Best Hotels in Bauang, Philippines

The place is instagrammable and most of the staff are friendly and accommodating. My otherwise shy parents loved their swim-up room because it afforded them a semblance of privacy while enjoying the pool. The rooms are spacious, the beds comfortable. I personally love the balcony overlooking the pool complex. And bathrobes are always appreciated. The beach has fine, whitish sand. The buffet breakfast is adequate, standard, (although I heard a couple complaining at the salad bar due to the lack of salad dressing). The fried bananas were the star of the breakfast buffet, and we kept re-filling our plates with it to make up for the very ”malitid” beef tapa. The river pool was quite enjoyable and we found ourselves just floating with the current. For some reason, the water in the river pool and slide pools/pool bar were quite hot (not ”warm”). Im unsure if that's intended or the sun was just too hot that day. There were incidents though that we found stressful/annoying/disappointing. As we were on our way to Aureo, I received an email and text message from them saying they are letting go of our reservation (4 rooms, since we are a party of 10), because they did not receive any confirmation from me. I backtracked on the reservation email they sent days ago and did not find anything requiring me to confirm. All I remembered was that they were giving us the option to either pay up-front or settle the fees upon check in. It was later sorted out and we were told they will hold the rooms for us. Nevertheless, that email/text message considerably caused us stress, as we were already on the road, with kids and senior citizens in tow. Perhaps the management could adopt a better way of informing clients that a confirmation is needed, or that payment should be made upfront (which we would have gladly done), instead of automatically sending a message, without prior notice, that they are cancelling our rooms. Since it was our parents' anniversary and it was a rare occasion for our family to be complete, we arranged for a private dinner by the beach. We agreed to the P5k dinner set up by the beach, in addition to the P750/person boodle fight food. We were, however, disappointed to find out that the 5k set-up consisted of a simple plastic table and chairs, with lights strung above (see pic). We checked Aureo's pics from IG and saw that previous set-ups have arch backdrops with flower garlands, etc. I suppose we expected something similar for 5k. It did not help that just a few feet away, the restaurant has beach tables and chairs with better lights/lanterns, where we could have eaten without the additional 5k charge. As a compromise, the staff reduced the beach set-up fee to P3k. We reluctantly accepted this so as not to ruin what could hopefully be a special dinner for our parents. The staff also informed us they will only charge us for 8 persons although the set up was for 10pax. While we appreciate this, it must be pointed out that the 9th and 10th pers