Made an impromptu decision in one night to visit Jamaica. We didn’t have any sort of expectation for this trip because “all-inclusive resort” and “beach” are rather foreign concepts to us… not sure we were going to bore our minds off there. Nevertheless, we used this opportunity to escape the brutal cold winter and to celebrate our marriage anniversary and Chinese New Year.
We stayed at the more secluded yet spacious and luxury Sandals Whitehouse. Although the shuttle ride to this resort is the longest from the airport compared to other Sandals resorts in Jamaica, the journey, in our opinion, was part of the overall experience in Jamaica. The resort service was great, albeit incredibly laid back… took us a day or two to get used to the “slowness”.
At our resort, we spent our time doing all sorts of water activities, including snorkeling, kayaking and swimming… and lounging lazily at the beach chairs under the shade. We did a one-day local tour to Negril that brought us to some souvenir shops, Margaritaville, Sandals Negril and Rick’s Cafe, which is a famous spot for watching sunset and cliff diving.
It was surprisingly an amazing and relaxing trip. The resort workers were very friendly. The jerk chicken and pork were delicious. Most importantly, the warm weather was perfect… definitely a little tough to leave 85F for -25F on our last day in Jamaica.
An interesting observation… not too many Asians at Sandals, thus we stood out like a sore thumb. Another interesting observation… “Ya Mon!” is probably the most overused phrase we heard from the resort workers. Almost every sentence by them began with that two words.
