1 month in Indonesia (open to other Asia suggestions)

[chillyinCanada]

7/8 days is too short for lob in Raja Ampat

 

[Luko]

3. Tack on 10 days to Alor in Oct, although I would prefer to do big current destinations with my husband and not solo, and the Mermaid biodiversity cruise we're eyeing for 2021 also covers Alor. So not leaning toward this atm.

Beware : going on a liveaboard is NOT the best way to dive Alor! Alor is much better dived with land operations.

 

[Cali_diver]

Tubbataha is pretty amazing... so if you haven't gone I would highly consider this.

 

[outofofficebrb]

I am looking at mainly two options and hoping for some advice:

1. Phillipine Siren has a 14D/13N Cebu to Puerto Princessa crossing trip at the end of Feb that covers most of the southern Visayas and Tubbataha. I was thinking I can expand this to 1 month by doing Malapascua, Leyte, and Moalboal before the trip, and El Nido after. Not interested in wrecks so will skip Coron. Alternatively I move my Anilao booking to after El Nido


So I guess my question is, should I go to areas in the Phillipines (esp Tubbataha) where I have not been to before, or use the time to do another trip to Raja Ampat? I do like trying new places and Phillipines is much easier to get to from HK (direct flights), but I don't want to pay a premium for the Siren trip (7k) if Raja will be much better (and can be done for 4k)

I agree that 8 days is not enough for Raja Ampat but if you are splitting it up and doing central and north in 1 chunk and southern in a separate chunk, that might be OK but I generally like to go there over 11-12 days ideally altogether.

I have a few thoughts about Tubbataha specifically. The season for Tubbataha is around mid or late March to early or mid June. I have been there myself and know a few instructors who work there on liveaboards. mid to late March is a bit risky as they sometimes have weather that is rough that can affect itineraries or sailings since it is the beginning of the season. If you are sailing there at the end of Feb, even if you reach there mid March, it can be luck of the draw. Additionally, there is a long open water crossing and once you get there, they are very exposed atolls. There is no hiding anywhere from bad weather, wind, or rough sea conditions. Given it is a long open water crossing, the Siren is also a wooden hull. Given the time of year, I would not feel great about it. When I was there in mid to late April, we had a couple of rough days on the way out there and then for a day or day and a half after that. I was on the Discovery Palawan which is one of the largest if not the largest boat out there with a steel hull. (They are so large, they can't moor to any of the buoys or mooring points so they continuously run and have a steel hull.) When everyone was moored, I distinctly remember seeing the Philippine Siren listing heavily from side to side due to the conditions, more so than any of the other boats out there. If you do it, maybe a steel hull would be better for that early in the season. This is of personal opinion and choice but I am not so attracted to the Siren Fleet given how many issues they have had with many of their boats over a short period of time. As of September 2015 and noted by Undercurrent, they had five disasters for eight Siren boats in six years and they lost the Fiji Siren in 2017.

I've done Tubs 1X and have done RA 2X. I find RA better, but you should still see Tubs. It's very good but not as good as RA in my opinion. However, Tubs does have whale sharks and way more sharks than RA. Different...

 

[jjmochi]

Very helpful, thanks all. I do lean toward doing Tubbataha before my April Raja Ampat trip, so the diving can continue to improve! I am really looking forward to the whale sharks, which hopefully we'll see on our next trip to the Maldives, but can never have too many. I was initially recommended the Siren by a really good guide I dived with earlier this year in Anilao who used to work there (but doesn't anymore). The sales guy told me they have never not been able to make the crossing due to weather conditions, at least in the past few years, so maybe it's a case of just stocking up on seasickness pills. I did just read the undercurrent article on the Fiji Siren tho and that's quite concerning. It's the priciest boat so I would have thought they have a high standard of safety / will not cut corners on boat maintenance?

@outoftheoffice, I looked into Discovery Palawan but there's 32 divers- did you find it too crowded? I didn't really like my recent experience in Tetamanu where close to 30 divers dropped in the water at once and drifted as one giant group.

If our April trip goes well I will probably extend the Jan 2021 trip by a week after the liveaboard and dive from one of land-based resorts, for 2 weeks in Raja Ampat. It's really hard to make Alor land-based work because of the infrequent flights and I keep changing my mind due to not wanting to fly Lion/Wings and not wanting to use up 2 days going there each way. Hopefully Garuda starts a route there eventually.

 

[Luko]

. It's really hard to make Alor land-based work because of the infrequent flights and I keep changing my mind due to not wanting to fly Lion/Wings and not wanting to use up 2 days going there each way. Hopefully Garuda starts a route there eventually.

There are direct flights from Bali to Alor operated by Swriwijaya AFAIK.
There's also a Bali-Kupang operated by Garuda followed by Kupang-Alor on TransNusa, it only takes the morning landing at 12:30 in Alor.