bcarver

Great place for hiking, mountain biking, fishing, boating, swimming, offroading, dirt bike riding, hang-gliding, and lots of other stuff. About three hours from the Bay Area.

Good place to go for dinner or shopping, but not worth a special trip.

Great rooms. Our bungalow on the beach was $40 per night, but we got it for $25 per night for the month.

I stayed in Roatan for a month, and it is an incredible place. The people are friendly, there is fantastic scuba diving (cheapest place to learn and also one of the best places to learn), great food, fun bars, and a laid-back feeling. Not the cheapest place I’ve been, but you can have a lobster dinner for <$10 and a cabin on the beach for a month for way less rent than I pay in California for a small apartment!

Ski the entire mountain, from left to right, all in one day. I don’t mean ski every run, just ski all the sections.

They’ll say you can’t do it, but you can if you’re good. Go up the cog-wheel train as early as you can, go up all the gondolas, ski down the left side of the mountain, take the gondolas to the top near the Matterhorn, ski all the way down to Italy, and make it back before the lifts close. You’ll have had one of the longest skis possible in a ski resort without ever retracing your steps.

It’s incredible, go there.

Nice place to stay in Manila. Lots of shopping malls. Not sure if it’s worth making a special trip, though.

Best food I’ve had in the Philippines. Hippocampus had really good green curry.

Beach is nice but marred by washed up coral from old dynamite fishing.

Weather was windy in August, but not bad considering August is the rainy season in most of the Philippines. Windy weather made diving difficult (one diving boat broke in the waves).