit banks. On Coron Island (where the exchange rates were very favorable, and I exchanged a lot) and Cebu Island, they're everywhere.
The room was clean and spacious, with fresh linen. It came with toiletries (shampoo, hair conditioner, shower gel, body conditioner, liquid soap, toothpaste and brush, cotton swabs, comb), a kettle, water, and hangers. The water pressure in the shower was decent (not strong), and the drainage was good. No insects running around in the room. The towel was good; it absorbed all the water from my hair effectively (I once had a bad experience in another hotel where the towel didn't absorb water from my hair at all and barely dried my body). The air conditioning was quiet, cooled well, and had many settings. There were two mirrors, which was very convenient as I didn't have to rush to the bathroom mirror.
The staff was friendly. I arrived at 11 AM, and check-in was supposed to be after 2 PM. They told me the room wasn't ready yet but that they would check me in before 2 PM once it was. While I waited in the hotel lobby, cooling off, they had me checked into this lovely room within an hour.
There was a beautiful sunset by the promenade, but I left early because it started raining, and then a rainbow appeared.
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