Diving FROM Japan

[jackalope299]

Not sure if this fits here, but here goes...

Spent the last 5 days in Palau diving and kayaking. I used to live in Micronesia so I have been there several times.

Palau is a great place to dive from Japan. It is the same timezone, takes a less than 8 hours to get there (including a transfer on Guam) and is much cheaper than diving in Japan (from what I have seen).

If you have air miles, it costs 25,000 round trip on Continental to get there from Japan (50,000 for the 2 of us). 2 days of 2-tank boat dives, lunch, tanks, weights, guide, etc, 1 day kayaking, and 4 nights in a very nice hotel was around $800 for 2 of us total.

As for the diving it was a great as always. Great viz, sharks, sea turtles, walls, even tiger sharks feeding on a whale carcass (actually missed it by a few hours as the carcass was already on a beach when we arrived).

Just yell if you want more details.

Cheers

 

[jagfish]

Thanks for the post...
Always interested in hearing more about a destination like that.

Your $800 for 2 people was both people using air miles for the tickets?

JAG

 

[Kim]

My regular Japanese buddy has been to Pulau twice now - he also reckons it's very good. As far as the airmiles go - which group of companies is Continental - is that the same as JAL?

 

[Chris Bangs]

I think you can use JAL miles on Continential but the miles can not be used in addition to continential miles to meet to requirement.

If you do go dive with Sam's or Fish N Fins, Or better yet take a week and use the Agressor. At all cost avoid the Palau Sport! What a joke! Sardine can accomidations, limited number of dives and typical 30 min Japanese style guided dives, and lots of extra charges for the night dives, beer ect!

 

[jackalope299]

Yes it was $800ish (I forget the final tab) for 2 of us, hotel, diving, kayaking, and using 50,000 airmiles.

Since I got the air tickets at the last minute I had to pay another $100ish for fees, taxes, etc. You can avoid that if you plan better than I did

Since I lived on Guam I booked though MDA.

http://www.mdaguam.com/travel1.htm

Great service and good prices. All by email too.

Cheers

 

[Mar Scuba]

I know Cindy of MDA, a real nice person.

We also book Aggressor tours to Palau and hope to get a technical week to Truk one of these days when everyone is up to speed.

Glad to hear of the nice trip.

Cheers,

 

[jackalope299]

I did a week aboard the Thorafin (forget spelling) on Chuuk. It was great, almost too much diving. It was pretty much dive, snack, dive, snack, dive, nap, etc.

Even Guam has some interesting dives. There is a beach (long swim) dive in the harbor where you can dive on a WWI and WWII wreck on the same dive. There is a German vessel scuttled during WWI and a Japanese vessel was sunk and happened to land right on top of the German one.

Lots of typhoons though.

cheers