Virgin Beach Resort, San Juan, Batangas

Click to watch video

April 22-24, 2019

End of the school year, good report cards again so it must be time for another fun beach trip!
We booked on Agoda, the resort does not have its own website yet. We picked the Casita cabin, a step up from the bargain cabin - 7,810PHP/$153 per night, two queen beds. They want you to pre-pay for food, I've not encountered that before, I don't think. 1,750PHP/$35 per person, per day. 

Locate on Google Maps.
So a quick review:  The cabin was adequate, at least it had A/C! No WiFi anywhere on the premises except at the restaurant so we burned through some data charges. But the resort is nice, quiet, beach and water are clean and enjoyable:

There are activities available such as jet ski, banana boat and snorkeling (of which we partook). But the first order of business was to get the Phantom 4 up:

I had the same issues with EM interference and the aircraft disconnecting when getting a thousand or so meters out that I've had elsewhere in both the Philippines and in the U.S. Even with those gold-foil antenna extenders, which I don't really bother with any more.

At any rate, check out the video at the top of this article. This trip was also my first extended use of the DJI Osmo Pocket gimbal camera. All the non-aerial footage was taken with the Nikon 1 J5 mirrorless.

This was young Lady Z's first time snorkeling, she was a bit apprehensive, didn't want to let go of Joelet but calmed down after a while. She liked seeing the Dory and Nemo fish. Afterward was lunch and a long afternoon of beach and droning:

This pampered lady!

Of course I could not go away without another Philippine sunset shot. This was tough because the sun was behind those high hills. I waited until it was all gone but never got the look I wanted so this was the only keeper:

In the evening, they light up the trees so we jury-rigged a tripod for the J5. Using the widest aperture possible (f/3.5), a 1.5 second exposure seemed to do the trick nicely:

The next day, our last, we spent wandering the beach and using the resort's WiFi at the restaurant:

We had a good, relaxing time here. The resort was clean, well-run, and quiet (!). Would we go here again? Likely not, mainly due to lack of amenities such as cabin WiFi and a swimming pool. If you follow along in the video, the resorts along the shoreline west of Virgin Beach do have pools. We might come this way again, maybe even next. But our sights are set on the newly-renovated Boracay island (arguably the #1 destination in the P.I.) and Coron, in Palawan - even though we were there before, my drone failed and we got no footage of those picture postcard splendid islands there.