Paradise, lost

Lakawon Island Resort
Off Cadiz City, Negros Occidental
Tag: Worth visiting

Lakawon Island off Cadiz City in Negros Occidental is an island getaway for urban Bacolod. Just like Cebu's Mactan or Bantayan Island, Davao's Samal Island or Ilolio's Boracay.

My friends packed our bags and took a six hour bus-boat-bus-tricycle-pumboat ride (that's just one way) to what we expected to be a paradise island sweetened by the sugar haciendas around it. The island did not disapoint me, but a few other things did.

The island was great. A dozen hectares of land bordered by white powdery sand. The water was cool although spiny corals could prick sensitive beach feet. Only around a quarter of the island is resort beach, one half is for a fishing village, while the other half is vast wetlands and seaweeds.

The island can be circumnavigated in around 30 minutes. At the back of the resort is the tail of the tadpole-shaped island..a sandbar that is a perfect photo op during sunset. Seaweeds, however, carpet the place and spoils what could have been a perfect sun-sky-sea-beach view.

Now the bad part. The resort buck guests for extra charges – separate fees for room accommodation (P1,800/night for two people), and entrance fees (P50/person) and banca (P300 two way/group). They also threatened to charge us corkage fees if we do not order from their rather restaurant.

The worst thing about the resort, however, are the flies. They are almost everywhere and they seem to have an appetite for fresh human flesh. With electricty and aircondition only running between 5:30 p.m. up to 6 a.m., sleeping inside the cottage was hotly impossible. Just at the back of the resort, some 10 meters from the airconditioned cottages was a garbage dump.