There are some hotels and resorts around Nongsa, but in my humble opinion Turi Beach is the best, despite of its minuses. Well, maybe it depends on what you’re looking for from a resort anyway, while for me it suits most of my needs. Let me talk about the good stuffs first, and later I will point out the minuses.

Not all of the beaches in Nongsa is swimmable nor playable, due to lots of sharp corals along the shorelines and some beaches even doesn’t have the sandy shorelines. But in this hotel, you have 3 spots where you can play by the beach. First, on the farthest East or on the right hand side when you’re facing the sea, between the jetty and the border of this hotel property. This spot is the best part to look for seashells, play with the sands, and to get wet, but not for swimming; because on this spot there are a lot of big stones from stretching from shore line to open sea direction about 30 meters away. But you can climb to these rocks and take beautiful pictures with jetty or ship passing by as background. At the end of this 1st beach, is connected through small path alongside the shore lines to neighbor resort. But when I was there, this path was under construction after broken down by the big waves. Too bad, because I couldn’t say anything about it.

The second spot is the one in the middle. This is the spot where you can swim with mild depth up to about 30 meters away to open sea direction. Though water sometimes gets milky and the seabed full of seaweed, but if you’re OK with those, the water is nice and warm and the wave are smalls since it the strait between Singapore and Batam, not the ocean with big waves. On this second spot they have some facilities you can try and enjoy like fly-board and hover-board, jet skiing, water skiing, wakeboarding, knee-boarding and banana boat. Knock yourself out!

The 3rd spot is on the farthest West or on the left hand side when you’re facing the sea. On this spot you can play by the beach, play volley beach (the hotel provide the net and the ball), or just sitting under the unique tree which grows on the seashore. If you have small children, this is the ideal place to play with sand toys because they can play under the shade of the trees. At the end of this 3rd beach, is actually the border of this hotel property side by side with Nongsa Pura Resort as its neighbor. The guest of these two resorts are free to use each other facilities including beaches and swimming pools, though you have to bring your own towels. The most attractive place to visit and taking pictures in Nongsa Pura Resort is the Marina or ship and yachts docking terminal. It’s a tiny version of Monaco, but it’s worth a shot.

Between the first and second spot, this hotel has beautiful 220-meter long jetty with island bar in the middle and a gazebo at the end of the Jetty which is the ideal place to read books while hearing the sound of the wave and company with the breeze. Both at day time and night time, this place is ideal for taking pictures. At day time you can try fishing from the jetty or in the clear day just enjoying the view of Singapore skyline and Johor Baru land in the distance.

If you are want to cool down after playing on the beach, you have 2 choices of swimming pool. The first one near the restaurant they call it the ‘Lagoon Pool’ with combination depth for small children up until 2.5-meter deep. The color of this Lagoon Pool is light blue, when the second pool near in the middle called ‘Emerald Pool’ has the green color like emerald. This Emerald Pool has two separate pool on different height while the top pool is infinite pool with controlled temperature of warm water. This pool also has combination depth but not for very small children because the depth is not changing gradually, and step down vertically instead.

Jogging or simply walk around the complex is also something you should try especially the path alongside the beach. To get to the 3rd beach spot I mentioned earlier, you have to go through this path entering small ‘jungle’ or complex of trees where you can see monkeys on these trees if you are lucky. Just be careful to your belongings not to be stolen by the monkeys and don’t try to feed them or they would follow you begging for another treats. Along this path, is also ideal to be in your Instagram pictures.

Now let’s talk about the food. This resort has at least 3 places to eat. First is the restaurant that utilized for breakfast. The second one is underneath the 1st one, is the bar with pool table. And the 3rd one is in the island bar I mentioned earlier. All foods and drinks are consider expensive to Indonesian people and the price are very much like in Singapore. So if you don’t want to spend too much on expensive foods, you might just try the breakfast as it includes in room rates. For me the taste was not something that this resort could be proud of, because it was just so ordinary. And the menu for the breakfast for resort like this was also consider very limited. I suggest the hotel should be more creative to make more variety menu for breakfast. It’s 5-star resort for crying out loud.

How about the room? This resort has 2 separate type of rooms. The first one is the bungalow complex stretch out on the East part of the resort located on slopes from the top near the entrance or lobby to the bottom near the shore lines of the 1st beach I mentioned earlier. Of course you would always have to choose the one near the shorelines if you want to stay in this type of room. Because the one near the entrance would be full of disturbances as cars passing by, and they are too far from the shorelines.

When I was here with my family I stayed in the second type of rooms which was more ordinary room, located on the West part of the resort. It has 4 stories of building in cascading type also located on a steep slope. So if you don’t take elevator you would have to climb dozens of stares from the pool level near the Emerald pool I mentioned earlier to your room, especially when you’re staying on the top floor. If you want have the nicest few of the beach, I suggest you take the 4th floor But if you want to easy access to the pool and the beach, I suggest you take the 2nd floor. Or you can add more extra cost to stay on the 1st floor, because the rate on 1st floor a more expensive compare to other three floors. I was staying in the room 3006 on 3rd floor, because it was new year and any other room were fully occupied. From 3rd floor I still can see the beach but not as good as on the 4th floor. Overall the room was good, but I guess the furniture in the room needed to be upgraded since they look outdated. Funny thing about all the room on this complex is the way you open and close your room door. It opened in wrong direction to the point that you have to position the curtains in a way for them not to be nibbled by the door every time you’re closing and opening the door. What I did was I just left the curtains in open position. It’s true that anyone who would see clearly to my room, but it’s on 3rd floor and the only one who see it would be the hotel staffs. So I didn’t care. But I suggest, the management of this resort somehow have door direction fixed in the future.

I have one hindrance when I stayed in this room 306. One day I asked the housekeeping to clean my room before I left by hanging the sign ‘Clean My Room’ on door handle, only to witnessed when I got back on the late afternoon that my room was not cleaned. I address my complaint to manager on duty and he directly took action by coordinating his crew to clean the room. I also demand answer why they didn’t clean my room. The housekeeping guy told that he saw the sign “Do not disturb” hang on the door handle. I did hang the “DND” sign in the morning when I went swimming that morning and returned to my room after that. Before I left I changed the sign with “Clean My Room”. This is the solid proof that he went to my room in the morning and did not recheck the sign again after that. My family and I waited in the lobby and later we moved to patio on the beach. After the room was cleaned the MOD called me and we returned to our room. The problem solved, but I believe that this thing should not be happening in the hotel like this. This hotel should train the housekeeping crew to check many times to rooms that have not been cleaned in order not to miss anything. And to my surprise there are no single ‘service recovery’ from the hotel for me and my family but a simple sorry. What a lousy way to treat their guests!

The most perturbing thing about this hotel that surprisingly some part of the beach are dirty, full of garbage that swept away and brought by the waves overnight. I know that this not their fault, and maybe this is just the way it is for the beach in this area. But in my humble opinion, this 5-star resort should have special crew to clean the beach. No matter how dirty it is, they should have their beaches clean at all time, even if that crew has to work around the clock! I will return again to this resort if I visited Nongsa, therefore I hope by that time I would find that these 3 beaches they have, would be clean and free from litter and rubbish.

If it was not because of the ‘room cleaning’ incident and garbage on the beach, I would have already gave full 5-point rating for this resort.