Febraury in Indonesia

[23Greg23]

I am newly registered to ScubaBoard, but I have been reading it for nearly a year. It was my chief source of dive info when my wife and I were planning our trip to the Philippines last February.

We are new to diving (15 logged dives each) and 10 of those dives were in the Phils - Apo Island and Balicasag primarily, the others were around Belize.

We are hooked!

Now we are planning to spend a month in Indonesia traveling and diving. We are on a budget and are not going to Indonesia just to dive, but our travels are going to center around where we dive. We would like to do about 20 dives. I think liveaboards are out of our budget.

I have looked at numerous posts here and other websites, but I am still not sure about where we should be going.

In our limited experience colorful reefs and oddball creatures seem to be our favorite, but I can't say we done any real diving with big critters (dove around spotted eagle rays and reef sharks in Belize). Honestly, though, just about everything is new and exciting for us.

I have read that Bali has great diving for beginners, but it is hard to travel all the way to Indonesia and miss out on the amazing diving in Komodo, Lembeh, etc. I have already conceded that Raj Ampat is out of our price range and skill level.

I did read that Komodo/Rinca can be done from Labuanbajo instead of a liveaboard, but are the currents beyond our skill level?

Is Lembeh out of our league? Togean? Sangalaki?

I know these questions are somewhat subjective, but it would be good to get a sample of suggestions from divers who know the region and have done more diving than I. We are open to ALL suggestions, not just the places I mentioned above.

Specifically:
Where are the best sites to dive in late January to late February?
Where are the best sites to dive for our level of experience?
Where are the best sites to dive on our budget (about $1,200 for me and my wife to do as many dives as possible, we will be renting all of our gear)?

Thanks for any and all advice/info.

Greg

 

[hallboy]

Indonesia is not the place to go in february. That would be the perfect choice to get the worst weather conditions of the year. For exemple go to the reefseekers site ( better dive op in Flores/Komodo) and see what they say about february. If you have been already to the philipines you should go to thailand ( West coast ) and share your trip between chiang mai, Bangkok and around bangkok; then go down south. Stop in khaolak make a few dives take acruise to similans ( sea

 

[hallboy]

OOOps . Take a cruise with sea dragon ( 4 days 14 dives with gear around 350 $ each of you if you pay cash ) skip phuket go to kophiphi and burn your last bucks there before geting back. Tahiland is easy dives. and they need people to come after the Tsunami. And this year will not be overcrowed.

 

[ssra30]

I am not sure about diving in Indonesia, weatherwise in February.
Generally, Komodo would be the place that you need to be a bit more careful due to some very strong and tricky current. That would be the place I would avoid as a beginner. Lembeh/Bunaken should be ok in February and diving is very easy over there with little to no current. However do not expect beautiful reef/coral or great viz in Lembeh. It is all about muck diving and little critter. Bunaken will give you some excellent macros and nice wall diving.
Sangalaki is ok for beginner as well, except may be Big Fish Country at Maratua where the current could be a bit strong.

 

[Indah]

Hello ssra 30. You are not that good informed about Lembeh I think. Inside of the Strait you can find places such as Makawide, Magic Coral, Pulau Putus and California Dream, all sites with very nice corals. Even the famous critter site Nudi Falls has beautiful soft corals at 20 meters. Batu Kapal is definitely not for beginners but can compete with Cape Kri in Raja Empat. But more important to know is that February is an excellent time to dive the ocean side of Lembeh Island. Beautiful reefs and viz up to 30 meters. No strong currents here.
Rob, Divers Lodge Lembeh

 

[ssra30]

I dove Angel Window and California Dream before and I did dive Nudifall down into the chanel around 25-30m and saw soft coral around Critter Hunt, Nudi Retreat etc. Overall, my impression, as far as coral is concern is that it is so-so. Certainly not comparable to Komodo, parts of Thailand or Sangalaki. If one want to see pristine coral reef, I don't think Lembeh would be on top of my list. Well, that's my impression anyhow from about 60 odd dives I had in Lembeh.

 

[scubashooter]

Greg, I am not a fan of diving Komodo from LabuhanBajo. It's a 1.5-2 hr ride to the sites and they try to dive the marquee sites(eg tatawa Kechil, Batu Bolong), usually at the wrong time of the day for tides because they are on a schedule. Those sites are high current sites.
It also depends on what you want to see and how much you want to spend on diving. Indonesia is more expensive for diving than the philippines and is probably more so now with the higher oil prices. Depending on what kind of diving you like, you can plan accordingly. There is budget diving in Manado (which in my mind is on par with Apo Island) and the northern sulawesi area. The Togian islands are hard to get to but also quite fun and the diving is decent. DO NOT GO THROUGH CENTRAL SULAWESI.
I know of a few backpacker style dive shops in flores around Maumere as well as Alor. The best sites tend to be accessible by liveaboard but not always the case, the glaring example is Lembeh Straits and Bali.
We'd be able to help you more if you tell us what kind of diving you like. I realize at 15 dives most anything is new but muck diving is out of this world in Indonesia and I've had guys with 1000 dives looking at me like I'm weird for even looking at a worm that's 0.5" long.

 

[ssra30]

Opps, forgot to mention, as scubashooter mentioned, Komodo is best via liveaboard. For land base, Bali/Talumben, Bunaken/Lembeh would be ideal. I did not mean to discourage you from going to Lembeh, in fact, I definitely am going to Lembeh again as it has one of the best, if not the best muck diving/macro stuffs in the world. However, if you are not into macro stuff and prefer big palegics, big prestine coral reef, Lembeh may not be ideal.

 

[23Greg23]

As scubashooter said, at 15 dives we are not sure what we are into yet, the whole Martian world of tropical diving is wonderful to us. I am hesitant about muck diving only because we are so enamoured with brilliant coral, though I must say the idea of seeing loads of new creatures, no matter how small, is very enticing.

I think Hallboy's post makes sense, especially in light of the need for tourists in western Thailand, but we have been to Thailand and are very interested in seeing Indonesia (above and below). We also have friends who will be in Bali for 4 of the days we plan to go. I also realize that spending a month in Thailand five years ago does not mean we have seen everything there is to see (particularly since we didn't dive!), but we were just looking to go somewhere new.

That said, we are not locked in to Indonesia. SE Asia is our favorite travel destination and we have been to a number of countries there. It's just that since we got into diving we are looking to make that a large part of our travels now. February is the month we get off, so...

How's the diving in Burma?

 

[ssra30]

Burma diving is excellent. However it is again done by liveaboard and because of fuel price, I expect the cost to be quite a bit higher since all the dive sites are far from each other. In comparison to the Similans liveaboard in Thailand, Burma liveaboard probably uses about 5 times more fuel.
Visibility is generally not as good as the Similans in Thailand except for Burma Bank. Coral there is quite nice. Sharks used to be found there regularly but the last 5 years, the number of sharks went down significantly. There are some areas that are damaged by dynamite fishing.
I went to Burma in February in the last 2 years, saw a whale shark on one trip and mantas on the other trip. Burma also has some nice macro stuffs. The best thing about Burma however is the number of liveaboards there. Even at peak season, there is usually no more than 1 or 2 boats at each site unlike the Similans/Richeliue in Thailand. I am not sure what kind of crowds Phuket/Similan will have this year but probably not as crowded as in the previous years.