Diving at King Cruiser, Phuket, Thailand

I'm not gonna lie! After the terrible visibility at Kho Doc Mai, I needed a pallet cleanser to fresh up the taste of Andaman underwater. We have reached our destination for the second dive of the day. The king cruiser is located between Kho Doc Mai and the famous Phi Phi Island of the beach movie. You can actually see it if the visibility is good. Anyway, we started to suit up in our lovely boat Jolly Roger with ultimate interference of the mothers and wives at the divers area. I guess there is no need to talk about the super respectful customers of Jolly Rogers anymore after the previous article. 

I wish to say that the visibility was great in King Cruiser but I was not. However, it was not supposed to be great anyways. So this time the disappointment is less than previous time. Nonetheless, King Cruiser was hiding much more for us! The place is great for the lion fish chasers. Lion fishes are thriving around the wreck. I have seen at least 8 as individual and in groups. So the wreck was not really a deep one. The rock bottom is around 30 meters and most of the must-see parts of the wreck is around  16-18 meters. So she lets see her for an almost hour long dive.

Apart from the all the crowds of fishes and the sneaking hunter lion fishes, there are a couple of places you should check when you dive King cruiser. First of all don't forget to take a pee! Well yeah! On the back of the boat you can see the toilets of the cruiser. The ceiling was opened and the toilets are visible. So fun time! 

The other hot spot of the site is the chimneys of the boat where a shrimp colony was thriving. They are not shy at all and you can have great picture over there too. The color of them were so crisp and the scenery was amazing!

The gate of the vehicle deck is almost completely destroyed. Thus you can go in and have a nice trip inside the parking site of the cruiser. If you have a good flash light, I believe you can see many beautiful things inside.

All and all, King Cruiser dive was a great experience and it is a location for all levels of divers. She gives beautiful shots and you can see many different rate sea creatures down there... or up above. We have accompanied by a giant jelly fish during our ascent. The combination of sharp sunlight and the jelly fish gave great pictures to make this beautiful place unforgettable. 

Diving at Koh Doc Mai, Phuket, Thailand

In the boat Jolly Roger, which I have mentioned in detail in the previous entry, that was the first dive of the day at Koh Doc Mai. This little island has a very nice reef underskirts of her! You can think of it as a very large reef that you can wonder around. The dive can last a reasonable amount of time without turning around of the island more than once. The depth of the reef is around 30-40 meters if you keep yourself close to the vertical cliffs. Therefore the site is quite suitable for a range of divers from beginners to the experts.

Normally, the site supposed to have a good visibility especially in the early morning and for calm surface as you can see above. However I was not that lucky I guess. The visibility was quite poor and it was not possible to have a good shot unless you go for a macro shot. Nevertheless, the fauna down there was really great. Especially the nudibrach population was quite stunning. Other than that you may check out the groupers, box fishes, and random gang of fish crowds!

However the impressive part of the dive was, for me, to see the bamboo shark hiding underneath a big rock. I assume it is a regular inhabitant of the neighborhood because I encounter similar sceneries on other websites before.

Overall the spot is a nice dive point with variety of the fishes. I totally recommend you to check out if you pass by Phuket to dive. I hope you will be luckier than me and have great visibility so that 100% or your shots are clear.

Diving in Phuket Island, Thailand

Phuket, as I have mentioned before, is a great island to have a laid back holiday. She contains all necessary ingredients: tropical weather, golden beaches, turquoise sea, gorgeous people, good food... On top of all, there is another great feature of the island. That is the beauty of Andaman Sea's underwater life and uncountable number of diving points which are accessible from the island.

When I get to Phuket, I am not gonna lie, I didn't think to dive. I had good time under the Balinese sea and I hadn't had the time to make a search about the dive centers there. However, I hadn't also know that there was no way to hide from my destiny. As soon as I settled down in my "temporary hotel room", I realized the dive center across the street. Despite I spent such a long time to recover from long Bali-Phuket flight and the shuttle ride, the dive center was still open. ...and I knocked the door of Rumblefish Adventure. There I met great people. They were quite friendly and helpful. They explained me how diving business runs more or less and it actually has nothing to do with any other place I have dived before. 

In Phuket, the dive boats and the dive centers are almost completely separated. When you go to a dive center, as an experienced diver, they will show you the schedule of the available boats with their route of dive points. Every combination has its own price roughly changing between 1000-1500 THB/dive. According to your preferences and experiences, the guys at the dive school help you to choose the appropriate dive boat. Here the things start to bifurcate. You may be accompanied by the dive buddy/leader from the dive center or you may stuck with the guys of the boat or the buddy might be a freelance instructor, like in my case. So this separation of power has its own benefits and disadvantages, which I will explain later. Anyway, the complete gear is supplied by the school for 500 THB/day. You can also rent dive computer for around 300-500 THB/day. In my case, they were quite cool to me and let me use their good old Aladin UWATEC computer.

In the morning, a shuttle bus picks you and your gear up from your hotel and takes you to the harbor where the boat is. From this point on, you are with the dive boat crew and thus I will try to summarize my experience about the dive boat called Jolly Roger and her crew. I will tell about the three dive points of the day, Koh Dok Mai, King Cruiser and Shark Point,  in separate entries.

She is quite long, pretty new and well maintained dive boat. The main deck is composed of a preparation space for the divers and the dining room. There you can have a fresh and substantial breakfast in with lots of varieties. They also serve the lunch in the afternoon and it is also equally good. Highly recommended! There is also an espresso machine, cold and hot water and several munchies at your disposal at anytime on-board. There is also on-board WiFi which is very convenient. There are two shower/toilets right next to the preparation area. The upper deck is very roomy to socialize with the other divers, as well. Beer is also serve on-board but subjected to charges. From all the facilities provided, she is a great dive boat. But nothing can be perfect right. Here are the beasts inside the beauty!

First of all, the service crew was acting kinda weird! They were shouting to the customers here and there when people were trying to board. The people who guides you talks mostly in Russian because they and most of the customers were Russian but sometimes they forget there are people of other nationalities. I have to say that the order in the boat was a bit chaotic. Of course that was my experience with the customers of that day but it seemed to me that the profile is more or less the same in every trip after I shared my experiences with the other divers in Kata Beach. The space you prepare for the dive, although it was quite large, was stuffed by non-divers. Especially, the moms and the wives were everywhere and messing up with your gear. Coming back to the lunch room, people were leaving their leftovers on the tables and nobody were collecting them. Of course you are supposed to return your stuff but as you can imagine not everyone was taking care of. In the dives, there were no regular order to get in to the sea. I think for that may of diver (more than 30) the dive masters  need to do some planing before the dives. However, it seems to me the ones of the boat were coordinating themselves without letting know the other dive leaders. And finally on the way back, the shuttles were totally messed up. The chances are you may be left in the harbor if you don't understand Russian because they stop doing regular announcement in any other language. Thus you  need to go an ask if your bus is actually arranged.

To sum up, I think Phuket is a great place to dive. The underwater was flourishing. And that was a great boat in terms of all of the amenities inside. If you are a guy of luxury and can arrange the whole dive for his group, you may want to go for this boat. Otherwise, I recommend you to think twice and go for a second best option.  

Nusa Penida dives, Bali, Indonesia

In the second day of the dives, I went to the island called Nusa Penida located on the south east of Bali. The island is actually the biggest of the three islands at close coordinates. They are 45 min away from the Sanur beach by a relatively slow dive boat. Sanur beach is quite shallow and there is no pear to have a dry boarding. Hence, the BIDP guys arranged the transfer from the beach to the dive boat by small joker boats. From that point on you are on the dive boat till the afternoon. During that 45 min journey to the famous Manta point, the landscape was pretty nice with several water rocks facing to the island. The partly cloudy morning helped to enjoy the nice way with mild sun bathing...

We had a short briefing after reaching the Manta point and started our dive with the hope of seeing an elegant manta ray. The dive team was pretty crowded this time. We were eight divers and 4 dive masters leading the dive. From this point of view it was a safer dive then the ones I had in Tulamben with much more opportunity to see the hidden beauties of the nice reefs down there because two of the guys constant checking the cracks and bottom for the creature harder to notice while one is leading and the other was keeping the rear.

The crystal clear water of the Manta point started to freeze us since the beginning of dive with an average temperature of 18 degrees Celsius. That was not only another difference between the dives of today and USS Liberty but also a good indicator of different characteristics of all dive points scattered around the Bali Island. It is better to avoid the shorties at Manta point to keep body temperature reasonable. The bottom is composed of many small reefs an big pieces of rock which is covered with the colorful coral. Underneath the rocks and in the slits of the reefs, small predators look for their pray like the big lobster or weevers. The deepest point in the close vicinity is around 15 meter and thus you can enjoy long and colorful dives in the quest for manta rays. Unfortunately, at the end of the dry season for Bali, end of October, we were not that lucky to experience this unique encounter. Nevertheless, the underwater is still worthwhile to see with its relatively smaller creatures and rainbow of colors on the reefs.

The anemones blooming all around in different colors give beautiful shots for the underwater photo lover. However, I was not able to see anemone fish for almost all 40 minute dive. Instead, little gobies and lizard fishes staying still for their prays on top of small rocks or corals were reluctant to move while we were swimming around them.

All and all, I can say that Manta Point is a beautiful site with its rich marine life even if the mantas are not visible for you. It provides you a long and delightful five with its tranquil bottom.

The next destination of the day was Crystal Bay (C in the map above) located half an hour away on the north of Manta Point (A in the map). This is a small and calm isolated bay located on the west of the biggest island, Nusa Penida. When you first enter the bay, the astonishing view of small huts underneath palms trees gives you a delighting scenery. There were several dive boats around when we arrived. Then disappeared after we had lunch, giving us a wast underwater space to enjoy and better possibility to see the ocean sun fishes widely known as mola mola who thrives in this bay.

We started the dive half an hour after the arrival, a nice stop to enjoy the view and peace of mind. Following the jump in the water, we commenced to search for the mola molas possible surface for feeding or having their skins cleaned. The bottom of the sea shows different characteristics. While the part close to the shores are mostly dominated by the sand and pebbles, deeper parts are covered with corals. The maximum depth of our dive zone was around 23 meters and the average was 15 meters. We continued our search mostly at this average. Therefore, I was able to enjoy the bright colors by the help of sunlight penetrating down to this level.

The small fishes like the angel fishes, moorish idols or surgeon fishes were dominating the deep sea scenery of the bay. You can forget everything while chasing a moorish idol and suddenly find many of them hiding in a large crack.

The relatively flat bottom of the bay was rarely populated with big and isolated rocks covered by coral like the one below. Swimming around them to check the cracks and holes was a very good way of spending time while looking for mola molas. On top of it, around those boulders there were hundreds of small fishes wondering and giving marvelous shots like below.

Overall, the checking in the Crystal Bay was good and long dive although we were not able to encounter with the mola molas. The dive masters were claiming that the end of dry season is also the start of migration of those fishes from the region. Hence it might be more logical to come to Bali around August or September might be a better idea if you really want to see oceanic sun fishes. However, the other compromise is to stay here or on the southern hemisphere for all the time and to be unable to go other nice dive spots like Thailand, Malaysia or Philippines as there will be the mun-son season. It was an option to plan my trip but I didn't do that and I am happy to have the dives in Phuket.

In short, diving around Nusa Penida and Bali was a great experience for me and highly recommended although it is a must to find good accommodation and a hotel to near by the major towns. The BIDP guys were very helpful and also recomemended but I also recommend you to check out prices in other dive schools. Enjoy your time in Bali and sountheast Asia...

Diving in Tulamben, Bali, Indonesia

Bali has long been famous with its diving points. Following the fame, I also went to dive in Balinese coasts. As I have mentioned in the previous posts, I have arranged my dives beforehand with the dive center called Bali International Diving Professionals. The dive site is located at a fairly distant location from the main touristic locations where most of the hotels are. To give you a perspective about the distance, I can say that it takes two and a half hours of driving from the dive canter which is at Sanur. The major reason for the distance to take so long is that Bali has no decent highways although the island is pretty big (almost 10 times larger than Singapore). And also, two volcanoes located at the center of the island makes such an infrastructure hard to be constructed. So be prepared to wake up early and sleep in the van in order to dive in Tulamben.

When you get to the dive site, you park the car in a parking spot which is encircled by a restaurant where you have the lunch or munchies, café (Kopi house), change rooms and toilets. Well, apparently those are almost everything you have in the close neighborhood. After you change, you have a short walk to the beach which is 50-100 meters away. This is a rocky beach where you have several wooden benches under the trees to put your diving gear and bags. Normally all group of divers or dive schools settles around those benches and plan their dives. There is one kiosk where you can have refreshments but you may not need them if your dive center supplies drinking water line BIDP. There are also several kids wondering around to sell you t-shirts and stuff like that. Well, if you can have a good bargain, you may buy the stuff. Me, I have reduced the rice of a Tulamben t-shirt, which was nice actually, to 50000IDR. So I recommend you not to pay more that. There was another thing interesting for me that all of the diving gear and equipments were carried by local young girls and women. There is a constant flux of air bottles carried by those people from the parking to the beach. Normally, I am kinda used to see that your gear are carried by the guys of the dive center but I have seen that is done by the women first time. I guess that does not include the fare trade concept.

I dived to two points in Tulamben: USS Liberty shipwreck and Drop-off. The former is an American Army/Navy transport ship which has beached in 1942 after she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. She was moved away from the beach by a volcanic eruption in 1963 and then become a dive point. Her 120 body lies from 6 to 30 meters depth roughly parallel to the shore. I made two dives around the shipwreck. First one was from port side to the back and the second was other way around. We followed the pieces of the wreck which is mostly aligned on a straight line of the frame when we approached from either direction. I can say that the coral coverage was rare and scattered around the wreck especially as compared to surface of the ship. Volcanic sand and small rocks dominate the sea bottom. You can see anemones and the anemone fishes frequently. Around the larger pieces of rocks at the bottom covered with corals, you may encounter angel fishes, snappers and rarely groupers. When swimming around her, the scenery is mostly dominated with many types of colorful corals, anemones and snappers. The low visibility of the day I dived made it harder to see the fishes mastering camouflage. However, I was lucky enough to see a scorpion fish and a barracuda. On top of that, we, by chance, started the decent with a giant colony of tuna fishes and that was unbelievably nice moment that I wish you experience as well.

The visibility became much better when we dived to drop-off which is relatively  shallower dive point. The corals dominate much larger area and get pretty colorful here. That was much more tranquil and longer dive thanks to the depth, I highly recommend to check this out before leaving Tulamben. Moreover, the nice daylight penetrating well on this depths giving the diver to picture much nicer sceneries. The bottom is much rockier, thus the seeing fishes hiding around is much more possible then on the terrain a bit away from Liberty.

Finally, the dives I had in Tulamben beach was pretty nice in terms of experiencing a relatively shallow shipwreck and nice coral reefs of Indonesian water as starter dives in south east Asia. Therefore, it paid back the long way we had 2 times a day. Highly recommended to be experienced for all of you!....

Diving with Bali International Diving Professionals

I went to Bali with the sole aim of diving in its crystal clear waters and seeing the amazing underwater creators of Indonesia. I ain't professional divers with uncountable stars or master of open water realm. I dive for real fun but I need to cooperate with some people like many of you. On the other hand, I know well enough that diving is not a joke and you should go for trusted dive centers. I normally do research about the dive centers before I go to a place for that. But this time I was luckier than other times because a Dutch friend of mine, who have spent many years as a dive master at Gulf of Thailand, recommended me a dive center named Bali International Diving Professionals. I contacted them by email beforehand. I wanted to see not only their offers but also the options because my major aim was to dive for manta rays and mola molas. I must say that they were quite fast with the communication. I have my answer in the next day and it included both Manta Point and Crystal Bay which is known for mola mola encounters. There was also another bonus track: USS Liberty wreck! I am going to write on my experiences about those dive points locate at Tulamben and Nusa Penida. However, I would like to talk about the dive school now.

First the prices! Finally after exchange of some email for the arrangements, I decided to have 3 dives at Tulamben where the shipwreck is and 2 dives around Nusa Penida which is the island on southeast of Bali. They first gave me the price of 103 USD and 100 USD respectively. These prices excludes the equipment rent which is 20 USD/day but includes transfer for/to your hotel if it is located at Sanur, Kuta, Nusa Dua, Jimbaran areas. I was not that lucky to find a decent hotel at that region for a good price and unfortunately had to stay at Hotel Ecosfera in Echo beach, Canggu. That was not only a bad accommodation experience but also almost an hour away from the dive school where we have to pass by before the dives in very early in the morning. And on top of it I had to pay extra money. Before I got to the island, I am not gonna lie, I was a bit suspicious about this charge. But after you get to the place and understand the scales of the distances in Bali. I actually understand why they were asking extra. The distances are huge in Bali. Another good example would be the way to Tulamben dive point. It takes two and a half hour to get there from the dive center at Sanur. You can really sleep in the van before the dives and actually I think you should! The only good think about those trips is that the transfer, lunch, which was extremely good both at Tulamben and on the boat, and drinking water are all included in the price. Coming back to the price, after a bit of iteration to convince the lady I contacted for a lower price, I finally ended up 275 USD for 5 dives including the equipment and hotel transfer. Well it was not that much of a bargain to be frank but it was worth to have good dives. There was only one thing annoying about the monetary part that they have never warn me about the bank charges they reflect on the payment although I have explicitly said I will be paying with the credit card. They might have skipped this detail but finally I had to pay ~4.5% for the payment by AMEX. The fee is a little bit lower for MasterCard and VISA, like 3%. So I recommend you to be aware of it. 


For the technical part of the dives, they were quite ok. The ratio of diver to dive master is less than 4 which is pretty good. They group people according to the experiences so that you don't surface unnecessarily early. For the dives with large groups, like the ones I had in Nusa Penida, they had a couple of extra dives to check around. So overall they helped a lot to spot the creatures around like lobsters or scorpion fishes in the cracks or disguised. The only thing disappointed me for the dives, and I want to share with you guys, was end of one dive I had in Tulamben. I have not been diving for a while, and naturally I was consuming air badly. Thus I depleted my air quite fast for the first day. In the second dive, we were diving 3 people: me, dive master and another customer. As my bottle was at 50 bars, the other guy was a bit above 100. In this situation, the dive master took me 5 meters for 3 minutes of safety stop. And signed me to follow the bottom then surface and swim to the beach. So this was, honestly, not nice. I am not very familiar to the dive centers way of doing the business but I have mostly dived with university societies where no such thing can happen especially when you are diving in a completely now point. Other than that everything was cool with those guys. They were extremely cool and kind. The briefs before the dives were satisfactory. The equipment they offered were pretty new. So they can be used with no worries.

Overall, I recommend you to dive with those guy but I also recommend check out other dive school beforehand just to be sure that you don't have a price lower than 60 USD per dive including everything. Frankly speaking, this seemed to be a bit extreme after diving for 30 USD at Kata Beach Phuket.

How to get in and out Bali, Indonesia

Bali, without any doubt, is one of the most famous island of Indonesia for western tourists. It is located between Jawa and Lombok islands. Although there are way to reach to the island by the sea transport, the most convenient way to get to the island is through Denpasar (Ngurah Rai - DPS) Airport if you are coming from far like me. The airport is located at the narrowest part of the island on the south. The runway is east to west oriented. Therefore, I can recommend you to sit on the window side if you wish to enjoy a unique touchdown. Denpasar Airport is a relatively small airport, as expected. When you first get you out of the plane to the terminal, you are first welcomed by the money exchangers in numbers. They yell at you with the money at their hands. That was, I'm not gonna lie, a unique moment as tens of people were yelling at me with a language hard to understand right after I entered a country for the first time. Anyway, I recommend you not to exchange any money over there because they are pretty pricey. Instead, you can exchange some money worth 1,000,000 IDR, which will be well enough for you to make the day, at the place of departure, if you have a chance, and then you can exchange the rest at Kuta, Denpasar or Seminyak. The exchange offices in the towns are giving really good prices than the ones at the airport, like everything!

So as you pass the currency scavengers, you will be approaching the immigration hall. There are a couple of things you should do about it. Firstly, you must fill in the immigration form in the plane. That is to be handed to the officer. Secondly, you must "buy" your visa on arrival. That is a piece of sticker worth for 25 USD. They put it on page of your passport and give you another piece as a proof of payment. Citizens of many countries are eligible to claim this visa valid for 30 days but you can check if you are eligible from the list as well. The ones who loved Indonesia and wants to stay for 30 more days need to pay more 25 USD and get a newer visa. After you get your visa, you approach to the immigration counters to hand in the form and the passport and voila! You are in.

Right after the clearance you get your luggages and then they will be monitored in an X-ray scanner. Normally, they look for alcohol and illegal stuff to be a
passed the border. The legal limit is a liter of liquor and a carton of cigarettes. But I am more on the side of not taking any as they are relatively cheap in the island. So it is better to keep yourself away from the security people for your own security and not to mess up the things. Right after the X-rays you have the exit of the terminal.

Now you are out and transport is kinda messy at the airport. I highly recommend you not to let anyone to carry your luggage and not to listen anyone for the taxi. There are so many scams and you cannot imagine how you can be conned. In my opinion, the best is to queue for the official taxi just outside of the terminal and wait until one is assigned for you. You pay at the place, get your pay slip and the driver takes you to the car. The taxi park is more or less 5 minutes away from the terminal.

Bali is a volcanic island as many of other islands of Indonesia. There are four volcanoes on the island: Agung, Batur, Bratan and Merbuk, two of which are still active. This, actually, makes the distances quite longer than I was expecting and the taxi fares, of course, increases. You pay average 100,000-300,000 IDR for the closer places on the southern half of the island. Hence, it is better, cheaper and safer if you can arrange your transport with the accommodation otherwise some bills waits for you. Other recommendation for the roads is "get away". Especially during the day time, the narrow roads of the island are jam packed by the thousands of motorbikes and small trucks. So it is much better to travel during early morning or in the evening instead.

A couple of extra tips for Bali could be that you should be aware of the fact all of the prices are 21% tax and service charge excluded, including the foods in the menus or good at the supermarket. So don't be surprised when the price is increased by one-fifth at the counter. For the small stuff you need I recommend small Circle K (like 7/11). More importantly, you'd better find an accommodation on walking distance to the small commercial centers so that you can have many options to wine and dine and also shopping. If you do as I did and lock yourself at a place like Echo Beach and a good rated bad run hotel like Ecosfera, you might have a very calm holiday but eat in small varieties and shop at extremely overrated prices at the airport. In particular, the souvenir shopping is very expensive at the airport. Strangely, the prices inside of the terminal is double of outside. Of course you see how it happens after you enter the terminal because you pass the security clearance right at the gate of the terminal. So it makes the huge difference between inside and outside. So it is highly recommended to buy the stuff, if you really need to, before you get into the terminal. Of course, the best is to but at the towns.

After you check in, you should be quite attentive for your departure because written and verbal announcements are really bad. Therefore the best is to get to the gate at a logical time for your original departure time. As you approach to the gates you will have an extra stop of payment. Spending certain period of time in Indonesia makes you realize that you have to pay for anything and everything. This time it is to get out of the country. Yes, you heard right. You have to pay a departure fee of 150,000 IDR. So it is better to save this money for the departure because that could be problematic to pay with other currencies. After the last payment, you are free to go out of the country. The next thing you may check could be a few small duty free shops. As expected they are very expensive and there is not much of a thing fascinating. So at that point the best thing to do is get on the plane and say bye bye to Indonesia. Enjoy the view from the plane...