Malapascua or Phuket

[Mucksavage]

Do you prefer a built up polluted city with average diving or a picture postcard tropical island with world class macro and a totally unique opportunity to dive with Thresher Sharks? It boils down to an urban experience or a tropical experience really.

Malapascua is not a night life capital but there are plenty of good bars, the local discos are fun and you invariably end up making friends with dive guides, bar staff etc so you can experience it the local way.

For diving - I have done 10 in Phuket, none of which I particularly remember and 500++ in Malapascua, many being the best dives I've done. The Thresher Shark is incredible and to see it only 2 metres away is a once in a life time opportunity - available almost daily! It is a busy dive in the morning but Evolution is diving newly discovered cleaning stations with GPS so no one else knows where they are. Bringing people to Gato is always a joy - start with the swim through / cavern (50 metre over head - AOW only), exit to adult and juvenile white tips cruising around, admire the mating cuttlefish, watch the Big Mouth Mackerel school circling and then find a pygmy seahorse or two - seems to make even seasoned divers happy.

Add in the Dona Marylin wreck, Tapilon Japanese wreck, virgin walls, muck dives etc etc. And last of all - its The Philippines! Case closed.

I disagree that Alona is better. If you check for opinions on the Philippines section of SB you'll see that very few people talk about Alona as a top tier dive destination.

 

[Mucksavage]

And I meant to add the last great reason - its in The Philippines! Case closed.

 

[Quero]

Mucksavage, I love the PI, but I also love Phuket, and I really dislike it when people buy into and pass on stereotypes. (I could name a few about the PI as well, but I'm not like that.) The fact is that Phuket is not a "built up polluted city." It's an island, and in fact it is Thailand's largest island. Saying that the whole of Phuket is like the town of Patong (which in fact is built up and polluted) would be like saying the the whole of Luzon is like the city of Manila.

 

[Centrals]

If we are talking on DIVING then Phuket is very very ORDINARY.
There is NO CONTEST in terms of diving between Phuket and Malapascua.
If you had dived the wreck of Dona Marilyn and the King's Cruiser. Would you go back to the King's Cruiser again? Well, I certainly won't wasting my time and money.
BTW, I am not on diving trade or even a dive professional. I speak with my own experience as a paying customer.

 

[Quero]

Personal opinion is just that--personal and individual. What is good for one person is not necessarily what is good for the next. Personally, neither of those wrecks does a single thing for me, so as a yardstick, that one is fairly useless, to me, and if I were given these two dive sites as iconic, typical ones for each destination, I'd most likely give both places a pass as far as diving is concerned! This is why I tend not to make statements that express absolutes, since I recognize that for some people these dive sites are really quite interesting. Each dive destination has its pros and cons, its ordinary sites and its better ones. Weighing all the factors up and deciding what tips the balance is the trick, and the factors will have different weights according to each diver.

 

[Centrals]

This thread is about diving in Malapascua and Phuket.
I can ONLY give my personal experience on diving in Malapascua and Phuket. And I do not expect everyone agrees with my opinion.

BTW, Quero: Have you dived Malapascua before?

 

[Quero]

As I said, Centrals, I love the PI for diving. But the way I'm "made," I tend to see the good side of everything rather than the negatives. Every place has a good side and a bad one. I just don't focus on the parts I am not so hot on. Others seem hell-bent to create converts on one side or the other and express strong negative feelings in order to do so, whether it's "Phuket vs Malapascua" or "Puerto Galera vs Anilao" or "Andaman vs Gulf of Thailand." Not me--I don't engage in badmouthing any locale, but I am able to see the good in each of them.

 

[red_barbarian]

For the OP, which you will enjoy the diving on more will partly depend on what kind of diving you enjoy and how tolerant you are of crowded boats/sites. The good dives in Phuket tend to be a little shallower than in Malapscua. As you go deeper the dives in Malapscua get great and those in Phuket get less so.
The Monad Shoal Thresher shark dive in Malapascua is a drop down and wait on a cleaning station and hope a Thresher comes by kind of a dive. (Very crowded as well). During certain hours you can go over the edge and go down to a spectacular wall and at 45M a different cleaning station. Even at 30M this would be a special dive. Phuket does not have any dive sites of this quality that I have seen.
The wrecks in both locations are not very plentiful, but the Dona Marilyn is very good, lots of interesting swim throughs, minor and major penetration points. The King Cruiser does allow for about 120M penetration dive if your Adv Wreck certified, has an interesting swim thorough underneath between the hulls, and on a good viz day makes for a decent wreck site.
Costs: Rooms are better value in Phuket, I'd estimate 30% cheaper for the same quality of room. Dive costs, in Malapascua they were priced by the dive ~$30 a dive and $50 for Deco dives with a surcharge for long distance boat runs (~$20 for the trip). I think Phuket prices run around $120 for a 2 dive trip. Food will be a little cheaper in Thailand and better quality.
Onshore stuff: Phuket has a wide variety of accommodation and things to do outside of diving and more cultural stuff. Malapasqua has a great beach and gets quiet early.
My last trip was to Malapascua, had a great time and will go back again. My next trip is to Phuket for a tech live aboard, so I see the merits in both places. If you have to chose just one and you can do deeper dives preferably with deco stops go to Malapascua, (check out Evolution ).