Bali Questions

[ystrout]

Hi Everyone,

My fiancé and I are planning our honeymoon in Bali this October.

We've been diving about two years and go a lot. We each probably have near 100 dives. But we dive like beginners. After some horrifying conditions at 100 feet on a wreck in Key Largo, we decided we don't like going deep. We prefer staying between 20 and 60 feet, but don't mind venturing down to 80 feet in the right conditions. While we have done dives to 90 and 100 feet, I would REALLY feel more comfortable doing more mild dives, looking at coral and fish in relatively shallow water.

Does Bali have diving like this? If so, could you point me to some areas and operations/resorts we should consider?

 

[Wisnu]

Plenty, unless you are looking for moly.
My recommendation for your first stop in Bali is Tulamben area.
Talk to your guide what you want.
There's lot of discussion about tulamben in this forum.

 

[howswedeofme]

Were you diving the Spiegel Grove in Key Largo? That can be tough in current, especially with upwelling.

We dove Tulamben and Padang Bai last month. Tulamben was easy and I think Tulamben/Amed would fit what you're looking for. Very little current, pretty shallow overall. I think on the Liberty Wreck we got down to 80 feet but it is an easy dive. Padang Bai can be more challenging but there are many dives I think you would be comfortable with. Manta Point is not very deep and wasn't much current but I think that is paired with a Nusa drift which is faster moving water but not deep (maybe 50 feet?). The local PB sites seemed pretty easy.

Also, we stayed at Toyabali Resort in Tulamben and dove with Liberty Dive (Wayan/John was our guide who was phenomenal so if you dive with LDR ask for him!). Toyabali is incredibly beautiful and romantic and a very convenient location. I highly recommend it for a couple!

 

[ystrout]

Were you diving the Spiegel Grove in Key Largo? That can be tough in current, especially with upwelling.

We dove Tulamben and Padang Bai last month. Tulamben was easy and I think Tulamben/Amed would fit what you're looking for. Very little current, pretty shallow overall. I think on the Liberty Wreck we got down to 80 feet but it is an easy dive. Padang Bai can be more challenging but there are many dives I think you would be comfortable with. Manta Point is not very deep and wasn't much current but I think that is paired with a Nusa drift which is faster moving water but not deep (maybe 50 feet?). The local PB sites seemed pretty easy.

Also, we stayed at Toyabali Resort in Tulamben and dove with Liberty Dive (Wayan/John was our guide who was phenomenal so if you dive with LDR ask for him!). Toyabali is incredibly beautiful and romantic and a very convenient location. I highly recommend it for a couple!

Yes, we were on the Spiegel Grove... Lol. It was a disaster. Since then, I don't do dives where I have to drop to 100 feet to even participate in the dive.

There's been a few times I've gotten pretty deep since then, but at places like Catalina where I'm diving in 40 to 60 feet of water then venture 50 feet away from the reef for a few minutes into the sandy bottom at 95 feet while following a fish. But that's on my own terms and I don't HAVE to be that deep. I feel more comfortable at being deep when I am doing a shallower dive and have the option to go deep if I feel up to it. Does that make sense?

But thank you for the in depth review. When you say pretty shallow overall, how deep are you averaging?

And I'm super excited for the Liberty! That's not an issue because I can start at any depth I'm comfortable at and move around the wreck as I please.

Also, I just forwarded your response to my fiancé! We're checking going to look into this resort and dive guides.

 

[howswedeofme]

We didn't do any negative entry in Tulamben or PB, only Komodo, so you shouldn't have to do any drop ins to 100 feet at either location.

For Tulamben, I think our first day was 45-60 feet for most of the dive. It was gradual and sloping. With Liberty Dive, you have your own private guide so wherever and however deep (and whatever time!) you want to dive is your choice. For PB, you are in a group following a dive at set sites so if they go deep, you go deep. They (Geko Dive in PB) seemed to have two boats going out each day so you could call ahead and ask where they are diving and what the profiles are.

 

[howswedeofme]

I should note that in general around Bali, they aren't going deeper than 90 feet. All the dive ops we dove with had a 30m max depth.

 

[gekodivebali]

We didn't do any negative entry in Tulamben or PB, only Komodo, so you shouldn't have to do any drop ins to 100 feet at either location.
[...]
For PB, you are in a group following a dive at set sites so if they go deep, you go deep. They (Geko Dive in PB) seemed to have two boats going out each day so you could call ahead and ask where they are diving and what the profiles are.

That's correct: it's very seldom that do any negative entris. Few sites require this, if any!
We're happy to dive deeper than 30m, when divers are certified to do so and know what to expect. Such dives are normally explicitly briefed in this way. Now, what we do see a lot is divers forgetting their own training limits and deciding to go deeper than they are allowed to in the hope of mola molas or the such. As a reminder, it is clearly each diver's responsibility to not go beyond their max depth in the PADI system of diver education!

 

[howswedeofme]

That's correct: it's very seldom that do any negative entris. Few sites require this, if any!
We're happy to dive deeper than 30m, when divers are certified to do so and know what to expect. Such dives are normally explicitly briefed in this way. Now, what we do see a lot is divers forgetting their own training limits and deciding to go deeper than they are allowed to in the hope of mola molas or the such. As a reminder, it is clearly each diver's responsibility to not go beyond their max depth in the PADI system of diver education!

It isn't uncommon in the US to go beyond 30m with AOW and is common practice in many spots in the Caribbean to go to even 40m with just an OW cert if you're with an instructor. In Florida in particular (where the OP had the bad experience at 33m), you typically don't have a guide in the water so if something goes wrong or is stressful, you're on your own. It sounds like the OP may be new to Bali diving and more used to the US/Caribbean depths. I liked that the max depth was 30m in Indonesia. No need to go deep just for the sake of going deep. And you don't go through your air as fast.

ystrout - we dove with Geko Dive while we were visiting in May. It sounds like we are similar in the number and types of dives we like (I'm a little over 100 dives and don't care about deep dives or heavy current dives but will do them periodically because my husband likes them). Geko has very good guides in the water. Even with a stressful dive because of not being used to the rental gear buoyancy (my personal gear had a malfunction, womp womp), the guide was right there in a matter of seconds and helped me through it. Very nice shop and very nice rental equipment. I highly recommend them if you decide to dive out of PB. I don't believe we got down to 30m on any of our dives with Geko and if a few people did, I hung out a little higher because I tend to dive a little shallower, as well. On one of the Gili sites we were briefed about possibly going into a large and what looked to be relatively open cave that I think was around 25m if there were sleeping baby sharks down there, but the sharks were out and about so we wound up not going in.

 

[billt4sf]

We have also dived with Geko and had excellent help in the water. To my experience Amed/Tulmben is much calmer than the Padang Bai side (although there def. ARE calm dives in Padang Bai).

When I was a new diver, I signed up for the Spiegel Grove. The dive op told me they would send a DM with us and "we'd be fine". Then I talked to other divers on SB and changed my mind in a hurry! It's criminal what some of these diveops do.

That said, in general Indo diving has lots of currents, though you can find places and dives without many currents, and we have had good guidance about dives sites in Indo -- better than our experiences in the US I'd say.

- Bill

 

[Tippytoes12]

We have stayed and dived three times in Tulamben. By far the best guides are in Liberty Dive Resort. You get a private guide and decide your own schedule. It’s really easy diving there and the resort is incredibly beautiful. We have also dived Padang Bai with Absolute Scuba who are wonderful and have very nice comfy clean accommodation. From there you can get across to Manta Point fairly quickly, plus some very interesting local sites !