REVIEW: Tenggol Coral Beach Resort

If you guys read my post about my scuba diving experience, you probably know about my stay at Tenggol Island.

Tenggol Island is situated off the coast of Terengganu. To get there, you need to take a 45-minute boat from the Dungun jetty. There are only two resorts in Tenggol - we stayed at Tenggol Coral Beach Resort.

Source: Tenggol Coral Beach Resort Facebook page

We took the full board diving package inclusive of:

3 nights accommodation
Boat transfers
Meals: 3x breakfast, 3x lunch, 3x dinner
Open water diving course
Diving equipment
Unlimited coffee & tea at the diving center

We also upgraded our stay to the beach front view because.. why not?

Total: RM 1,988 (weekend, non-peak season)

Beach view from chalet

Alamak ter-enter frame

Bungalow chalet next to ours

Current rates

Overall Rating: 4.5/5.0

Pros:

Comfortable and clean
Chalet not far from diving centre
Food was good. There's all-day toast if you ever get hungry after diving
Diving equipment in good condition
Beautiful diving sites (we went to Tanjung Api, Turtle Point)
Clean beach
Swings!
FOC diving equipment for 12 months!
Free t-shirt

Cons:

WATER TASTE HORRIBLE!
No wifi, no phone service (except Celcom & RedOne. Tapi tu pun macam biskut. Sekejap ada sekejap tak ada)
Water heater installed in chalet, but no hot water
Packages quite pricey
Rats, rats everywhere
HAZE! (not the resort's fault though it kinda affected our mood) #terimakasihindonesia

So before you come here, get ready a big bottle of mineral water. Seriously the water doesn't taste filtered at all. I'm often OK with weird tasting water but THIS! I can't swallow at all. I think the resort tried to tone down the salty taste by adding LOADS of flavoured water but then it ended up tasting super sweet + super salty. The filtered water at the diving center was still drinkable to me (not to Yasmin though). She read reviews about the water problem (so it's not us yang mengada ok?!) and so we stopped at a petrol station in Dungun to buy a 6L water. It lasted throughout our stay but that prolly was because I didn't drink much plus I refilled my bottle at the centre. So if you are a heavy H2O drinker, you probably need to bring more.

Also before you come to Tenggol, try to ask the resort to reserve you a chalet away from the big trees. Ours was right below I-don't-know-what-tree-was-it-but-you-can-see-from-the-pictures-above and each time the wind blows, big seeds came falling on the zinc roof. The first time it happened gave a huge scare to us.

The culprit

The culprit's sidekick

The culprit's sidekick's sidekicks

But overall, I must say this is a diving heaven for all divers. Loads of nudibranch for you nudibranch lovers! Nothing much to do in the island so if you're not into diving or snorkeling, you'd probably bore yourself to death (did I tell you there's no wifi and phone service here?).