18 59 74:26 (1:15), the Perfect Combination? (Part 2 will be Posted in Thailand Forum)
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/th...perfect-combination-part-2-a.html#post4638643
I think this is my third trip report, and having read several other recent ones I’m going to try and concentrate more on content, and less on pictures. (Thanks to all who submit reports!)
As a further warning: this report is about a trip to the Manado area, with a little Phuket at the end, so if your “fed up” with Sulawesi reports close your browser now!
If you’ve made it this far, you now deserve to know what the numbers are:
18 – Diving Days
59 – Dives made by me (not the total available)
74:26 – Total Hours and minutes spent underwater
1:15 – AVERAGE dive time over the entire trip.
First a little background.
I am lucky enough to work on a rotational basis, so I work non-stop for a month followed by a months break. The result is I get to dive quite a lot every year and being based in Phuket then a lot of this is on the West Coast of Thailand and out in the Similans. May to October is generally considered to be the “off” season in Phuket, where the wind changes direction and days with wind and waves happen more often. Diving is still possible and many would say it improves as there are fewer people both on the island and diving – but having been here for a few “off” seasons I try to make at least one trip away in this time.
This time it’s for a two stop trip to Northern Sulawesi: first a 9 diving day trip on the Ocean Rover followed by a 6 day+1 stay in Kasawari in Lembeh. Normally most people would not dive on arrival day in Lembeh, preferring to gear up and sleep after a long flight but as I was only transferring from a boat I made 1 afternoon dive on my arrival day (the +1)
The Trip
There are now two easy routes from the West available to get to Manado, one with Air Asia via KL and the other with Silk Air via Singapore. I went with the latter as I’ve travelled with them before and enjoyed the experience.
The flights from Phuket through Singapore do not connect on the outward leg, so an overnight stopover is required. I chose to stay inside the airport, took a late flight out of Phuket and booked a room at the transit hotel. The whole journey was uneventful (that’s a good thing), and the night in Singapore airport allowed for a good exploration of the shops, restaurants and other facilities + a good sleep – I did stop short of using the swimming pool.
If you are not stopping in Singapore for a day or more I would strongly recommend doing the same, but be sure to pre-book the transit hotel.
The arrival in Manado has now changed a little, the Visa on Arrival process has been moved upstairs. You now line up upstairs to buy the visa (USD25), then line up again upstairs to have it put into your passport before moving downstairs to immigration.
Baggage collection is straight forward, followed by the customs inspection. Personally I have never had a problem in Manado, but I do always declare all my gear on the customs form just in case. When asked I always SMILE and tell them it’s for my personal use and will be taken out with me when I leave – then I’m waved on.
The pick-ups are just a few meters (yes I’m metric) outside the door and will normally be waiting holding a board with your name on it. Just walk slowly and look around. The Ocean Rover is first, so I’m being driven to Bitung (approx. 1.5 hours, depending on traffic).
We were taken to KBR, where we used their floating dock to get into the dinghies and then a 5min trip to get onto the OR.
I have been on the OR many times in the past, but this is my first trip with it under new ownership – it has now moved from Phuket and is based in Manado with an Indonesian crew.
Roman (the owner) met us at the airport and was our cruise director for the whole trip.
The OR is one of the best boats for diving/photographers I’ve been on, and has great facilities for camera maintenance and battery charging. The diving was exclusively by dinghy, so the boat would stop a short distance from the dive site and we would all gear up, get in the dinghy, put on fins, short trip to the site and back roll in.
Some people were not comfortable getting into the dinghy with tanks on, so the crew would lift those in and the person geared up there. Cameras were taken care of by the crew until you were either kitted up in the dinghy, or in the water (your choice).
Getting out was also a doddle, people had the choice of either just handing up camera and taking off fins before climbing the ladder, or like me also took off the weight belt and BCD before climbing up.
We were not required to return to any particular point, wherever we came up the dinghy would come & collect. Waiting time was always short, with the longest (3min or so) being when the dinghy’s were already picking up people.
Dive times were not limited, but with the possibility of 5 dives (4 day + 1 night) every day most people stayed in between 1-1.5 hours (my average was 1h 17m). I used EAN32 for the whole trip – with this number of dives something I strongly recommend if you don’t want big limits on your bottom time. Well worth getting EAN certified before the trip.
Time for a picture: A nudi from day one (Jahir 2)
We dived in Lembeh for the first day, after that we headed out to the northern mainland, Bangka Island, Biaro Island, Ruang Island and Tagulandang. This was one of the “NS” trips so we did not go out any further. The outer islands (Sanghie) are covered in the slightly longer 11 day “SA” trips).
We then travelled via Bangka and the mainland to Bunaken and the Manado side mainland. To help you visualise this here is a map of the area:
The end of the trip was back via the northern mainland ending with the last two dives in Lembeh.
This is not a trip that concentrates on Lembeh; instead it provided a fantastic mix of diving that varied from Lembeh Muck to Coral Critters, Lava Flows, Pinnacles and Walls. Most of the time I chose to go with Macro, but there were plenty of wide opportunities out at the islands and around Bunaken. It’s just with such great critters it’s difficult to take off the macro.
Turtle (Lekuan)
So what were the critter highlights?
For me there were quite a few Nudi’s I’d not seen before plus I got to photograph a selection of critters with my (relatively) new Sony-DSLRA350 camera. Some examples:
Mushroom Pipefish (Tanjung Paradise)
Halimeda GPF (Punten)
Boxer Crab (Batu Toto)
Stackable Gobies (Batu Mandi)
The other type of Rhinopias (Pasir Hitam)
And the worlds most annoying (to take a photo of) Pygmy Seahorse (Batu Toto)
I made a total of 35 dives on the Ocean Rover, in total there were 41 on offer during the trip.
Next was the transfer to Kasawari, easily accomplished as the OR was parked at the water filling station again within sight of Kasawari.
I’ve also stayed at Kasawari before, and the fact I keep going back should tell you something…. I arrived in time for the 2nd morning dive, but opted to skip that, have a nice lunch and do the afternoon dive.
Diving at Kasawari is surprisingly like a live-aboard. They make 3 day dives and give you an option of a 4th as either a late afternoon Mandarin dive, or a later night dive. Dive times are not usually limited, so most end when the tank is low.
Camera’s are carried to/from the camera room as required and your gear stays on the boat where it’s filled with EAN32 using a long hose. The boats are not “speed” boats – they are a little larger and have a covered area to stay out of the wind before gearing up when you arrive at the site. Transit times varied between 4 min and 15min as most of the sites are close.
Most days I left my camera on the boat all day, as there was no need to recharge batteries, change lens or download card. I did all this in the evening. This was also my approach when on the Ocean Rover.
Food at Kasawari is good, and when less than 14 people are there it’s ordered from their very extensive menu. I like this as I can have the same thing every day (I always had the chicken egg drop noodle soup for lunch – Yum)
The rooms are excellent, and have been updated since my last stay with some TV’s and a choice of a few English language channels. Unfortunately the news channel is CNN, I can only hope in the future they will upgrade to BBC
Over the next 6 days I got down to some serious muck diving
The most visited Pygmy’s in the Strait (Nudi Retreat)
Some Giant Frogfish (Pante Parigi)
Shy CuttleFish (Retak Larry)
Unusual Nudi’s (Serena West)
Colourful Cuttlefish (Hairball)
And Creepy Punk Shrimp (Nudi Falls)
Sadly this all came to an end, and I made the drive back to Manado airport where I travelled all the way back to Phuket on the same day.
At Kasawari I made another 19 dives out of a possible 25
Conclusion
Was it worth it? YES
The combination of dive sites around Manado was fantastic, and offered a whole bunch more to see than just the stay in Lembeh. Don’t miss Lembeh, but if you can possibly spare the time go and look at a few of the other areas.
A Final Word
If you are going to be muck diving then every now and again look behind you – while in Lembeh I did see some truly appalling dive techniques that stirred up the bottom and ruined visibility for other divers.
Most of the people were oblivious, but a few did look behind them and re-adjusted their technique to a more “Lembeh Friendly” one.
References
Some of the links I used to research and book this:
www.silkair.com
www.ocean-rover.com
www.kasawari-lembeh.com
www.sea-bees.com
Go to Part 2:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/thailand/299711-18-59-74-26-1-15-perfect-combination-part-2-a.html#post4638643
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/th...perfect-combination-part-2-a.html#post4638643
I think this is my third trip report, and having read several other recent ones I’m going to try and concentrate more on content, and less on pictures. (Thanks to all who submit reports!)
As a further warning: this report is about a trip to the Manado area, with a little Phuket at the end, so if your “fed up” with Sulawesi reports close your browser now!
If you’ve made it this far, you now deserve to know what the numbers are:
18 – Diving Days
59 – Dives made by me (not the total available)
74:26 – Total Hours and minutes spent underwater
1:15 – AVERAGE dive time over the entire trip.
First a little background.
I am lucky enough to work on a rotational basis, so I work non-stop for a month followed by a months break. The result is I get to dive quite a lot every year and being based in Phuket then a lot of this is on the West Coast of Thailand and out in the Similans. May to October is generally considered to be the “off” season in Phuket, where the wind changes direction and days with wind and waves happen more often. Diving is still possible and many would say it improves as there are fewer people both on the island and diving – but having been here for a few “off” seasons I try to make at least one trip away in this time.
This time it’s for a two stop trip to Northern Sulawesi: first a 9 diving day trip on the Ocean Rover followed by a 6 day+1 stay in Kasawari in Lembeh. Normally most people would not dive on arrival day in Lembeh, preferring to gear up and sleep after a long flight but as I was only transferring from a boat I made 1 afternoon dive on my arrival day (the +1)
The Trip
There are now two easy routes from the West available to get to Manado, one with Air Asia via KL and the other with Silk Air via Singapore. I went with the latter as I’ve travelled with them before and enjoyed the experience.
The flights from Phuket through Singapore do not connect on the outward leg, so an overnight stopover is required. I chose to stay inside the airport, took a late flight out of Phuket and booked a room at the transit hotel. The whole journey was uneventful (that’s a good thing), and the night in Singapore airport allowed for a good exploration of the shops, restaurants and other facilities + a good sleep – I did stop short of using the swimming pool.
If you are not stopping in Singapore for a day or more I would strongly recommend doing the same, but be sure to pre-book the transit hotel.
The arrival in Manado has now changed a little, the Visa on Arrival process has been moved upstairs. You now line up upstairs to buy the visa (USD25), then line up again upstairs to have it put into your passport before moving downstairs to immigration.
Baggage collection is straight forward, followed by the customs inspection. Personally I have never had a problem in Manado, but I do always declare all my gear on the customs form just in case. When asked I always SMILE and tell them it’s for my personal use and will be taken out with me when I leave – then I’m waved on.
The pick-ups are just a few meters (yes I’m metric) outside the door and will normally be waiting holding a board with your name on it. Just walk slowly and look around. The Ocean Rover is first, so I’m being driven to Bitung (approx. 1.5 hours, depending on traffic).
We were taken to KBR, where we used their floating dock to get into the dinghies and then a 5min trip to get onto the OR.
I have been on the OR many times in the past, but this is my first trip with it under new ownership – it has now moved from Phuket and is based in Manado with an Indonesian crew.
Roman (the owner) met us at the airport and was our cruise director for the whole trip.
The OR is one of the best boats for diving/photographers I’ve been on, and has great facilities for camera maintenance and battery charging. The diving was exclusively by dinghy, so the boat would stop a short distance from the dive site and we would all gear up, get in the dinghy, put on fins, short trip to the site and back roll in.
Some people were not comfortable getting into the dinghy with tanks on, so the crew would lift those in and the person geared up there. Cameras were taken care of by the crew until you were either kitted up in the dinghy, or in the water (your choice).
Getting out was also a doddle, people had the choice of either just handing up camera and taking off fins before climbing the ladder, or like me also took off the weight belt and BCD before climbing up.
We were not required to return to any particular point, wherever we came up the dinghy would come & collect. Waiting time was always short, with the longest (3min or so) being when the dinghy’s were already picking up people.
Dive times were not limited, but with the possibility of 5 dives (4 day + 1 night) every day most people stayed in between 1-1.5 hours (my average was 1h 17m). I used EAN32 for the whole trip – with this number of dives something I strongly recommend if you don’t want big limits on your bottom time. Well worth getting EAN certified before the trip.
Time for a picture: A nudi from day one (Jahir 2)
We dived in Lembeh for the first day, after that we headed out to the northern mainland, Bangka Island, Biaro Island, Ruang Island and Tagulandang. This was one of the “NS” trips so we did not go out any further. The outer islands (Sanghie) are covered in the slightly longer 11 day “SA” trips).
We then travelled via Bangka and the mainland to Bunaken and the Manado side mainland. To help you visualise this here is a map of the area:
The end of the trip was back via the northern mainland ending with the last two dives in Lembeh.
This is not a trip that concentrates on Lembeh; instead it provided a fantastic mix of diving that varied from Lembeh Muck to Coral Critters, Lava Flows, Pinnacles and Walls. Most of the time I chose to go with Macro, but there were plenty of wide opportunities out at the islands and around Bunaken. It’s just with such great critters it’s difficult to take off the macro.
Turtle (Lekuan)
So what were the critter highlights?
For me there were quite a few Nudi’s I’d not seen before plus I got to photograph a selection of critters with my (relatively) new Sony-DSLRA350 camera. Some examples:
Mushroom Pipefish (Tanjung Paradise)
Halimeda GPF (Punten)
Boxer Crab (Batu Toto)
Stackable Gobies (Batu Mandi)
The other type of Rhinopias (Pasir Hitam)
And the worlds most annoying (to take a photo of) Pygmy Seahorse (Batu Toto)
I made a total of 35 dives on the Ocean Rover, in total there were 41 on offer during the trip.
Next was the transfer to Kasawari, easily accomplished as the OR was parked at the water filling station again within sight of Kasawari.
I’ve also stayed at Kasawari before, and the fact I keep going back should tell you something…. I arrived in time for the 2nd morning dive, but opted to skip that, have a nice lunch and do the afternoon dive.
Diving at Kasawari is surprisingly like a live-aboard. They make 3 day dives and give you an option of a 4th as either a late afternoon Mandarin dive, or a later night dive. Dive times are not usually limited, so most end when the tank is low.
Camera’s are carried to/from the camera room as required and your gear stays on the boat where it’s filled with EAN32 using a long hose. The boats are not “speed” boats – they are a little larger and have a covered area to stay out of the wind before gearing up when you arrive at the site. Transit times varied between 4 min and 15min as most of the sites are close.
Most days I left my camera on the boat all day, as there was no need to recharge batteries, change lens or download card. I did all this in the evening. This was also my approach when on the Ocean Rover.
Food at Kasawari is good, and when less than 14 people are there it’s ordered from their very extensive menu. I like this as I can have the same thing every day (I always had the chicken egg drop noodle soup for lunch – Yum)
The rooms are excellent, and have been updated since my last stay with some TV’s and a choice of a few English language channels. Unfortunately the news channel is CNN, I can only hope in the future they will upgrade to BBC
Over the next 6 days I got down to some serious muck diving
The most visited Pygmy’s in the Strait (Nudi Retreat)
Some Giant Frogfish (Pante Parigi)
Shy CuttleFish (Retak Larry)
Unusual Nudi’s (Serena West)
Colourful Cuttlefish (Hairball)
And Creepy Punk Shrimp (Nudi Falls)
Sadly this all came to an end, and I made the drive back to Manado airport where I travelled all the way back to Phuket on the same day.
At Kasawari I made another 19 dives out of a possible 25
Conclusion
Was it worth it? YES
The combination of dive sites around Manado was fantastic, and offered a whole bunch more to see than just the stay in Lembeh. Don’t miss Lembeh, but if you can possibly spare the time go and look at a few of the other areas.
A Final Word
If you are going to be muck diving then every now and again look behind you – while in Lembeh I did see some truly appalling dive techniques that stirred up the bottom and ruined visibility for other divers.
Most of the people were oblivious, but a few did look behind them and re-adjusted their technique to a more “Lembeh Friendly” one.
References
Some of the links I used to research and book this:
www.silkair.com
www.ocean-rover.com
www.kasawari-lembeh.com
www.sea-bees.com
Go to Part 2:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/thailand/299711-18-59-74-26-1-15-perfect-combination-part-2-a.html#post4638643
Last edited:
