Here is my report of our trip to Scuba Seraya earlier this month.
If you get bored quickly here is the quick fire review:
Diving - Great!! Good, private guides & well organised, dive when you like where you like.
Accommodation - Villas very comfortable and great view (worth the extra cash), mansionettes perfectly acceptable.
Food - Breakfast was great. Lunch and dinner was not amazing but not terrible either, so OK in general, service fast and friendly.
Photos can be seen here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68937960@N08/sets/72157647044151174/
Feel free to leave comments on Flikr. The more the merrier
OK the slightly longer version.
We have dived many places in Indo before but I always shied away from Bali for some reason, thinking it is too touristy and too crowded. BUT FINALLY we decided to give it a bash! And man am I glad we did. Our week at Scuba Seraya was just great. Super chilled and relaxed. And we will be back soon. We hate crowds and are quite happy to be "stuck" at the resort and just eat, dive, sleep and repeat. Scuba Seraya is out of town and pretty secluded, which is why we loved it, but if you have non-diving friends/ family this may not be the best place.
We booked directly with the resort and everything in terms of communication/ emails/ reservation was handled quickly and professionally. Pick up from the airport was seemless and we had a big 13 seater bus all to ourselves for the drive up to the resort. The drive took us 3 hours but we were comfortable and the views are often spectacular. On the way back they allowed us to stop at the big "tourist" shop in Sanur to do some trinket shopping.
We booked a villa (#3) for the wife and I and then a mansionette (#8 by the pool) for our toddler and our helper.
The villa is very spacious and the bed was one of the most comfortable beds I've slept in at a dive resort. The bathroom is also big and spacious. The villa also has an amazing view (see below) and the day bed is just the most amazing place to chill during the day between dives. The little outdoor tub was filled with pretty flowers and the toddler loved splashing around in it, but honestly if my wife and I were there alone we probably wouldn't have used it much, if at all. The main pool is perfectly functional and we spent much time in it. The grounds are well kept and the place is nice and quiet. There are also sun beds along the front of the resort overlooking the pebble beach, beautiful fishing boats and swaying palm tress.
Food as stated above was ok. It is not gormet by any stretch and after a week I started getting a bit bored of what was on the menu. And because you are out of town there are not really any other options. For us it was perfectly acceptable but not the absolute best. The service was great though, fast and friendly and they accommodated us with all our crazy toddler related requests.
One small gripe is that the only alcohol on the menu was Bintang, A-OK for me, but the wife was a tad annoyed that she could not have any evening cocktails.
The free breakfast was excellent. Eggs to your order + bacon or sausages + fruit + croissant + toast + jam + coffee. A great start to the day.
Onto the reason we were here, the diving.
You get your own personal guide for the duration of your stay and he organizes everything for you. We had an older guy called Kamong and he has been diving the area for 15 years, so yes he knew exactly where everything was. And he really does have eagle eyes spotting the tiniest things that not even double stacked macro lenses could properly see. In terms of dive schedule you literally can dive as many times as you want, when you want and where you want. They have two dive boats. One large boat that can take 8-10 divers comfortably and then a smaller one that takes about 4-6. All the sites that we dived were within 10min of the resort so we came back between dives to play with our son, just the way I like it.
As for dive sites, Seraya Secret is the house reef and you walk down from the dive center steps across 3m of pebble/ stone beach and straight into the water. SS has a resident yellow clown froggy and a pair of harlequin shrimp along with a plethora of other tiny critters and nudis. I did 3 night dives out front and they were equally productive.
We also dived Melasti, which was not very productive for us and Pong-Pong, which had the stunning Doto nudi and a few interesting snake eels, a wonderpus and down at 34m we found our first ever pair of Coleman shrimps sitting on their big fire urchin home.
We then went searching for our first ever Rinopias which had been see close by and Kamong found him like he said he would. What an amazing creature.
During our stay we also dived the Liberty wreck twice. Once at 8:30ish which was a really good dive with not too many people in the water. And you could see why there is so much hype about this site. It really is pretty, with sweeetlips and angel fish swimming around pretty coral and the odd black tip shark and even a big turtle popping by for a visit. Then we did the 6am dive to see the bumpheads. And man what a zoo!! There must have been 50+ people in the water swimming every which way. The bumpheads were there and they are just so chilled and zen like, taking very little notice of all the flapping hominids with their flash guns!
Our only other WA type dive was on Seraya side of coral garden (not sure dive site name). It was a very pleasant dive with lots of fish and coral and a bumphead swam past to say hi.
In summary we had a great time at Scuba Seraya. Our son loved it he spent half the day either in the sea, playing in the boats or the pool or our tub and the other half he spent running on the lawn or just being a boy and getting up to mischief. We had a lot of really good diving and equally a good amount of rest and relaxation.
We will definitely be back.
If you get bored quickly here is the quick fire review:
Diving - Great!! Good, private guides & well organised, dive when you like where you like.
Accommodation - Villas very comfortable and great view (worth the extra cash), mansionettes perfectly acceptable.
Food - Breakfast was great. Lunch and dinner was not amazing but not terrible either, so OK in general, service fast and friendly.
Photos can be seen here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68937960@N08/sets/72157647044151174/
Feel free to leave comments on Flikr. The more the merrier
OK the slightly longer version.
We have dived many places in Indo before but I always shied away from Bali for some reason, thinking it is too touristy and too crowded. BUT FINALLY we decided to give it a bash! And man am I glad we did. Our week at Scuba Seraya was just great. Super chilled and relaxed. And we will be back soon. We hate crowds and are quite happy to be "stuck" at the resort and just eat, dive, sleep and repeat. Scuba Seraya is out of town and pretty secluded, which is why we loved it, but if you have non-diving friends/ family this may not be the best place.
We booked directly with the resort and everything in terms of communication/ emails/ reservation was handled quickly and professionally. Pick up from the airport was seemless and we had a big 13 seater bus all to ourselves for the drive up to the resort. The drive took us 3 hours but we were comfortable and the views are often spectacular. On the way back they allowed us to stop at the big "tourist" shop in Sanur to do some trinket shopping.
We booked a villa (#3) for the wife and I and then a mansionette (#8 by the pool) for our toddler and our helper.
The villa is very spacious and the bed was one of the most comfortable beds I've slept in at a dive resort. The bathroom is also big and spacious. The villa also has an amazing view (see below) and the day bed is just the most amazing place to chill during the day between dives. The little outdoor tub was filled with pretty flowers and the toddler loved splashing around in it, but honestly if my wife and I were there alone we probably wouldn't have used it much, if at all. The main pool is perfectly functional and we spent much time in it. The grounds are well kept and the place is nice and quiet. There are also sun beds along the front of the resort overlooking the pebble beach, beautiful fishing boats and swaying palm tress.
Food as stated above was ok. It is not gormet by any stretch and after a week I started getting a bit bored of what was on the menu. And because you are out of town there are not really any other options. For us it was perfectly acceptable but not the absolute best. The service was great though, fast and friendly and they accommodated us with all our crazy toddler related requests.
One small gripe is that the only alcohol on the menu was Bintang, A-OK for me, but the wife was a tad annoyed that she could not have any evening cocktails.
The free breakfast was excellent. Eggs to your order + bacon or sausages + fruit + croissant + toast + jam + coffee. A great start to the day.
Onto the reason we were here, the diving.
You get your own personal guide for the duration of your stay and he organizes everything for you. We had an older guy called Kamong and he has been diving the area for 15 years, so yes he knew exactly where everything was. And he really does have eagle eyes spotting the tiniest things that not even double stacked macro lenses could properly see. In terms of dive schedule you literally can dive as many times as you want, when you want and where you want. They have two dive boats. One large boat that can take 8-10 divers comfortably and then a smaller one that takes about 4-6. All the sites that we dived were within 10min of the resort so we came back between dives to play with our son, just the way I like it.
As for dive sites, Seraya Secret is the house reef and you walk down from the dive center steps across 3m of pebble/ stone beach and straight into the water. SS has a resident yellow clown froggy and a pair of harlequin shrimp along with a plethora of other tiny critters and nudis. I did 3 night dives out front and they were equally productive.
We also dived Melasti, which was not very productive for us and Pong-Pong, which had the stunning Doto nudi and a few interesting snake eels, a wonderpus and down at 34m we found our first ever pair of Coleman shrimps sitting on their big fire urchin home.
We then went searching for our first ever Rinopias which had been see close by and Kamong found him like he said he would. What an amazing creature.
During our stay we also dived the Liberty wreck twice. Once at 8:30ish which was a really good dive with not too many people in the water. And you could see why there is so much hype about this site. It really is pretty, with sweeetlips and angel fish swimming around pretty coral and the odd black tip shark and even a big turtle popping by for a visit. Then we did the 6am dive to see the bumpheads. And man what a zoo!! There must have been 50+ people in the water swimming every which way. The bumpheads were there and they are just so chilled and zen like, taking very little notice of all the flapping hominids with their flash guns!
Our only other WA type dive was on Seraya side of coral garden (not sure dive site name). It was a very pleasant dive with lots of fish and coral and a bumphead swam past to say hi.
In summary we had a great time at Scuba Seraya. Our son loved it he spent half the day either in the sea, playing in the boats or the pool or our tub and the other half he spent running on the lawn or just being a boy and getting up to mischief. We had a lot of really good diving and equally a good amount of rest and relaxation.
We will definitely be back.
