First, thank you so much to the scubaboard community especially, Luko, Centrals, drBill, ocdiver1, and Woodman. Your various posts and private messages were invaluable in planning this trip. I was equal parts excited and nervous to take a "big" trip like this for the first time, and the idea and the execution I owe almost exclusively to this community. I have written a short and incredibly detailed and long version. Please feel free to PM me if you have specific questions that I did not address.
Short Version:
Overall:
If you are wanting to get your US toes wet in SE Asia, I cannot recommend the Philippines highly enough. I could not believe how incredible the diving was, how easy it was to get around and the friendliness of the locals. Well worth the slightly longer/more expensive flight, which is more than balanced out by affordable accoms, diving, food, and the quality of diving available. I can highly recommend both Anilao for great muck diving with some coral and Club O for serious divers and uw photographers. We also really enjoyed Sabang for lots of great coral diving with some really good muck diving in a party town and Blue Ribbon for great training and the wonderful resort staff.
The only real drawback I can see is readjusting when you get back -not only to the jet lag though, because your eyes will be forever opened and it will be hard to see the Caribbean in the same light again!
Long Version:
Anilao/Club Ocellaris - 7 nights/6 diving days, 24 dives:
Overall Impression of Club O: Want to spend 4-6 hours underwater every dive day?
Want to spend your surface intervals charging camera batteries, unloading SD cards, discussing your sightings and shots with other divers of the same mindset? Have no need for TV or spa or Karaoke on your dive trip? Want simple but delicious cuisine? This is the place for you (and us).
Anilao Diving:
We love Bonaire in the Caribbean because you can dive your butt off, take your time, and enjoy the small stuff. We are first timers to SE Asia. So, we may have overshot it a bit by going here first. For us, this was heaven. Reviews also describe Anilao as muck diving and there is plenty of that. But there is also a lot of gorgeous coral here, too, which was great for me. I think the first day I saw 80% of my “hoping to see” list. By the end we were at 95% which is pretty excellent for 6 diving days. Of course there are loads of different nudi’s and that's what we saw most of. Also lots of frogfish, seahorse, pipefish, shrimp, crabs, and cephalopods. Hubby got his first real camera for this trip (Canon G16, after a gopro hero3, before that a canon s series) and had a great time, this is a haven for an UW photographer - I am going to have to start up myself for when we return.
Van Transfer to Anilao from NAIA: Flawless. Picked up right outside the airport exit doors, fired up the aircon and got us to Club O almost exactly 2 hrs after climbing in. Very safe and courteous driver.
Resort/Room:
Clean, simple, comfortable bed and bath. Good space for camera equipment in the room. Room was cleaned every 3 days which was adequate, but necessary. Lots of steep stairs, but they will carry everything for you when you check in and check out, so not much of an issue. Usually about 10-12 guests, I think they can handle a handful more.
Food:
Food was simple but very very good. Usually fruit, eggs, ham, and toast for breakfast (with one pancake/bacon and one french toast/bacon morning thrown in during our 7 night stay). Lunch and dinner were rice, three dishes (meat, veg, and fish), lunch was fruit for dessert, and dinner had ice cream, or something fancier for dessert. Brewed coffee in the morning and a hot water/instant coffee/tea station available all day. Cold filtered water also available all day at this station. Canned/bottle drinks were available for purchase. Restaurant staff was quiet, but friendly and extremely helpful.
Dive Schedule:
Breakfast at 7:30 am, Boats left about 8:30 am for two dives (about 5-20 min boat rides), surface interval on the boat with coffee or tea. Returned to the resort usually about 1pm ish. Lunch. Boats leave about 3:30p or 4p for usually an afternoon and night dive. Sometimes they would come back in between, and once we did a dusk dive for mandarin fish. Return to resort between 7:30-8:30pm. Dinner, bed. They pretty much let everyone dive their tank and come up in buddy pairs to the boat as required by your air/NDL. We are newer divers and limited by our air consumption, but even we averaged a lot of 60+ minute dives. Our longest was 80 mins, but a lot of the more experienced divers had mostly 75-90 minute dives.
Dive Boats & Crew:
5 divers max per boat and guide, plus two boatmen. Most days it was us two and one or two other divers. Boatmen and guides were the best I have ever had. Helpful and excellent at spotting. Also excellent at learning what you need/like/ want and trying to accomplish it for you. Absolutely excellent at facilitating underwater photography, which is what about 90% of the guests are there for. They carried EVERYTHING on/off the boat for you. We were spoiled rotten.
Sabang (PG)/Blue Ribbon Dive Resort, 6 nights, 5 1/2 diving days, 17 dives incl AOW class :
Overall Impression of Blue Ribbon: Want to take a course? Want to have a leisurely dive schedule and good varied cuisine, shopping, and parties at your fingertips? This is a good place for you and if you run the numbers it is an incredible value.
Sabang/PG Diving:
Gorgeous coral everywhere, some huge fish and tons of small fish. Lots of nudis and some great muck diving, too. Short boat rides, exhilarating currents, a few wrecks, and an above water party atmosphere.
Boat Transfer to Sabang/PG:
The transfer arranged by Blue Ribbon was half an hour early. The boatmen did the best job they could to keep us and our things from getting wet. The crossing was a bit choppy but otherwise uneventful. It took approximately 90 minutes from Club O to Blue Ribbon. There was some lost in translation and we didn’t realize that they needed cash in pesos to the boatman, but the resort helped us get it sorted.
Resort/Room:
This is a great size resort for us with 12 cottages, a small restaurant and onsite dive shop. The room was incredibly spacious and included a mini-fridge which was awesome to have. The a/c paired with the provided fan were adequate to keep the room comfortable. The room was serviced everyday which was unnecessary but nice. We did enjoy the fluffy towels. The real gem of this place is the staff, especially Shirly, who made everything from inquiries and initial booking to souvenir shopping to checkout as flawless as possible. Shirly is amazing and kind- an absolute joy, who really made our trip here as relaxing and special as possible.
Food:
I feel guilty to admit that we ate almost exclusively at the resort, but the menu was reasonably priced and varied. This coupled with the ability to put meals and beverages on our account to pay by credit card or paypal at end was a huge advantage and added to our ability to relax due to the fact that we had problems getting cash and exchanging existing USD to pesos (more about this later in the considerations section). I enjoyed the Asian dishes best, but also the fruit smoothies and milkshakes were very nice too. They did have filtered water available at the bar, and a beverage such as coffee, tea, or hot chocolate was complimentary following each dive. There are so many restaurants in this area, though that if I were not diving as much and/or working on AOW I would have explored more. You could never go hungry in Sabang, there are endless choices in a range of prices at your fingertips.
Dive Schedule:
This was hard for me but wonderful for my husband. The first dive of the day was at 10AM. That meant briefing at 9:45, usually in the water by 10AM. The dive sites can be 1 min -10mins away, most were 1-5 mins away. So they always returned the resort between dives. There was a 10AM, 12:30PM, 3PM everyday, and a night dive at 6:30PM about every other night upon request. They were flexible on the times. They will go to Verde if the conditions are right (they weren’t - high tides and a far away typhoon), you are appropriately experienced and certified (AOW min), and you have enough divers interested (requires 4 min). Dive times were dependent on who had the lowest air or NDL first, but were usually about 45 minutes. The DM would fire an SMB during the safety stop (absolutely necessary as the boat traffic here is intense). Some of the more advanced groups were getting 60 minute dives.
Dive boats & crew:
Two boat”men” and a DM per 5 divers, however it was usually just the two of us with one or two extra divers. I would have to say that this a very a safe and “by the book” dive operation, they give really great briefings and they are on the lookout to create a safe diving environment. I definitely think if you are a newer diver or looking for training that this is a great environment. We absolutely loved our instructor for AOW, US Army expat, Marcus. I feel that the dive conditions around Sabang have potential to change from a mild to an advanced diving situation from one moment to the next, and these guys are very aware of that and proactive. They were great about helping us with minor gear issues (blown oring in hp spool). The boatmen were great about carrying your setup bc/reg on/off the boat and helping you gear up. You were only responsible for carrying on/off mask, fins, weight belt, and camera if applicable.
The only exception to the impeccable safety atmosphere of this place was a few times with the boat”men” - they would often be sleeping as we surfaced with an SMB and we would have to wait awhile to be picked up. A bit unnerving with surface current and heavy boat traffic. This never happened with the Instructors in tow, but when it was just the DM, they seemed to be a bit lackadaisical. There was obvious frustration in the expressions of the DMs when this would happen and it seemed that after a day or two it must have been addressed internally, for the boat”men” were much better.
Boat transfer to Batangas:
Showed up a few minutes late (or as Shirly joked Filipino time), much bigger boat, much smoother ride. They even stopped for us to watch a large pod of dolphins. About 3/4s of the way to Batangas we lost one of the engines and we went from fast to slow. I think the whole ride took about 90 minutes.
Car transfer to the Manila Marriot:
On time, took about 2 ½ hours, driver was very friendly and helpful.
Manila Marriot:
Very secure, required a metal detector to get in. Check in was a little slow. The room was booked way ahead and I thought a bit pricey. But, man, that huge bathtub was worth it. I lived in that thing. The Java+ was a really nice little coffee bar/cafe. The actual Marriot Cafe was the most expensive and least appetizing of any our meals this trip (go to the mall or just do Java+). The attached mall was mostly large luxury stores and no real souvenir shopping to be had. Lots of nice looking restaurants though and a movie theatre. The complimentary airport shuttle the next morning was on time. We took the 6:30am and were at the airport at 6:45 even with a stop at the Remington en route to NAIA. I consider this hotel overpriced but really nice. They had a business center to check in online and print boarding passes (which saved us a ton of time at the airport) and they will come to your room and weigh your luggage which was helpful and reassuring that we wouldn’t have that issue at the bag drop.
Considerations:
Filipinos are incredibly kind and accomodating. My biggest takeaway was to just ask - they really want you to be pleased.
We really only had two “issues” on this trip. Getting pesos and traveler’s diarrhea. For the diarrhea we had antibiotics and immodium from the travel clinic. I would recommend taking both. For the pesos, we could not get any of the ATMs or the Max bank in Sabang to give us pesos with our debit card even though they and our bank said before and during it should be no problem. Credit cards however did work to get a cash advance from the Tropicana resort in Sabang (thank God!), but FYI Visa only. Our piles of USD were problematic for the money changers, because even though we had gone to the bank to get “pretty ones”, being in a wallet in the humidity for a week causes creases that made the vendors and changers uneasy, thus a lot of our US money was “worthless” in the PI. If we had more time in Manila it might have been easier to get cash from ATMs or change cash there. Next time I’m bring the limit in pesos, and stop in Manila to change or get cash. I’m also pre ordering pristine new US bills from the bank and keeping them in an envelope unfolded.
Sabang: There have been several threads/comments/questions about young Filipina escorts/companions with much older men. We saw this several times at the restaurant at our dive resort.
Travel/Flights:
Denver to Tokyo (United): Nice new Dreamliner 787 and very friendly and generous crew made the trip as bearable as it can be in Economy class for a 12hr flight.
Tokyo to Manila (ANA): Nice to have the 2, 4, 2 setup so we could be together and alone, nice, attentive crew, noticeably smaller personal space than the 787 but fine for a 4.5 hr flight. Was able to sign up for ANA online so we could change our seats (we were originally seated separately since we booked through United) and check in online which was a life saver ticket to a shorter line upon departure at Ninoy Aquino airport, especially since this was a full flight - the ticketing person said “good you checked in online ahead - we are bumping people”.
Tokyo (Narita) airport: Very nice, lots of shopping and food options. I discovered the squat toilet, although there are bathrooms with both styles of toilets available.
Manila airport: weird organization, was surprised most of the vendors did not accept credit cards - don’t leave your souvenir shopping to the last minute - I didn’t see lots of options in the way of t-shirts, hats,etc - but I was rushing. We arrived 2 hrs and 45 mins prior to our flight time and waited 25 mins in the main ANA line to get to the real lines, luckily we had checked in online and printed boarding passes previously at the Marriot so we go in the shorter “checked in online” line instead of the 30+ minute everyone else line. Security was quick, I think total it took us an hour and change to get to our gate (obviously more if we had to use the horrifically long everybody line at ANA check-in). Had to check in to the gate area and leave your boarding pass if you wanted to make a last minute trip to the restroom.
Short Version:
Overall:
If you are wanting to get your US toes wet in SE Asia, I cannot recommend the Philippines highly enough. I could not believe how incredible the diving was, how easy it was to get around and the friendliness of the locals. Well worth the slightly longer/more expensive flight, which is more than balanced out by affordable accoms, diving, food, and the quality of diving available. I can highly recommend both Anilao for great muck diving with some coral and Club O for serious divers and uw photographers. We also really enjoyed Sabang for lots of great coral diving with some really good muck diving in a party town and Blue Ribbon for great training and the wonderful resort staff.
The only real drawback I can see is readjusting when you get back -not only to the jet lag though, because your eyes will be forever opened and it will be hard to see the Caribbean in the same light again!
Long Version:
Anilao/Club Ocellaris - 7 nights/6 diving days, 24 dives:
Overall Impression of Club O: Want to spend 4-6 hours underwater every dive day?
Want to spend your surface intervals charging camera batteries, unloading SD cards, discussing your sightings and shots with other divers of the same mindset? Have no need for TV or spa or Karaoke on your dive trip? Want simple but delicious cuisine? This is the place for you (and us).
Anilao Diving:
We love Bonaire in the Caribbean because you can dive your butt off, take your time, and enjoy the small stuff. We are first timers to SE Asia. So, we may have overshot it a bit by going here first. For us, this was heaven. Reviews also describe Anilao as muck diving and there is plenty of that. But there is also a lot of gorgeous coral here, too, which was great for me. I think the first day I saw 80% of my “hoping to see” list. By the end we were at 95% which is pretty excellent for 6 diving days. Of course there are loads of different nudi’s and that's what we saw most of. Also lots of frogfish, seahorse, pipefish, shrimp, crabs, and cephalopods. Hubby got his first real camera for this trip (Canon G16, after a gopro hero3, before that a canon s series) and had a great time, this is a haven for an UW photographer - I am going to have to start up myself for when we return.
Van Transfer to Anilao from NAIA: Flawless. Picked up right outside the airport exit doors, fired up the aircon and got us to Club O almost exactly 2 hrs after climbing in. Very safe and courteous driver.
Resort/Room:
Clean, simple, comfortable bed and bath. Good space for camera equipment in the room. Room was cleaned every 3 days which was adequate, but necessary. Lots of steep stairs, but they will carry everything for you when you check in and check out, so not much of an issue. Usually about 10-12 guests, I think they can handle a handful more.
Food:
Food was simple but very very good. Usually fruit, eggs, ham, and toast for breakfast (with one pancake/bacon and one french toast/bacon morning thrown in during our 7 night stay). Lunch and dinner were rice, three dishes (meat, veg, and fish), lunch was fruit for dessert, and dinner had ice cream, or something fancier for dessert. Brewed coffee in the morning and a hot water/instant coffee/tea station available all day. Cold filtered water also available all day at this station. Canned/bottle drinks were available for purchase. Restaurant staff was quiet, but friendly and extremely helpful.
Dive Schedule:
Breakfast at 7:30 am, Boats left about 8:30 am for two dives (about 5-20 min boat rides), surface interval on the boat with coffee or tea. Returned to the resort usually about 1pm ish. Lunch. Boats leave about 3:30p or 4p for usually an afternoon and night dive. Sometimes they would come back in between, and once we did a dusk dive for mandarin fish. Return to resort between 7:30-8:30pm. Dinner, bed. They pretty much let everyone dive their tank and come up in buddy pairs to the boat as required by your air/NDL. We are newer divers and limited by our air consumption, but even we averaged a lot of 60+ minute dives. Our longest was 80 mins, but a lot of the more experienced divers had mostly 75-90 minute dives.
Dive Boats & Crew:
5 divers max per boat and guide, plus two boatmen. Most days it was us two and one or two other divers. Boatmen and guides were the best I have ever had. Helpful and excellent at spotting. Also excellent at learning what you need/like/ want and trying to accomplish it for you. Absolutely excellent at facilitating underwater photography, which is what about 90% of the guests are there for. They carried EVERYTHING on/off the boat for you. We were spoiled rotten.
Sabang (PG)/Blue Ribbon Dive Resort, 6 nights, 5 1/2 diving days, 17 dives incl AOW class :
Overall Impression of Blue Ribbon: Want to take a course? Want to have a leisurely dive schedule and good varied cuisine, shopping, and parties at your fingertips? This is a good place for you and if you run the numbers it is an incredible value.
Sabang/PG Diving:
Gorgeous coral everywhere, some huge fish and tons of small fish. Lots of nudis and some great muck diving, too. Short boat rides, exhilarating currents, a few wrecks, and an above water party atmosphere.
Boat Transfer to Sabang/PG:
The transfer arranged by Blue Ribbon was half an hour early. The boatmen did the best job they could to keep us and our things from getting wet. The crossing was a bit choppy but otherwise uneventful. It took approximately 90 minutes from Club O to Blue Ribbon. There was some lost in translation and we didn’t realize that they needed cash in pesos to the boatman, but the resort helped us get it sorted.
Resort/Room:
This is a great size resort for us with 12 cottages, a small restaurant and onsite dive shop. The room was incredibly spacious and included a mini-fridge which was awesome to have. The a/c paired with the provided fan were adequate to keep the room comfortable. The room was serviced everyday which was unnecessary but nice. We did enjoy the fluffy towels. The real gem of this place is the staff, especially Shirly, who made everything from inquiries and initial booking to souvenir shopping to checkout as flawless as possible. Shirly is amazing and kind- an absolute joy, who really made our trip here as relaxing and special as possible.
Food:
I feel guilty to admit that we ate almost exclusively at the resort, but the menu was reasonably priced and varied. This coupled with the ability to put meals and beverages on our account to pay by credit card or paypal at end was a huge advantage and added to our ability to relax due to the fact that we had problems getting cash and exchanging existing USD to pesos (more about this later in the considerations section). I enjoyed the Asian dishes best, but also the fruit smoothies and milkshakes were very nice too. They did have filtered water available at the bar, and a beverage such as coffee, tea, or hot chocolate was complimentary following each dive. There are so many restaurants in this area, though that if I were not diving as much and/or working on AOW I would have explored more. You could never go hungry in Sabang, there are endless choices in a range of prices at your fingertips.
Dive Schedule:
This was hard for me but wonderful for my husband. The first dive of the day was at 10AM. That meant briefing at 9:45, usually in the water by 10AM. The dive sites can be 1 min -10mins away, most were 1-5 mins away. So they always returned the resort between dives. There was a 10AM, 12:30PM, 3PM everyday, and a night dive at 6:30PM about every other night upon request. They were flexible on the times. They will go to Verde if the conditions are right (they weren’t - high tides and a far away typhoon), you are appropriately experienced and certified (AOW min), and you have enough divers interested (requires 4 min). Dive times were dependent on who had the lowest air or NDL first, but were usually about 45 minutes. The DM would fire an SMB during the safety stop (absolutely necessary as the boat traffic here is intense). Some of the more advanced groups were getting 60 minute dives.
Dive boats & crew:
Two boat”men” and a DM per 5 divers, however it was usually just the two of us with one or two extra divers. I would have to say that this a very a safe and “by the book” dive operation, they give really great briefings and they are on the lookout to create a safe diving environment. I definitely think if you are a newer diver or looking for training that this is a great environment. We absolutely loved our instructor for AOW, US Army expat, Marcus. I feel that the dive conditions around Sabang have potential to change from a mild to an advanced diving situation from one moment to the next, and these guys are very aware of that and proactive. They were great about helping us with minor gear issues (blown oring in hp spool). The boatmen were great about carrying your setup bc/reg on/off the boat and helping you gear up. You were only responsible for carrying on/off mask, fins, weight belt, and camera if applicable.
The only exception to the impeccable safety atmosphere of this place was a few times with the boat”men” - they would often be sleeping as we surfaced with an SMB and we would have to wait awhile to be picked up. A bit unnerving with surface current and heavy boat traffic. This never happened with the Instructors in tow, but when it was just the DM, they seemed to be a bit lackadaisical. There was obvious frustration in the expressions of the DMs when this would happen and it seemed that after a day or two it must have been addressed internally, for the boat”men” were much better.
Boat transfer to Batangas:
Showed up a few minutes late (or as Shirly joked Filipino time), much bigger boat, much smoother ride. They even stopped for us to watch a large pod of dolphins. About 3/4s of the way to Batangas we lost one of the engines and we went from fast to slow. I think the whole ride took about 90 minutes.
Car transfer to the Manila Marriot:
On time, took about 2 ½ hours, driver was very friendly and helpful.
Manila Marriot:
Very secure, required a metal detector to get in. Check in was a little slow. The room was booked way ahead and I thought a bit pricey. But, man, that huge bathtub was worth it. I lived in that thing. The Java+ was a really nice little coffee bar/cafe. The actual Marriot Cafe was the most expensive and least appetizing of any our meals this trip (go to the mall or just do Java+). The attached mall was mostly large luxury stores and no real souvenir shopping to be had. Lots of nice looking restaurants though and a movie theatre. The complimentary airport shuttle the next morning was on time. We took the 6:30am and were at the airport at 6:45 even with a stop at the Remington en route to NAIA. I consider this hotel overpriced but really nice. They had a business center to check in online and print boarding passes (which saved us a ton of time at the airport) and they will come to your room and weigh your luggage which was helpful and reassuring that we wouldn’t have that issue at the bag drop.
Considerations:
Filipinos are incredibly kind and accomodating. My biggest takeaway was to just ask - they really want you to be pleased.
We really only had two “issues” on this trip. Getting pesos and traveler’s diarrhea. For the diarrhea we had antibiotics and immodium from the travel clinic. I would recommend taking both. For the pesos, we could not get any of the ATMs or the Max bank in Sabang to give us pesos with our debit card even though they and our bank said before and during it should be no problem. Credit cards however did work to get a cash advance from the Tropicana resort in Sabang (thank God!), but FYI Visa only. Our piles of USD were problematic for the money changers, because even though we had gone to the bank to get “pretty ones”, being in a wallet in the humidity for a week causes creases that made the vendors and changers uneasy, thus a lot of our US money was “worthless” in the PI. If we had more time in Manila it might have been easier to get cash from ATMs or change cash there. Next time I’m bring the limit in pesos, and stop in Manila to change or get cash. I’m also pre ordering pristine new US bills from the bank and keeping them in an envelope unfolded.
Sabang: There have been several threads/comments/questions about young Filipina escorts/companions with much older men. We saw this several times at the restaurant at our dive resort.
Travel/Flights:
Denver to Tokyo (United): Nice new Dreamliner 787 and very friendly and generous crew made the trip as bearable as it can be in Economy class for a 12hr flight.
Tokyo to Manila (ANA): Nice to have the 2, 4, 2 setup so we could be together and alone, nice, attentive crew, noticeably smaller personal space than the 787 but fine for a 4.5 hr flight. Was able to sign up for ANA online so we could change our seats (we were originally seated separately since we booked through United) and check in online which was a life saver ticket to a shorter line upon departure at Ninoy Aquino airport, especially since this was a full flight - the ticketing person said “good you checked in online ahead - we are bumping people”.
Tokyo (Narita) airport: Very nice, lots of shopping and food options. I discovered the squat toilet, although there are bathrooms with both styles of toilets available.
Manila airport: weird organization, was surprised most of the vendors did not accept credit cards - don’t leave your souvenir shopping to the last minute - I didn’t see lots of options in the way of t-shirts, hats,etc - but I was rushing. We arrived 2 hrs and 45 mins prior to our flight time and waited 25 mins in the main ANA line to get to the real lines, luckily we had checked in online and printed boarding passes previously at the Marriot so we go in the shorter “checked in online” line instead of the 30+ minute everyone else line. Security was quick, I think total it took us an hour and change to get to our gate (obviously more if we had to use the horrifically long everybody line at ANA check-in). Had to check in to the gate area and leave your boarding pass if you wanted to make a last minute trip to the restroom.
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