Swiss-Belhotel Maleosan Manado North Sulawesi

I had stayed 1 week on Bunaken Island and had 1 last night in Manado before flying back to Jakarta. I had spoken to a few people about where to stay and they had recommended to stay at the Swiss-Belhotel. I had previously stayed at the Aryaduta Hotel on the Boulevard in downtown Manado and it was just OK (see the review of Aryaduta Hotel here). I booked in for the 1 night at the Swiss-Belhotel and glad I did, it really is a nice hotel.

The Swiss-Belhotel in Manado is 4 star hotel and has a swimming pool, restaurant. gymnasium, free WiFi internet access in the room and in all public areas and a bar with karaoke rooms down in the basement. The bar has live music or DJ playing every night of the week. The bar is a bit quiet throughout the weekdays but gets very busy on weekends (Friday and Saturday).

The staff were very efficient and friendly on check-in. A bell boy took me up to my room with my bag and had a nice chat with me in the lift. I had arrived at lunch time so went straight down to the restaurant on the 2^nd floor (the same place where the buffet breakfast is served, included in the room price). I had only eaten rice or noodles for the previous week so the beef burger was an easy choice off the extensive food menu. They did have a huge lunch buffet on display but was your standard Indonesian buffet. Most times this would have been fine and the food did look delicious but I needed a chunk of beef on a burger bun!

Beef burger at Swiss-Belhotel restaurant

The buffet breakfast had everything you could want. The standard fare was Indonesian breakfast though they had a good selection of breads and pastries, cereal, fresh fruit or you could have the chef prepare any sort of eggs you wanted – scrambled, fried, poached or an omelette.

Buffet breakfast at Swiss-Belhotel Manado

Rooms were very comfortable with a nice large king sized bed. The room I had was on the top floor (15^th floor) and had a really good view out to Mount Klabat, the large volcano to the south of Manado. The WiFi worked really well in the room. Each room has its own WiFI router so speed is perfect for anything you need to do on the internet. I uploaded a 1Gb file to the internet no problems.

The Swiss-Belhotel Maleosan is located at the top end of Manado. To go down to the Boulevard area with all the large shopping malls only takes around 5 minutes by taxi and cost around 15,000Rp. Make sure you carry small money when you catch a taxi in Manado! I caught a taxi from the Swiss-Belhotel to Raja Sate Restaurant (see the review for Raja Sate Restaurant here). The fare came to 17,000Rp. I handed the taxi driver a 50,000Rp note (the smallest I had) and he said he only had a 10,000Rp note to give me! So a 17,000Rp trip cost me 40,000Rp. He did offer to wait to take me back to the hotel. I am sure he would have charged me extra for this!!