After an absence of around 14 years I found myself on a dive trip to Indonesia following an invitation to join a couple of friends from Oz who were traveling to Lembeh in Northern Sulawesi. The planned trip was based at Lembeh Resort, also known as Critters @ Lembeh.
Unfortunately the short notice to arrange flights, the timing of my arrival and departure did not coincide with my friends and I ended up arriving two days before them and departing four days earlier, coupled with three days stopover in Singapore prior to flying to Manado.
The Singapore stopover was a pleasant break after a nine hour flight from Dubai (via Colombo), and it also allowed me to do some dive shop shopping as well as pick up my newly serviced D300 housing that I had sent to the Sea&Sea shop for replacing the strobe connection.
The flight from Singapore to Manado was delayed for 45 minutes due to a massive tropical downpour, and the flight itself took nearly 4 hours, so by the time the plane touched down I was already dismissing the thoughts of an afternoon shore dive to check out my gear.
Entry visa on arrival is IDR250,000 (USD25), payable in local currency or USD/EUR/SIN …. Issue of the visa is not fast despite it involving three people. Next step is immigration and then pick up the bags. All trolleys had porters attached to them, and given that I needed one for all my dive gear which was split into two cases, it made my life easier, cost for tip was IDR2,000 (USD0.19). Too many zeros in this currency was confusing me!
The people from Lembeh Resort were waiting outside and I shared a minibus with two other divers who were on the same flight who had traveled from Spain directly via Dubai to Singapore. The drive to the other side of that arm of Sulawesi took almost two hours, the roads are appalling and full of potholes. Once we reached Bitung we transferred to a small boat at the police station jetty and ten minutes later arrived at Lembeh Resort.
There appeared to be dozens of staff all smiling waiting to greet us, and I was taken by a very charming young lady called Fitri to my room on the first floor of a four roomed building close to the main building. The bedroom is spacious, plenty of storage space, plus lockable safe and a huge bathroom at the back.
All the bags were carried up to the room by other staff, and after a quick fresh up, I was taken a tour of the resort and given a video to watch on what was expected of me regarding diving. There were the usual papers to sign too for the dives, plus checking Nitrox and Cert Cards, and then it was time for a G & T before dinner.
Breakfast and lunch are both buffet style, and in the evening the dinner is a la carte with most meals offering a choice of both local and western style cuisine, to what I would say is a reasonably high standard. I had no complaints whatsoever with the food quality during my entire stay, and the staff in that area are great.
For a photographer, the camera room is very spacious and plenty of sockets as well as 110/220V power supply
The following day I had arranged to do a house reef dive in order to check out my gear, a good choice as it happened as I had some issues with my newly serviced housing, which took three dives to resolve.
Everyone is assigned an area for storing the gear and it is labeled so that the boat crew can quickly locate it and take it on to the assigned boat. A whiteboard with all of the boats and who is on which one along with dive locations is situated in this area. Mandarinfish dives and night dives are additional and have to be pre-booked, although you could do a night dive on the house reef for free I believe.
I hired a guide for my first dive on the house reef and was assigned Agus, who proved to be pretty good at spotting critters. On the forms filled in the previous day there was a space for a wish list, and on the top I had put a Blue Ringed Octopus, which Agus found on my second dive with him. The dive resort IT coordinator, Lillian, had mentioned to him where she had seen a solar powered nudibranch and he found that too on the first dive, very impressive.
First impressions though of diving the house reef were not good as you have to wade through a lot of floating rubbish but once under the water it was a better experience even though there still is a fair amount of plastic laying around, but that applies to many of the dive sites in Lembeh Straits.
There are three boat dives per day, at around 08:00, 10:45 and 14:30, dives are usually a minimum of 60 minutes, I certainly had none less than that, with my longest dive recorded at 83 minutes. Generally there is one guide to four divers, usually I was one of two photographers in the group, sometimes I was the only photographer which was better for me.
There is coral as well as muck, but it is the muck diving that draws divers to this area and the strange critters that inhabit this environment. Although the nudibranch variety did not meet my expectations (could have been the time of year or just my luck!), there were plenty of other critters around that were a joy to watch and photograph. Certainly never seen so many frogfish in any area, although I never managed to spot the hairy one during my recent trip … next time
On my last dive day there we hired our own boat and dive guide and split the cost three ways, which came to around USD58 each, well worth it in order to dive where we wanted to, plus get a bit more personal attention.
Now I just need to plan my return trip
Unfortunately the short notice to arrange flights, the timing of my arrival and departure did not coincide with my friends and I ended up arriving two days before them and departing four days earlier, coupled with three days stopover in Singapore prior to flying to Manado.
The Singapore stopover was a pleasant break after a nine hour flight from Dubai (via Colombo), and it also allowed me to do some dive shop shopping as well as pick up my newly serviced D300 housing that I had sent to the Sea&Sea shop for replacing the strobe connection.
The flight from Singapore to Manado was delayed for 45 minutes due to a massive tropical downpour, and the flight itself took nearly 4 hours, so by the time the plane touched down I was already dismissing the thoughts of an afternoon shore dive to check out my gear.
Entry visa on arrival is IDR250,000 (USD25), payable in local currency or USD/EUR/SIN …. Issue of the visa is not fast despite it involving three people. Next step is immigration and then pick up the bags. All trolleys had porters attached to them, and given that I needed one for all my dive gear which was split into two cases, it made my life easier, cost for tip was IDR2,000 (USD0.19). Too many zeros in this currency was confusing me!
The people from Lembeh Resort were waiting outside and I shared a minibus with two other divers who were on the same flight who had traveled from Spain directly via Dubai to Singapore. The drive to the other side of that arm of Sulawesi took almost two hours, the roads are appalling and full of potholes. Once we reached Bitung we transferred to a small boat at the police station jetty and ten minutes later arrived at Lembeh Resort.
There appeared to be dozens of staff all smiling waiting to greet us, and I was taken by a very charming young lady called Fitri to my room on the first floor of a four roomed building close to the main building. The bedroom is spacious, plenty of storage space, plus lockable safe and a huge bathroom at the back.
All the bags were carried up to the room by other staff, and after a quick fresh up, I was taken a tour of the resort and given a video to watch on what was expected of me regarding diving. There were the usual papers to sign too for the dives, plus checking Nitrox and Cert Cards, and then it was time for a G & T before dinner.
Breakfast and lunch are both buffet style, and in the evening the dinner is a la carte with most meals offering a choice of both local and western style cuisine, to what I would say is a reasonably high standard. I had no complaints whatsoever with the food quality during my entire stay, and the staff in that area are great.
For a photographer, the camera room is very spacious and plenty of sockets as well as 110/220V power supply
The following day I had arranged to do a house reef dive in order to check out my gear, a good choice as it happened as I had some issues with my newly serviced housing, which took three dives to resolve.
Everyone is assigned an area for storing the gear and it is labeled so that the boat crew can quickly locate it and take it on to the assigned boat. A whiteboard with all of the boats and who is on which one along with dive locations is situated in this area. Mandarinfish dives and night dives are additional and have to be pre-booked, although you could do a night dive on the house reef for free I believe.
I hired a guide for my first dive on the house reef and was assigned Agus, who proved to be pretty good at spotting critters. On the forms filled in the previous day there was a space for a wish list, and on the top I had put a Blue Ringed Octopus, which Agus found on my second dive with him. The dive resort IT coordinator, Lillian, had mentioned to him where she had seen a solar powered nudibranch and he found that too on the first dive, very impressive.
First impressions though of diving the house reef were not good as you have to wade through a lot of floating rubbish but once under the water it was a better experience even though there still is a fair amount of plastic laying around, but that applies to many of the dive sites in Lembeh Straits.
There are three boat dives per day, at around 08:00, 10:45 and 14:30, dives are usually a minimum of 60 minutes, I certainly had none less than that, with my longest dive recorded at 83 minutes. Generally there is one guide to four divers, usually I was one of two photographers in the group, sometimes I was the only photographer which was better for me.
There is coral as well as muck, but it is the muck diving that draws divers to this area and the strange critters that inhabit this environment. Although the nudibranch variety did not meet my expectations (could have been the time of year or just my luck!), there were plenty of other critters around that were a joy to watch and photograph. Certainly never seen so many frogfish in any area, although I never managed to spot the hairy one during my recent trip … next time
On my last dive day there we hired our own boat and dive guide and split the cost three ways, which came to around USD58 each, well worth it in order to dive where we wanted to, plus get a bit more personal attention.
Now I just need to plan my return trip
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