Background: My boyfriend (BF) and I are budget-backpacking-scuba diving SEA for the next ~8 months. Our goal is to see as much healthy hard coral in the Coral Triangle as possible. We brought all our own gear (excluding weights & tanks of course), including full 3mm wetsuits, which we carry in 75L backpacks. The prices listed are for two people, unless otherwise noted. Apologies if the report is too long! This one is a bit late.
Day 0: As we heavily suspected ear infections, we left ASDC/Anilao in the morning via trike (50P) to Anilao Port and hopped onto a jeepney heading to Bauan (80P) to go to an ENT that ASDC recommended. It was quite easy finding the ENT and we only had to wait about an hour for a walk-in appointment. As a side note, they did require that we wear face masks to enter the practice. BF and I both had ear infections and got prescribed ear drops (BF also got antibiotic pills). The good news was that the doctor cleared us to keep diving, as the infection was only in the outer ear! After the appointment we flagged down a jeepney and asked it to take us to Batangas Port (50P).
I wanted to hop onto the RORO to save money but admittedly we were hustled onto a Montenegro Lines fast craft vessel (1224P). We arrived at the port around 14:10 and they wanted us to board the 14:15 boat to PG so we basically threw the port fee (60P) at the window before speeding through the “security” line. The boat didn’t even end up leaving until 14:30-14:45 lol. At Balatero Port we took a trike to Sabang (250P) and checked into Capt’n Gregg’s.
The accommodation: Capt’n Gregg’s was super nice! It was a little pricy but we booked online ahead of time several months ago, so it doesn’t count for the trip budget. The room had excellent aircon and also a fan so we were consistently cool. The furniture in the room was a bed, shelves with a TV on top, and a wardrobe where you could hang some items. There was an attached bathroom that was clean (!). No problems with the bathroom. Something a little peculiar was that the housekeeper wouldn’t clean our rooms unless specifically asked, so we often had to request for our towels to be changed or trash to be taken out. I think this was only a problem for us, as the first day she had knocked on the door and asked if we wanted the room cleaned, but we were still in the room and busy and had said no, so we suspect this was applied towards the entire stay.
The dive operation: The call time every day was 8:30 for the first dive at 9:00. The surface intervals here in PG were quite interesting, since this was the first time I experienced something like this. After every dive, we would come back to the shop for the SI. You were free to do whatever and expected back 30 mins before the next dive. This is probably because all of the dive sites are so close (the farthest site in PG being 10 mins away). A normal day consisted of 3 dives (9:00, 11:00, 13:30), with a night dive (17:30) added if enough people were interested.
Our tanks were always filled to 3000 PSI. The guides (Kexia, Ruby, Mark) were always good with briefing the site beforehand, even drawing out the site on a whiteboard. It felt very professionally run. Between dives, we would leave our gear on the boat during the SI, and the staff would change out the tanks on the boat for us. The guides were attentive during dives, checking on every guest for air often. Dive times were 45-50 mins depending on air consumption but we hit 50-60 mins almost every dive. The guides were also very good with taking requests for dive sites and what different people wanted to do. Capt’n Gregg’s has two speedboats, but we only used one unless there were a lot of people.
Honestly the prices at Capt’n Gregg’s were just unbeatable for us. Each dive was 1200P (own gear) and if you dove 10 dives you’d get 10% off and if you dove 20 dives you’d get 25% off. We were planning on doing 21 dives (3 a day x 7 days) so this was a great deal for us.
Day 1: BF’s ear was hurting a lot, so we decided to skip diving today. This was unfortunate for our diving goals but we decided to add on two night dives at some point to get us to the 20 dives.
We read online that there were some really nice coral fields within snorkelable distance so that became the plan for the day. We did two snorkeling sessions, roughly 2 hours each. For the first session we checked out the La Lagunas and the inside of Sabang Bay. There is a very beautiful, high-coverage, highly diverse Montipora colony in Big La Laguna (BLL) between Campbell’s Beach Club and Scandi Divers. In addition, on the other side of BLL in front of Diving Park ~50m out there is a deeper reef with fields of various branching corals and big healthy Porites corals. This continues around the headland but closer (~20m out) until you reach Red Sun Resort at the start of Small La Laguna (SLL). SLL only has some small, isolated colonies of coral.
From the pier at Ell Galleon/Asia Divers separating SLL from Sabang Bay all the way to in front of Angelyn’s Resort, there are fields of short staghorn coral between 20-50m off the shoreline/concrete wall. The fields are consistent and work their way deeper until large (but dead) table corals and Porites appear. These fields become sparse around the pier.
We took a break for a few hours.
For the second session, we walked all the way to the end of Sabang Bay on the east side and got into the water there before swimming around the headland towards Monkey Beach. The goal was to get all the way to Dungon Beach but we only made it halfway between Monkey and Dungon before turning around. The corals here (depth of ~5m, 10-20m from shore) were just spectacular. Very diverse and healthy. Can’t say anything else about them really.
Day 2: Our first dive day! There were 5 divers today (including me and BF). The two of us did relatively shallower sites with one of the guides while the other three (two Malaysian divers and a Lithuanian diver) were with a different guide, as the guides wanted to gauge our skill levels.
One note is for the first dive the other group did Canyons and the down currents were so bad that one of them went into deco! We figured he was done diving for the day but were quite surprised when he showed up again for the rest of the day’s dives. When asked, he said that his buddy and him were “around the same depths always” and that her computer didn’t push her into deco, therefore he would just dive the rest of the day based off her computer since his had shut him out for the rest of the day. Astounding logic.
Dive 1: West Escarceo
Max depth 71 ft, 58 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 2: Ernie’s Cave
Max depth 67 ft, 54 mins, min water temp 84F.
Dive 3: Sabang Wreck
Max depth 71 ft, 51 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 4: Fantasea Reef
Max depth 49 ft, 63 mins, min water temp 85F.
Night dive.
Day 3: Same group as before but with the addition of an AOW student doing his checkout dives.
Dive 1: La Laguna Point
Max depth 93 ft, 48 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 2: Sabang Point
Max depth 72 ft, 52 mins, min water temp 81F.
Dive 3: La Laguna Point
Max depth 44 ft, 62 mins, min water temp 82F.
Day 4: A group of four Chinese divers joined us. We ended up using two boats, with their group on one and our group (same as Day 3) on the other. Even though both groups usually dove the same sites, we didn’t see them underwater.
Dive 1: Sinandigan Wall
Max depth 91 ft, 51 mins, min water temp 84F.
I was quite excited as one of the Malaysian divers said she spotted a thresher shark off in the distance when she did this site a few days before. Unfortunately, none was found.
Dive 2: Monkey Beach
Max depth 74 ft, 47 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 3: Fantasea Reef
Max depth 55 ft, 53 mins, min water temp 82F.
Dive 4: Sabang Wreck
Max depth 67 ft, 54 mins, min water temp 83F.
Night dive. This dive was fine until we reached around 40 mins, then we spent almost 15 mins blown around in the pitch black with ripping currents, trying to avoid getting slammed into things. At the end everyone managed to grab onto a mooring line to try and stick together.
Day 5: Same diving groups as Day 4.
Dive 1: Alma Jane
Max depth 96 ft, 41 mins, min water temp 80F.
This was the first time I noticed the other dive group underwater, and they were truly awful. Buoyancy all over the place and one even picked up a live starfish and seemed determined to take it with her from the site until I pointed it out to the DM leading our group and she swam over to chastise the diver underwater.
Dive 2: West Escarceo
Max depth 85 ft, 55 mins, min water temp 83F.
Dive 3: Dungon Wall
Max depth 74ft, 53 mins, min water temp 83F.
Day 6: The AOW student finished his course and him as well as one of the Malaysian divers left.
Dive 1: Canyons
Max depth 90 ft, 31 mins, min water temp 82F.
The couple (Malaysian + Lithuanian) that had the deco incident the first day did not want to do Canyons again and did West Escarceo with a different guide. We had a good time though and didn’t experience currents that were too difficult.
Dive 2: La Laguna Point
Max depth 70 ft, 53 mins, min water temp 83F.
Dive 3: Sabang Point
Max depth 57 ft, 54 mins, min water temp 83F.
Day 7: Same group as Day 6.
Dive 1: Boulders
Max depth 88 ft, 55 mins, min water temp 83F.
Truly a magical dive: we saw a flamboyant cuttlefish (and it did its full range of coloration for us!).
Dive 2: Giant Clams
Max depth 44 ft, 60 mins, min water temp 83F.
The guides forgot where the clams were, so we didn’t see them until about 45 mins into the dive.
Dive 3: Sabang Bay
Max depth 57 ft, 59 mins, min water temp 81F.
Day 0: As we heavily suspected ear infections, we left ASDC/Anilao in the morning via trike (50P) to Anilao Port and hopped onto a jeepney heading to Bauan (80P) to go to an ENT that ASDC recommended. It was quite easy finding the ENT and we only had to wait about an hour for a walk-in appointment. As a side note, they did require that we wear face masks to enter the practice. BF and I both had ear infections and got prescribed ear drops (BF also got antibiotic pills). The good news was that the doctor cleared us to keep diving, as the infection was only in the outer ear! After the appointment we flagged down a jeepney and asked it to take us to Batangas Port (50P).
I wanted to hop onto the RORO to save money but admittedly we were hustled onto a Montenegro Lines fast craft vessel (1224P). We arrived at the port around 14:10 and they wanted us to board the 14:15 boat to PG so we basically threw the port fee (60P) at the window before speeding through the “security” line. The boat didn’t even end up leaving until 14:30-14:45 lol. At Balatero Port we took a trike to Sabang (250P) and checked into Capt’n Gregg’s.
The accommodation: Capt’n Gregg’s was super nice! It was a little pricy but we booked online ahead of time several months ago, so it doesn’t count for the trip budget. The room had excellent aircon and also a fan so we were consistently cool. The furniture in the room was a bed, shelves with a TV on top, and a wardrobe where you could hang some items. There was an attached bathroom that was clean (!). No problems with the bathroom. Something a little peculiar was that the housekeeper wouldn’t clean our rooms unless specifically asked, so we often had to request for our towels to be changed or trash to be taken out. I think this was only a problem for us, as the first day she had knocked on the door and asked if we wanted the room cleaned, but we were still in the room and busy and had said no, so we suspect this was applied towards the entire stay.
The dive operation: The call time every day was 8:30 for the first dive at 9:00. The surface intervals here in PG were quite interesting, since this was the first time I experienced something like this. After every dive, we would come back to the shop for the SI. You were free to do whatever and expected back 30 mins before the next dive. This is probably because all of the dive sites are so close (the farthest site in PG being 10 mins away). A normal day consisted of 3 dives (9:00, 11:00, 13:30), with a night dive (17:30) added if enough people were interested.
Our tanks were always filled to 3000 PSI. The guides (Kexia, Ruby, Mark) were always good with briefing the site beforehand, even drawing out the site on a whiteboard. It felt very professionally run. Between dives, we would leave our gear on the boat during the SI, and the staff would change out the tanks on the boat for us. The guides were attentive during dives, checking on every guest for air often. Dive times were 45-50 mins depending on air consumption but we hit 50-60 mins almost every dive. The guides were also very good with taking requests for dive sites and what different people wanted to do. Capt’n Gregg’s has two speedboats, but we only used one unless there were a lot of people.
Honestly the prices at Capt’n Gregg’s were just unbeatable for us. Each dive was 1200P (own gear) and if you dove 10 dives you’d get 10% off and if you dove 20 dives you’d get 25% off. We were planning on doing 21 dives (3 a day x 7 days) so this was a great deal for us.
Day 1: BF’s ear was hurting a lot, so we decided to skip diving today. This was unfortunate for our diving goals but we decided to add on two night dives at some point to get us to the 20 dives.
We read online that there were some really nice coral fields within snorkelable distance so that became the plan for the day. We did two snorkeling sessions, roughly 2 hours each. For the first session we checked out the La Lagunas and the inside of Sabang Bay. There is a very beautiful, high-coverage, highly diverse Montipora colony in Big La Laguna (BLL) between Campbell’s Beach Club and Scandi Divers. In addition, on the other side of BLL in front of Diving Park ~50m out there is a deeper reef with fields of various branching corals and big healthy Porites corals. This continues around the headland but closer (~20m out) until you reach Red Sun Resort at the start of Small La Laguna (SLL). SLL only has some small, isolated colonies of coral.
From the pier at Ell Galleon/Asia Divers separating SLL from Sabang Bay all the way to in front of Angelyn’s Resort, there are fields of short staghorn coral between 20-50m off the shoreline/concrete wall. The fields are consistent and work their way deeper until large (but dead) table corals and Porites appear. These fields become sparse around the pier.
We took a break for a few hours.
For the second session, we walked all the way to the end of Sabang Bay on the east side and got into the water there before swimming around the headland towards Monkey Beach. The goal was to get all the way to Dungon Beach but we only made it halfway between Monkey and Dungon before turning around. The corals here (depth of ~5m, 10-20m from shore) were just spectacular. Very diverse and healthy. Can’t say anything else about them really.
Day 2: Our first dive day! There were 5 divers today (including me and BF). The two of us did relatively shallower sites with one of the guides while the other three (two Malaysian divers and a Lithuanian diver) were with a different guide, as the guides wanted to gauge our skill levels.
One note is for the first dive the other group did Canyons and the down currents were so bad that one of them went into deco! We figured he was done diving for the day but were quite surprised when he showed up again for the rest of the day’s dives. When asked, he said that his buddy and him were “around the same depths always” and that her computer didn’t push her into deco, therefore he would just dive the rest of the day based off her computer since his had shut him out for the rest of the day. Astounding logic.
Dive 1: West Escarceo
Max depth 71 ft, 58 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 2: Ernie’s Cave
Max depth 67 ft, 54 mins, min water temp 84F.
Dive 3: Sabang Wreck
Max depth 71 ft, 51 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 4: Fantasea Reef
Max depth 49 ft, 63 mins, min water temp 85F.
Night dive.
Day 3: Same group as before but with the addition of an AOW student doing his checkout dives.
Dive 1: La Laguna Point
Max depth 93 ft, 48 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 2: Sabang Point
Max depth 72 ft, 52 mins, min water temp 81F.
Dive 3: La Laguna Point
Max depth 44 ft, 62 mins, min water temp 82F.
Day 4: A group of four Chinese divers joined us. We ended up using two boats, with their group on one and our group (same as Day 3) on the other. Even though both groups usually dove the same sites, we didn’t see them underwater.
Dive 1: Sinandigan Wall
Max depth 91 ft, 51 mins, min water temp 84F.
I was quite excited as one of the Malaysian divers said she spotted a thresher shark off in the distance when she did this site a few days before. Unfortunately, none was found.
Dive 2: Monkey Beach
Max depth 74 ft, 47 mins, min water temp 85F.
Dive 3: Fantasea Reef
Max depth 55 ft, 53 mins, min water temp 82F.
Dive 4: Sabang Wreck
Max depth 67 ft, 54 mins, min water temp 83F.
Night dive. This dive was fine until we reached around 40 mins, then we spent almost 15 mins blown around in the pitch black with ripping currents, trying to avoid getting slammed into things. At the end everyone managed to grab onto a mooring line to try and stick together.
Day 5: Same diving groups as Day 4.
Dive 1: Alma Jane
Max depth 96 ft, 41 mins, min water temp 80F.
This was the first time I noticed the other dive group underwater, and they were truly awful. Buoyancy all over the place and one even picked up a live starfish and seemed determined to take it with her from the site until I pointed it out to the DM leading our group and she swam over to chastise the diver underwater.
Dive 2: West Escarceo
Max depth 85 ft, 55 mins, min water temp 83F.
Dive 3: Dungon Wall
Max depth 74ft, 53 mins, min water temp 83F.
Day 6: The AOW student finished his course and him as well as one of the Malaysian divers left.
Dive 1: Canyons
Max depth 90 ft, 31 mins, min water temp 82F.
The couple (Malaysian + Lithuanian) that had the deco incident the first day did not want to do Canyons again and did West Escarceo with a different guide. We had a good time though and didn’t experience currents that were too difficult.
Dive 2: La Laguna Point
Max depth 70 ft, 53 mins, min water temp 83F.
Dive 3: Sabang Point
Max depth 57 ft, 54 mins, min water temp 83F.
Day 7: Same group as Day 6.
Dive 1: Boulders
Max depth 88 ft, 55 mins, min water temp 83F.
Truly a magical dive: we saw a flamboyant cuttlefish (and it did its full range of coloration for us!).
Dive 2: Giant Clams
Max depth 44 ft, 60 mins, min water temp 83F.
The guides forgot where the clams were, so we didn’t see them until about 45 mins into the dive.
Dive 3: Sabang Bay
Max depth 57 ft, 59 mins, min water temp 81F.
