Welcome to this Indonesia's unnofficial dive site. I'm still  waiting for some friends to send me pictures from our dive trips (a BIG hint to those friends who happen to visit this page..) But I will list some places where I used to go there. Further explanation would be posted together with the picture, so again, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If you're planning to go diving in Indonesia, feel free to contact me and you could also borrow the Indonesian diving guide (that is if you live quite close to me.. I'm in Australia at the moment, in case you haven't noticed)

The best thing about diving in Indonesian water is... it's warm all year round !!! You don't have to struggle to get in that thick wetsuit. The reefs in some places are excellent and lots of beautiful fishes.

Thousand Islands

Thousand Island consists of lots of island (isn't that obvious enough from the name...) but only a few are occupied. Even fewer were turned into resort areas. It's a really nice and relaxing destination to spend one weekend away, the nearest island is only 20 min away and the furthest resort island is about 2.5 hours away by boat.

Mimi and I call this : our island. We did our training here and continue coming here even after we have to train everyone else. The corals are not the best, I would even rate it only 5/10. The fish are not that grand either, but the place is super duper nice... After the dive, you just lie down on the pier, waiting for the sun to set and sometimes jump in the water to float until the dark takes over... It's been more than 2 years now since I came there the last time. That was me, setting up the gear at sunset on the jetty.

We came to this island by accident actually. It was quite expensive and we couldn't really afford it but our booking in Sepa somehow was not taken and it was full. The dive sites are great, lots better than Sepa. The corals are still intact and I saw a lot more fish too. Strangely enough, the island is divided into 3 part with 3 different owners. Once, I dived from the jetty and got carried away by current so I had to went up the jetty in the enemy's territory. Lucky enough the guard let me walked through, usually he said, "illegal entities" have to pay $10 if they cross the border of the other's... Geeezzz...

Went with a bunch of boys from the commercial diving school, and of course being one of the only 3 girls among some 20 other guys gave me the priviledge to try on Kirby Morgan (the commercial dive gears) underwater for like 15 minutes. It's a bit awkward in a way that you could talk... you could see me in the picture on the left, struggling to get that helmet on with Bayu's help (no, you can't see him on the picture..)

Here's sunrise in Pulau Karya jetty. Nice, huh ? Taken just a few minutes before we did an early morning dive, watch the darkness turn into light underwater. Hmm.. no place like home...

photograph by. Thea.

Glenn dragged me to this island just before I leave to Australia about 2 years ago (that's him in the picture, we were on the boat). We had with us some 20 other high-school students who were on a camping journey and my task was : to teach them to snorkel. We even took some of them underwater with tank and everything and everybody loved it. This is one of the non-resort island in the area and thank god they had "becak" (traditional cart) otherwise we would have to walk about 1 km carrying all the tank and gears to our camp site. Not funny..

This site is quite new, found only when one of our instructor (Thea) moved there. The place was quite rough and it's not unusual that students would get a severe seasick. Once, our boat crashed on one of the island there so we were stranded for like 2 nights there, building pathetic tents to sleep in. We were even visited by a big mountain cat and everybody was busy keeping the fire on afterwards...

On the left picture is the traditional fishermen boat that we use to go diving. Not the one that crashed, but similar. On the right picture is our pathetic tent and look how frustrating we were...

Ujung Kulon

Ujung Kulon was located at the western tip of Java island. We went there by boat and it took 10 full hours to go there in a very very rough condition. I was standing on the dock and the horizon was moving violently before my eyes.. needless to say, everybody got seasick (for 10 hours !!!!). The dive sites were good, so it's worth it anyway. It took 12 hours for us to go back due to the current and again, it wasn't a pleasant journey.. but look at the beautiful beach there.. isn't it lovely.. (that tiny weeny little figure next to the boat is me, by the way..)

Tulamben

I was here in 1996 with a bunch of friends : Mimi, Lala, Linda, Uki, Do-Q, Thea, Pak Amak (our nanny since he's the really old one) and Pak Edi. It's a nice and easy shore dive and we just swam 50 m straight from beach before reaching the ship wreck. The water was clear and lots of big fish here.. !! It's a must-visit dive spot I reckon.

Menjangan Island

Went there on the same trip as Tulamben with the same people. Another nice and easy dive, with clear waters and a garden full of eels !!!! The coral garden was excellent and lots of colorful fish as well. The second group saw 3 sharks but again, knowing my luck, I didn't see any...

Pemuteran

We dived in Chris's garden. Chris is the dive shop owner, he's Australian and he has lots of foster children in Bali. One of them came while we were there, asking for a bike because he passed the exam with an A or something, he..he.. cute, eh.. He joined us for the first dive (getting there with a weird boat), and while we were busy looking around he was busy with something else : collecting crown of thorns !! I rated the site as 8/10.

Nusa Penida

Never been here but I want to. It'a quite an advance site with big current running on regular basis. I'll tell you more about this site if I had a chance to dive there, probably this coming August.

Never been here either, but again.. I'd love to go there. More report later.

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