reubencahn
Contributor
I've just returned from 5 days at Kungkungan Bay Resort in the Lembeh Strait and 10 days on Kararu traveling from Bali to Komodo National Park and thought I would post a brief report before I forgot every important detail.
The Resort: After a few days in Bali to recover from jetlag, my wife, son and I flew Garuda Airlines to Manado. We were picked up at the airport by Kungkungan Bay Resort ("KBR") employees who took charge of us and our luggage for the 90 minute trip to the resort. We arrived in early afternoon and spent 30 minutes filling out the always unnecessarily lengthy paperwork. Our luggage was taken to our room.
We had chosen the traditional house, KBR's cheapest accommodations. This was a poor choice. While the houses are roomy, they are KBR's oldest accommodations and are showing their age. They also lack air conditioning. While KBR has a constant breeze and is not uncomfortably hot, it was necessary to keep all windows open in order to be comfortable and to sleep. Because of the layout of the room and the resort, this left us with zero privacy. In addition, by the end of 5 days, I was covered with numerous welts from some sort of bug bites. (They did not appear to be mosquito bites, and neither my son nor my wife suffered the same fate.) If I returned I would either pick one of the newer cottages with A/C or I would stay at Lembeh Resort across the strait.
Food at KBR was adequate but mediocre. I would neither rave nor complain about it. Breakfast and lunch were buffets. Dinner was a la carte. Lunch was probably the best meal with wonderful hot sandwiches. Service at dinner was slow but adequate. (I did get a very bad bout of stomach illness while at KBR. It is possible that the cooking was to blame as I was very careful not to use any water other than bottled.)
The diving: At 4:00 the day of our arrival, we met with Steve, the English born head of the dive operations who explained how things work. Our dive gear would be picked up at our room the next morning and taken to our assigned boat. As we were to be at KBR for only 4 days diving, we were assigned to one of the smaller boats with another diver there for the same amount of time, and Steve had picked out sites he felt would give us a chance to see the best of Lembeh. Our guide for most of the week was Frankie. Each day there were three dives at 8:00, 11:00 and 3:00. A night dive was available for $30 extra. You could also substitute either a shore dive on the house reef or a twilight mandarinfish dive for one of the day dives. A night shore dive was $20 extra. Nitrox was $10 per bottle. All boat rides were less than 10 minutes. Gear stayed on the boat the entire time with the exceptions of wetsuits and cameras. Wetsuits were rinsed at the end of the dock in either the rinse tank or the dockside hot showers. Cameras were transported individually in plastic laundry baskets from the camera rinse tank to the boat.
The diving at Lembeh is muck diving over fine silty black sand. Visibility is relatively poor. As such, this diving is not for everyone, but if this is what you are looking for, Lembeh is fantastic. Every dive was a treasure hunt. Aside from the usual, and the unusual, nudibranchs, during four days, I saw Ambon scorpionfish, stargazers, pygmy cuttlefish, juvenile bangkai (sp?) cardinalfish, cockatoo flounder, cockatoo waspfish, leaf fish, black ribbon eels, ghost pipefish, robust ghost pipefish, mandarinfish, pygmy seahorse, squat lobsters, zebra crabs, coleman shrimp, etc. The only things I would have liked to have seen and didn't were blue ring octopus, flamboyant cuddlefish, mimic octopus and wonderpuss. Had I specifically asked to see these creatures, I have no doubt the guides would have endeavored to and probably succeeded in finding them. The guides are KBR are generally wonderful with fantastic eyes for spotting well camouflaged creatures. They are also incredibly warm and friendly.
In general KBR was a very good experience with excellent critter diving and warm and friendly people at very reasonable prices. While I am not particularly enamored of muck diving and am only a middling photographer, I enjoyed to trip and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this type of diving. I should say that my wife and son while not unhappy would probably have preferred to spend the time diving the walls at Bunaken.
I'll try to add pictures later.
The Resort: After a few days in Bali to recover from jetlag, my wife, son and I flew Garuda Airlines to Manado. We were picked up at the airport by Kungkungan Bay Resort ("KBR") employees who took charge of us and our luggage for the 90 minute trip to the resort. We arrived in early afternoon and spent 30 minutes filling out the always unnecessarily lengthy paperwork. Our luggage was taken to our room.
We had chosen the traditional house, KBR's cheapest accommodations. This was a poor choice. While the houses are roomy, they are KBR's oldest accommodations and are showing their age. They also lack air conditioning. While KBR has a constant breeze and is not uncomfortably hot, it was necessary to keep all windows open in order to be comfortable and to sleep. Because of the layout of the room and the resort, this left us with zero privacy. In addition, by the end of 5 days, I was covered with numerous welts from some sort of bug bites. (They did not appear to be mosquito bites, and neither my son nor my wife suffered the same fate.) If I returned I would either pick one of the newer cottages with A/C or I would stay at Lembeh Resort across the strait.
Food at KBR was adequate but mediocre. I would neither rave nor complain about it. Breakfast and lunch were buffets. Dinner was a la carte. Lunch was probably the best meal with wonderful hot sandwiches. Service at dinner was slow but adequate. (I did get a very bad bout of stomach illness while at KBR. It is possible that the cooking was to blame as I was very careful not to use any water other than bottled.)
The diving: At 4:00 the day of our arrival, we met with Steve, the English born head of the dive operations who explained how things work. Our dive gear would be picked up at our room the next morning and taken to our assigned boat. As we were to be at KBR for only 4 days diving, we were assigned to one of the smaller boats with another diver there for the same amount of time, and Steve had picked out sites he felt would give us a chance to see the best of Lembeh. Our guide for most of the week was Frankie. Each day there were three dives at 8:00, 11:00 and 3:00. A night dive was available for $30 extra. You could also substitute either a shore dive on the house reef or a twilight mandarinfish dive for one of the day dives. A night shore dive was $20 extra. Nitrox was $10 per bottle. All boat rides were less than 10 minutes. Gear stayed on the boat the entire time with the exceptions of wetsuits and cameras. Wetsuits were rinsed at the end of the dock in either the rinse tank or the dockside hot showers. Cameras were transported individually in plastic laundry baskets from the camera rinse tank to the boat.
The diving at Lembeh is muck diving over fine silty black sand. Visibility is relatively poor. As such, this diving is not for everyone, but if this is what you are looking for, Lembeh is fantastic. Every dive was a treasure hunt. Aside from the usual, and the unusual, nudibranchs, during four days, I saw Ambon scorpionfish, stargazers, pygmy cuttlefish, juvenile bangkai (sp?) cardinalfish, cockatoo flounder, cockatoo waspfish, leaf fish, black ribbon eels, ghost pipefish, robust ghost pipefish, mandarinfish, pygmy seahorse, squat lobsters, zebra crabs, coleman shrimp, etc. The only things I would have liked to have seen and didn't were blue ring octopus, flamboyant cuddlefish, mimic octopus and wonderpuss. Had I specifically asked to see these creatures, I have no doubt the guides would have endeavored to and probably succeeded in finding them. The guides are KBR are generally wonderful with fantastic eyes for spotting well camouflaged creatures. They are also incredibly warm and friendly.
In general KBR was a very good experience with excellent critter diving and warm and friendly people at very reasonable prices. While I am not particularly enamored of muck diving and am only a middling photographer, I enjoyed to trip and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this type of diving. I should say that my wife and son while not unhappy would probably have preferred to spend the time diving the walls at Bunaken.
I'll try to add pictures later.
