My husband and I just returned from our honeymoon in Bali and we wanted to give you guys a report to help anyone planning a trip. Just to give you a little background: we are both 28 and have been diving for about 2 years with about 25 dives each before this trip. About half in cold water Monterey and half on a live aboard on the GBR.
We flew from SFO to Denpasar with a stop in Taipei. Our tickets were $1100 each, but we ended up having to pay an extra $100 each to fix a booking bungle. Note to all travelers: If a flight leaves at 1:00am on Monday, you have to be at the airport on Sunday night, not Monday night. And if that Sunday night happens to be your wedding night, you owe China Airlines $200 to change your tickets.
Also, China Airlines is lame. The food was bad and poorly timed (think pickled egg and shrimp for breakfast after having a flight attendant launch your chair up despite the fact that you were clearly asleep covered in a blanket with your tray up and not at all interested in pickled egg and shrimp.
After reading the boards we wanted to go to Menjangen Island and stay at the Mimpi resort which seemed like one of the few options in the area. We booked the first part of our trip with Aquamarine Diving which is based in Seminyak (about 20 min from the airport and on the way to Menjangen.) Based on the web listed prices, booking through Aquamarine saved us a couple hundred dollars over the Menjangen Mimpi diving + accommodation packages. We built a custom itinerary with Aquamarine that cost us about $1200 for four nights at Mimpi, 5 dives, all gear, transport to and from Menjangen and breakfast included (breakfast is included everywhere in Bali though so its not really a perk) and we had to put down about $300 in advance.
We arrived in Denpasar around 2pm in the afternoon. Aquamarine provided transport from the airport to Menjangen and we arrived around 6pm after also stopping for dinner. All the drivers in Bali seem to have their preferred stops for meals and sightseeing (not sure if they get kickbacks or not.) Aquamarine owns the gear and the shop and has their own guides and then hires out the drivers.
We arrived in Mimpi to our welcome fruit juices and an outdoor reception desk. We had booked a Courtyard Villa room which is one step up from the base Mimpi room. The web site doesn't do it justice. You're in a tropical garden, you essentially have your own compound with a private natural hot spring fed hot tub, an outdoor covered lounging area with pillows and tea. An amazing air conditioned bedroom with nice size sheets, and an outdoor covered bathroom and shower which actually came in really handy for all our scuba gear. The room looked like you had walked into a resort featured in a high end magazine. It was fantastic. They don't mention it on the web, but the Courtyard Villa room has another queen size bed upstairs in a loft that overlooks the rest of the suite.
We spent the next day just hanging out by the pool and getting massages and just generally relaxing from the long flight and crazy hectic wedding stuff. The two big cool water infinity pools seemed to all be fed by the hot springs and don't have much chlorine, There's also three infinity hot tubs with different temperatures close to the beach.
The next day we met up with the Aquamarine guide Yan(sp?) at the front desk and he and the driver took us on a 1 minute drive to the public port right next to Mimpi. But if you dive with Mimpi you just leave from the resort (in the same boats as the public port). All the gear was loaded onto the boat for us (I don't think we even saw the wetsuits and BCDs until we got on the boat which was a little disconcerting considering that one of us (Rachel) is 5'1", 100lbs and nothing ever fits her the first time.
The boat ride to Menjangen Island was about 30 minutes long (no one can stay on Menjangen island since its protected) and our first dive site was Pos II.
Aquamarine was really great about helping us put together our trip (especially Sophia) and really flexible and accommodating (think back to the part about the 1am flight and that we needed to change our itinerary with Aquarmarine super last minute). They even helped Ryan get his dive skin back across the country when he forgot it in Menjangen. So this next part about our guide is probably out of the ordinary.
We got off to a rough start for a couple of reasons. At Pos II, the boat anchors at the shore and there were probably about 5 boats already there. Most seemed to be snorkelers. Our guide assembled all our gear. We double checked everything but are just not used to having that done for us so we already felt a little uncomfortable. It turns out this is how its done everywhere we went in Bali.
Since it was a check out dive (it had been >1 year since our last dive) we walked into the water and descended in pretty shallow water. Once in the water Rachel realized that the bottom valve on her snorkel had disappeared (We brought our own fins boots masks and snorkels.) She asked the guide if he had an extra snorkel on the boat and he said she didn't need it and refused to check the boat for an extra one. We argued for a while and then we gave in and decided to dive without it. In the midst of the argument Ryan realized he hadn't tightened his camera strap and it had disappeared. The guide found it floating in four feet of water near the shore but we were kind of both frazzled and distracted at that point and our guide probably thought we were totally inept. This was compounded by the fact that Rachel started having ear problems about 6in down on her descent and was going super slow. The guide came over and kind of pulled onto Rachel's BC to pull her away from a large rock that was about 3 ft away. At that point she ascended and gave him an earful about not grabbing her underwater and made him go search for a snorkel on the boat.
He went over to the boat. There was much arguing and yelling in Bahasa Indonesian and he claimed there was no snorkel. There was more arguing between Rachel, Ryan and the guide and his second trip to the boat produced a snorkel. From there we took it slow. Pretty soon we were all under and looking at what we had flown halfway around the world to see. Unfortunately it was one of those drift dives where instead of drifting with the current you swim against it.
Luckily for all of us, the dives got better from there. We saw amazing healthy coral, huge trash can size sponges, fans bigger than a ceiling fan, shrimp, a lionfish, Great Barracuda, a million damsels, parrot fish, a lobster, and tons of other things. The wall was really fantastic to swim along.
We did 5 dives over two days in Menjangen and went snorkeling on our last day at the point near the mouth of the Mimpi Bay. The reef near the mouth of the bay was really damaged (we also encountered tiny stinging jellies) but once you got around the bend, the jellies cleared up and the reef was healthier. We saw a million gobies, a couple of nudibranchs and lots of healthy coral and fish. We were only in about 1-3m of water.
From there we stopped in Ubud for the cultural/shopping experience. It was nice but wouldn't recommend it for more than a day or two. Then we traveled to Tulamben and stayed at Tauch Terminal who let us in even after they realized we were Americans and not German
Big recommendation here: We dove with Blue Water across and down the street from Tauch Terminal. We had a fantastic guide (Ketut Sutama) and good gear. They were flexible and inexpensive: ~$40 for two day dives and $30/night dive compared to 50 Euro for two day dives at Tauch (caveat: we didn't look at the package deals at Tauch). A lot of other outfits in the area had their guides and gear meet them at the shore where they got suited up. We checked everything out at the Blue Water shop and then walked down to the beach wearing our wet suits and weight belts. Porters carried our BCDs and tanks (which is pretty standard in Tulamben). The porters seem to have no problem carrying up to 3 sets of tanks and BCDs wearing only flip flops and walking on a volcanic round rubble shore.
The Liberty Wreck was really great to dive (we had never dove a wreck before). Our guide helped us find several nudibranchs, a stone fish, , really cool sea squirts, and we generally enjoyed all the coral and the wreck as a whole. People complain about the wreck being crowded but we were totally interested in the macro/invert world and barely noticed the other divers. The resident school of jackfish made for an amazing dive and great underwater videos and photography. They're used to people so you can get in the center of the swirl where they are all around you. Also on a later Liberty dive we saw a field of garden eels and a 3 foot long puffer fish (we named him Thadius).
Our next three dives were all on the wall at the drop off. Over the course of these dives we saw enormous sponges, bumphead parrot fish, nudis, multiple shrimp cleaning stations, morays, garden eels. And on both the day and night dives, ghost pipefish. On our night dives we also saw a small bon-bon size white octopus with green eyes, cuttlefish, a pink frogfish, nudis, crabs, and other cool creatures. We did 7 dives (6 were shore dives) over three days in Tulamben.
So the short version is that we recommend Bali to anyone suffering from having a job in America and not living in a tropical paradise.
Check our profile for pics.
ps. Our driver originally hired by Aquamarine was Wayan Moyo. He was very nice, not pushy, a safe driver in a country that doesn't believe in any rules of the road, he had a nice air conditioned van with seat belts, and he's a great tour guide. You can reach him at 081 805 489 194
We flew from SFO to Denpasar with a stop in Taipei. Our tickets were $1100 each, but we ended up having to pay an extra $100 each to fix a booking bungle. Note to all travelers: If a flight leaves at 1:00am on Monday, you have to be at the airport on Sunday night, not Monday night. And if that Sunday night happens to be your wedding night, you owe China Airlines $200 to change your tickets.
Also, China Airlines is lame. The food was bad and poorly timed (think pickled egg and shrimp for breakfast after having a flight attendant launch your chair up despite the fact that you were clearly asleep covered in a blanket with your tray up and not at all interested in pickled egg and shrimp. After reading the boards we wanted to go to Menjangen Island and stay at the Mimpi resort which seemed like one of the few options in the area. We booked the first part of our trip with Aquamarine Diving which is based in Seminyak (about 20 min from the airport and on the way to Menjangen.) Based on the web listed prices, booking through Aquamarine saved us a couple hundred dollars over the Menjangen Mimpi diving + accommodation packages. We built a custom itinerary with Aquamarine that cost us about $1200 for four nights at Mimpi, 5 dives, all gear, transport to and from Menjangen and breakfast included (breakfast is included everywhere in Bali though so its not really a perk) and we had to put down about $300 in advance.
We arrived in Denpasar around 2pm in the afternoon. Aquamarine provided transport from the airport to Menjangen and we arrived around 6pm after also stopping for dinner. All the drivers in Bali seem to have their preferred stops for meals and sightseeing (not sure if they get kickbacks or not.) Aquamarine owns the gear and the shop and has their own guides and then hires out the drivers.
We arrived in Mimpi to our welcome fruit juices and an outdoor reception desk. We had booked a Courtyard Villa room which is one step up from the base Mimpi room. The web site doesn't do it justice. You're in a tropical garden, you essentially have your own compound with a private natural hot spring fed hot tub, an outdoor covered lounging area with pillows and tea. An amazing air conditioned bedroom with nice size sheets, and an outdoor covered bathroom and shower which actually came in really handy for all our scuba gear. The room looked like you had walked into a resort featured in a high end magazine. It was fantastic. They don't mention it on the web, but the Courtyard Villa room has another queen size bed upstairs in a loft that overlooks the rest of the suite.
We spent the next day just hanging out by the pool and getting massages and just generally relaxing from the long flight and crazy hectic wedding stuff. The two big cool water infinity pools seemed to all be fed by the hot springs and don't have much chlorine, There's also three infinity hot tubs with different temperatures close to the beach.
The next day we met up with the Aquamarine guide Yan(sp?) at the front desk and he and the driver took us on a 1 minute drive to the public port right next to Mimpi. But if you dive with Mimpi you just leave from the resort (in the same boats as the public port). All the gear was loaded onto the boat for us (I don't think we even saw the wetsuits and BCDs until we got on the boat which was a little disconcerting considering that one of us (Rachel) is 5'1", 100lbs and nothing ever fits her the first time.
The boat ride to Menjangen Island was about 30 minutes long (no one can stay on Menjangen island since its protected) and our first dive site was Pos II.
Aquamarine was really great about helping us put together our trip (especially Sophia) and really flexible and accommodating (think back to the part about the 1am flight and that we needed to change our itinerary with Aquarmarine super last minute). They even helped Ryan get his dive skin back across the country when he forgot it in Menjangen. So this next part about our guide is probably out of the ordinary.
We got off to a rough start for a couple of reasons. At Pos II, the boat anchors at the shore and there were probably about 5 boats already there. Most seemed to be snorkelers. Our guide assembled all our gear. We double checked everything but are just not used to having that done for us so we already felt a little uncomfortable. It turns out this is how its done everywhere we went in Bali.
Since it was a check out dive (it had been >1 year since our last dive) we walked into the water and descended in pretty shallow water. Once in the water Rachel realized that the bottom valve on her snorkel had disappeared (We brought our own fins boots masks and snorkels.) She asked the guide if he had an extra snorkel on the boat and he said she didn't need it and refused to check the boat for an extra one. We argued for a while and then we gave in and decided to dive without it. In the midst of the argument Ryan realized he hadn't tightened his camera strap and it had disappeared. The guide found it floating in four feet of water near the shore but we were kind of both frazzled and distracted at that point and our guide probably thought we were totally inept. This was compounded by the fact that Rachel started having ear problems about 6in down on her descent and was going super slow. The guide came over and kind of pulled onto Rachel's BC to pull her away from a large rock that was about 3 ft away. At that point she ascended and gave him an earful about not grabbing her underwater and made him go search for a snorkel on the boat.
He went over to the boat. There was much arguing and yelling in Bahasa Indonesian and he claimed there was no snorkel. There was more arguing between Rachel, Ryan and the guide and his second trip to the boat produced a snorkel. From there we took it slow. Pretty soon we were all under and looking at what we had flown halfway around the world to see. Unfortunately it was one of those drift dives where instead of drifting with the current you swim against it.
Luckily for all of us, the dives got better from there. We saw amazing healthy coral, huge trash can size sponges, fans bigger than a ceiling fan, shrimp, a lionfish, Great Barracuda, a million damsels, parrot fish, a lobster, and tons of other things. The wall was really fantastic to swim along.
We did 5 dives over two days in Menjangen and went snorkeling on our last day at the point near the mouth of the Mimpi Bay. The reef near the mouth of the bay was really damaged (we also encountered tiny stinging jellies) but once you got around the bend, the jellies cleared up and the reef was healthier. We saw a million gobies, a couple of nudibranchs and lots of healthy coral and fish. We were only in about 1-3m of water.
From there we stopped in Ubud for the cultural/shopping experience. It was nice but wouldn't recommend it for more than a day or two. Then we traveled to Tulamben and stayed at Tauch Terminal who let us in even after they realized we were Americans and not German
Big recommendation here: We dove with Blue Water across and down the street from Tauch Terminal. We had a fantastic guide (Ketut Sutama) and good gear. They were flexible and inexpensive: ~$40 for two day dives and $30/night dive compared to 50 Euro for two day dives at Tauch (caveat: we didn't look at the package deals at Tauch). A lot of other outfits in the area had their guides and gear meet them at the shore where they got suited up. We checked everything out at the Blue Water shop and then walked down to the beach wearing our wet suits and weight belts. Porters carried our BCDs and tanks (which is pretty standard in Tulamben). The porters seem to have no problem carrying up to 3 sets of tanks and BCDs wearing only flip flops and walking on a volcanic round rubble shore.
The Liberty Wreck was really great to dive (we had never dove a wreck before). Our guide helped us find several nudibranchs, a stone fish, , really cool sea squirts, and we generally enjoyed all the coral and the wreck as a whole. People complain about the wreck being crowded but we were totally interested in the macro/invert world and barely noticed the other divers. The resident school of jackfish made for an amazing dive and great underwater videos and photography. They're used to people so you can get in the center of the swirl where they are all around you. Also on a later Liberty dive we saw a field of garden eels and a 3 foot long puffer fish (we named him Thadius).
Our next three dives were all on the wall at the drop off. Over the course of these dives we saw enormous sponges, bumphead parrot fish, nudis, multiple shrimp cleaning stations, morays, garden eels. And on both the day and night dives, ghost pipefish. On our night dives we also saw a small bon-bon size white octopus with green eyes, cuttlefish, a pink frogfish, nudis, crabs, and other cool creatures. We did 7 dives (6 were shore dives) over three days in Tulamben.
So the short version is that we recommend Bali to anyone suffering from having a job in America and not living in a tropical paradise.
Check our profile for pics.
ps. Our driver originally hired by Aquamarine was Wayan Moyo. He was very nice, not pushy, a safe driver in a country that doesn't believe in any rules of the road, he had a nice air conditioned van with seat belts, and he's a great tour guide. You can reach him at 081 805 489 194
imagine first time in a year you are going to feel a little nervous,regarding snorkel you were right to feel you needed another one and rightly so at the end of the day,surprised guide did not offer to swop mask and snorkel and in the end a snorkel was found,wish i was there i would of been killing myself with laughter 
