East of Bali in November

[CajunDiva]

Just to clarify...Two Fish Divers is a PADI IDC...they train instructors. They offer all certifications from open water through divemaster and offer several IDC courses per year. I just learned that their Lembeh location is now a PADI 5* Resort.

I'm not trying to suggest where you should get the Advanced certification done, just letting you know that the option to do it in North Sulawesi definitely exists

 

[ocdiver1]

In 5 trips to Lembeh staying at 4 different places only 1 had an instructor, and the feedback was always that there was no need as relatively few people would come there to do a course. With that said I did meet a couple on their honeymoon who were actually doing their open water in Lembeh! So of course it's possible. With so little time on a first trip to an incredible part of the world I wouldn't advise anyone to do a course in North Sulawesi...allow full time for an absolute maximum amount of dives there. It can be done easily and cheaply by a multitude of dive ops in Bali..and a day trip by same to Tulamben could of course be included. They were talking about only having 5-6 days to dive in N.S... Anyway, that's my suggestion...its the same advice i would give friends if they were asking me.

 

[DiveExploreIndonesia]

1 : you can easily dive 2 or 3 days between Amed and Tulamben. You can find some walls and some black sand slope.
2: Pemutearn is on the northwest, but Candidasa is south east. Pemuteran is far from the rest of Bali, 3 to 4 hours drive with car. I would not lose hours in car ( Pemuteran is not better than North Sulawesie) .
3: Sanur or Amed/Tulamben have OK beach ( Sanur has white sand while east Bali has black sand) , you can find good dive centers at both locations.
4: Bangka is nice, but there is plenty of nice resorts on main island cost like Kima Bajo or Cocotinos. I would do a mix of both coral and black sand ( see answer to question 7).
5: Any agency in Indonesia can do it, just pick out the one that looks serious to you. Garuda Airline can be bought outside Indonesia .
6 : muck is easy diving, mostly black volcanic sand going slowly, looking for critters, not deep dive. Critters are rare species that you will generally not find anywhere else, the list can be long, have a look at some photo galleries on the Lembeh resort web page.
7: To be able to answer you the best, we would need to know your arrival and departure time in Bali, so it might or might not connect to Manado or from Manado.
Another option is to flight with Singapore airline and arrive ( from Denver) in Denpasar and depart from Manado .
I would do Bali first and the AOW in Sanur or/and Amed few days and then go to north Sulawesi for 5/6 days coral and 2/3 days black sand.