Cebu and Bohol
I'm pretty biased when it comes to Cebu since I grew up there. My parents had a beach resort in Panagsama Beach, Moalboal & when diving was still kind of foreign to the locals, my father kept inviting foreigners from the Mactan airport for a private dive excursion, then sometimes we had people who chose to stay so they ended up at our house in the city. Those are the kind of people you'll meet over there, hospitable and happy to see smiling faces.
Now for the dive part, us locals would just dump our gears in the trunk and head to a what we call "non resort" sites like KM45( locals would know this) This is like laguna beach(shaws cove) in California but no divers around & way more things to see. This is a different perspective from a dive in a resort. Now we have Whale Sharks that loves to hang out at a town called Oslob at a very shallow 20ft dive and they just swim around you.
Water conditions are always great, 80deg water temp year round & 50+ visibility(on a bad day). The best thing that I totally appreciate (coming from California) is the fact that the boat crew caters to you like take your dive gears and wash it for you even. Other towns you should look at in Cebu is Sumilon, Bantayan although still recovering from the typhoon.
When traveling to Cebu/Bohol or anywhere else in the Philippines, bring an open mind and remember this is a totally different culture.
