Scuba Susie
Guest
Our group of 6 stayed at the Holiday Inn on Phi Phi. The resort was great and had a really nice pool too. The diving was not as great as I had anticipated secondary to some weird mirky stuff in the water. I guess it was effecting all of southeast Asia during March. So, needless to say, visibility was 15-30 feet at times. It was also during the new or 'black" moon so the tides were really large as were some of the currents. Our group was a really experienced dive group so the conditions were only disappointing and not really that challenging. The big disappointment lay with the resorts dive operations. H20 Sportz was kind of a loosely run ship. They really didn't give us a run down of when to be where or where to store our gear or anything and were a little miffed when we asked these basic questions. We were there while there was a group of 9 Italians so we had them operating at max capacity with 2 boats (one of which they had to get from Phuket with half fills on the tanks and a really bad dive boat). We had a DM the first 3 days who had only been a DM for 7 months and only 3 months at this resort. All of that would have been OK, I guess had he spoken English. With no real dive briefing before each dive, we had no idea if it was a drift dive, if there were currents or what. It got pretty frustrating and I actually ended up leading (and ending a dive which he tried to have us kick into the current 3/4 of the way thru the dive) one dive. We would surface and there was no boat to be found....for like 20 mins! If our group had been less experienced they would have freaked. I spoke to the head Instructor at the dive shop and he switched us up and had us diving with himself or another Instructor who spoke English, which helped a lot. Still, we would surface and the boat was no where to be found at times. While we know we are responsible for our own set-up and such, there were many times we would be about to do our giant strides off the back of the boat and one of us would holler at our buddy that their tank strap was undone or that the inflator hose was not hooked up to our BC's. The whole operation was a bit too layed back for the amount of money we were paying. I would give the whole operation a C- for overall performance. Still the guys were nice enough and bought us rounds of beer on our last night. The soft corals were very colorful and the critters were nce too. I am sure there was a very whale sharks there we just couldn't see 'em because of the poor viz! The ususal cast of charaters: lion fish, nudi's of every color,eels, spotted sweet lips, emperor angels, huge groupers, flat worms, sea snakes, a cool seahorse, mating cuttlefish (very awesome), leopard shark, black tips, nurse and a very neato free floating midwater octopus! Huge too!
If the viz had been better we probably would have enjoyed it more. But the fact that we were in warm water, diving and not working, is always a good day!
Thanks to all of you for your reports over the past year! They really help!
Now can you tell me more about diving at Wakatobi?????
Susie
If the viz had been better we probably would have enjoyed it more. But the fact that we were in warm water, diving and not working, is always a good day!
Thanks to all of you for your reports over the past year! They really help!
Now can you tell me more about diving at Wakatobi?????
Susie
