A Life-transformative Healing Holiday At The Farm At San Benito

The Farm at San Benito was a dream local destination of mine for a long time already but it has this expensive branding that was keeping me from booking a night.

Located two hours away from the metro, The Farm at San Benito is a luxury health and wellness retreat in the heart of Batangas. It houses an array of luxury residencies and villas for guests to choose from. The Farm at San Benito is the perfect coupling of lifestyle and luxury as guests enjoy the beautiful facilities on offer.

I particularly wanted to stay at Narra Pool Villa, The Farm’s most renowned suite, which costs around PHP 25,000 per night. For me, it was Narra Pool Villa or never so I really have to save a lot for me to get to The Farm.

However, last week, my mom urged me to book for another staycation near Metro Manila. We had to go to Manila for her monthly visit in Quiapo and she wanted to maximize our trip by having a holistay in a hotel, vacation rental or something. But here’s the catch. I needed to find a place outside Metro Manila because my mom liked somewhere that has the countryside ambience. And it has to be somewhere that can be reached through commuting because we won’t be bringing our car. Therefore, since I’m already familiar with the transportation system in Lipa because my husband used to live there, I only thought of The Farm at San Benito. But I still don’t have the money for Narra Pool Villa so I guess it’s alright to pick Banaba Deluxe Room for the meantime.

The Banaba Deluxe Room is only a studio-type room yet it is spacious and is completed with a queen-sized bed, mini kitchen area, an office table and a large shower area. When it comes to interior, it wasn’t as luxurious-looking as the other villas of The Farm as expected. The room is painted in plain white and is furnished with old-fashioned furnitures. There isn’t too much embellishments in the room but I can’t say that it has modern minimalist style either.

Colored in white and dark wood, the bathroom also possesses vintage aura. It is a simple yet wide comfort room that has two vanities and separate cubicles for toilet and shower. Even though it looked ordinary, I would commend it for its cleanliness and, most especially, for its sustainability. The Farm is known for its strict farm-to-skin concept so their. Therefore, the bathroom amenities and toiletries are eco-friendly and are organic produce from their farm.

While most people know this place as a hotel or resort, The Farm is actually more of a holistic medical wellness sanctuary. Their services focus more on spa, therapy, workouts, yoga sessions and similar healing practices for rejuvenation, meditation, fitness and such. The haven has medically-supervised programs that guests can take to address personal lifestyle pain points from achieving a slim body, strengthening your relationship, healing a broken heart, maintaining ageless beauty, boosting immune system, managing pain and gifting oneself a break.

However, we were on a budget that time and we were only available to stay for one night so we weren’t able to book any of these programs and treatments. It’s a good thing that The Farm has supervised activities where guests are free to join. These activities include nature-walking, functional training, sound healing, art therapy, flower meditation, yoga session and organic farm tour. These are scheduled daily. We attended the Mandala Flower Meditation, wherein we have to arrange flowers and form mandala in a bowl filled with water. This is believed to arouse creativeness and bring spiritual enlightenment.

Of course, The Farm is generally a farm. It rests on 52 hectares of a lush green environment with a stunning view of the majestic Malarayat mountains. Basically, you will be surrounded by the beauty of the environment. In the property, you’ll witness an organic vegetable and herb garden near their restaurants. We also met some beautiful creatures such as peacocks, ducks and visitors’ pets while roaming around The Farm.

Everything grown on their land has been designed to fit the farm’s culinary needs. Hence, The Farm is proud to have their vegan, vegetarian, and pescetarian restaurants, which are Alive!, Panna and Pesca respectively. They want to spread wellness up to the food they offer. Recently, The Farm also opened the UPPERDECK, where you can indulge in delicious whole food dishes.

Since we were at The Farm, we wanted to practice vegan diet as much as possible so we had our dinner at Alive!. We ordered Mango & Apple with Candied Walnut Salad, which is an incredible combination of mango’s sweetness and apple’s crunch. There was a mild bitterness from lettuce, perhaps, because it was summer. It was all blended together with a yummy dressing. I wish there were more nuts though. I had the Eggplant Lasagna, which didn’t look fancy but became my favorite upon eating. It represented the union of tomato and cheese very well. It’s well-seasoned unlike their Whole Wheat Pesto Pasta. The eggplant being a vegetable didn’t bother me and I didn’t feel that the cheese was vegan at all. I ended my meal with Strawberry Balsamic, which was refreshing and fizzy.

I thought that we would have an even more wonderful meal at breakfast since we’ll have it at Pesce. This means that we’ll have seafood for breakfast, which will make food livelier. Moreover, it’s a great opportunity to showcase unique dishes that are for pescetarians. But sadly, I wasn’t amused. The breakfast buffet was just limited and they served simple and expected dishes. I think the only tweaked dish here is the Lapu Lapu Adobo, which tasted more like Paksiw. The Vegetarian Nuggets was good since it tasted like the regular ones. The Puttanesca was just average. The scrambled egg was a cooked more than how I requested it to be. There’s nothing special with their pastries. Emong’s Malunggay Pandesal tasted better than theirs. The pancake was dry. The cereal station has good choices but it wasn’t their creation. It’s great to have Papaya Juice but the brewed coffee was diluted. I love the ambience and scenery of the Pesce Restaurant though.

The Farm has four non-exclusive swimming pools. There’s a regular lap pool, an infinity pool, a manmade waterfall and a lagoon-shaped pool that is in front of Pesce. I noticed that the color of the pools doesn’t have the perfect crystal blue color most resort pools are aiming. It was aquamarine and yet it blended more with the surrounding and it felt more natural-looking. My favorite pool was the manmade waterfall because, aside from the waterfall itself that is an allure for sure, it is small and kinda hidden so I definitely felt the privacy and tranquility here. But the water here was so cold so we moved to the infinity pool, which had a relaxing warm water, during the night.