Diving in the Philippines

When we planned our trip to Southeast Asia, we had no intention of going to the Philippines but its proximity and the diving possibilities it offered were too hard to resist. Ian graciously offered to look after booking the trip; a daunting task with its 7000+ islands and 100s of dive sites and dive shops.

Our trip was planned for Vietnamese Tet so we could avoid the travel rush and things being shut down. As Vietnam is fairly close to the Philippines, we thought we could get a decent priced flight but surprisingly they were quite expensive. It proved cheaper to fly Air Asia to Bangkok and then take a Philippines flight from there.

Our first day was very long – the flight to Bangkok was maybe an hour and 20 minutes, then we caught our flight to Manila where we had a few hours to wait till our flight to Cebu. The airport in Manila was crazy. We landed international and had to wait FOREVER to get through immigration. Line ups were huge but the holding area was tiny so lines started going up the stairs. We had to claim our bags and have our flight tags checked before they were transferred to our next flight. Then we had to make our way to the domestic airport which was next door but involved leaving the international airport, going outside onto the sidewalk and trying to find the entrance to the domestic airport (they were not clearly marked).  It was dinnertime but the airport didn’t have any restaurants so we went without dinner.

The plane landed in Cebu around 11pm and we took a taxi to Pier Cuatro Hotel. The hotel was something else let me tell you. First of all, it seemed like it was in the middle of deserted buildings next to the docks but a very large, busy disco club sat across the street. Our driver commented on the disco being ‘popular’ and one couldn’t help but guess why a disco was located in such an isolated area….

The hotel was hopping despite being past 11pm. We were shown to our room and on route passed an obese man sitting shirtless in his boxer shorts smoking a cigarette underneath a no-smoking sign. NICE. Our room was sparse and mattresses thin and rock hard. To top it all off, someone was having a party in their room making a lot of noise so sleep was impossible. . The place got amazing reviews on tripadvisor which is why we had booked it. Unbelievable.

Other than our accommodation in Cebu, everything else was arranged with Sea Explorers (S.E.) a dive company that Ian had discovered in his research. We were doing an island hopping dive package with them and all transfers were looked after.  Considering we were going to 4 islands that would involve both boat and car transfers, so the fact that S.E. was looking after things, made it easier for us.

Over the last 10 days, we did about 30 dives, including our advanced dive course, bringing our dive experience up to 50 dives in total. Our first island stop was a very flat island called Malaspacua and the resort Ocean Vida.

We loved the resort. Sven the owner was friendly, our room was great, and the food excellent. Sitting on the beach watching the sunset was a favourite.

The dive shop was incredibly well organized with write ups on all the dive sites. Some sites required the diver to have their advanced certification which is why we decided to do our advanced diving.  Day trips involved lunch and three dives, or there were single dives, sunset dives and early morning dives. Boats were large with lots of sitting, a toilet, and non-skid floors. Entry was giant stride off the back.

The day trip was off a tiny island where we had a BBQ lunch. It was a gorgeous setting.  

While on the island, I kept an anxious eye on the approaching storm -

But we were lucky and it passed us by.

Ting was our dive master for many of our dives.

After our first few dives, we grilled him on all the fish and tiny marine life he had shown us. When he realized how interested we were, he started taking a slate to write things down so he wouldn’t forget at the end of our dives. He also lent me his magnifying glass to see things better – this was most helpful. The coral was beautiful: feather, barrel, sponges, leaf, and anemone. 

We saw the usual anemone fish, batfish, scorpion, grouper, lion, squirrel, fusilier, Moorish idol, etc.  Despite not being certified to dive deep, we ended up going about 27 metres.  The next day, we started our dive course with Tata.

Our first dive was to be the deep dive to see the Thresher sharks. Thresher sharks have a curved tail as long as their bodies. Here’s a tattoo of one (this is Ting):

It was an early morning dive leaving at 5am, diving around 5:45am and was quite a circus. As we suited up to enter the water, approximately 11 other boats showed up.  The area was known as a cleaning station for the Thresher sharks; it had something to do with the sharks coming to get cleaned by cleaner shrimps (I think).

Tata, our course instructor, discussed narcosis with us – this is a condition that can happen when you stay in the deep for too long. It’s a euphoric state where you feel completely confident and in control. Tata was taking a slate along with a simple math equation on it and we would fill it out underwater.  We moved to our deep dive location and Tata handed me the equation – I merely glanced at it, jotted down the answer and thought to myself how simple it was.  

We then planted ourselves to watch for the Thresher sharks. Tata pointed to some dark shadows swimming about but without my glasses, the details were invisible to me. At one point however, a Thresher shark did swim by us close enough for me to see it but it went by fairly quickly so it was a bit disappointing to be honest. There were divers everywhere – all just sitting, waiting and watching, and to be honest, I found it a bit boring. I think we saw 5 sharks but for me, only one really stood out.

Back at the boat, Tata came up to me and handed me the slate saying – look at your answer Wendie. A glance showed me how completely wrong the answer was and I looked at him in dismay. Tata just smiled and said – that’s narcosis. It was so clearly wrong yet underwater, it felt completely right. I remembered my thought process behind the answer and knew, back on the boat, how wrong it was. It was an eye opening experience for both Ian and I.

Our next lessons were navigation, buoyancy, natural environment and night dive. The navigation was easy but the buoyancy course was a bit tough. We had to hover for one minute but no matter what I did, I kept flipping over backwards so I was hovering upside down. Tata finally figured out that it was the placement of my weights and after a slight adjustment, I was able to hover. We spent another dive working on buoyancy and it really did help. I began calling Tata a Ninja diver as we had never seen someone hold so still for so long without resting on any surface. Many divers use their muck sticks or place the tip of their fins on the ocean floor to help them maintain a position. Tata could hover vertically for over a minute. He was a great mentor.

The sunset dive was brilliant. We entered the water just as it was getting dark and underwater, it grew black. I was quite nervous about a night dive but it proved to be a fantastic experience. We each had a torch so it was incredibly easy to find each other and see marine life. I was thrilled with the amount of life that we spotted: colourful mandarin fish; different crabs – bright orange or red, others scuttling along under shells, some very tiny; cleaner shrimp with their long tentacles; seahorse and squid. I had such a super time.

We did quite a few dives off Malaspacua seeing so many fish. We swam with a black frog fish, saw many seahorse and mandarin fish mating on another night dive, Ting and I spotted a fairly large barracuda, and Ian saw a school of cuttlefish. Ian did another thresher shark dive (I bowed out of that one b/c of my poor eye sight) and Ian said a few sharks came up close. It was a super great time, we met some lovely people from England, from Switzerland and a couple from B.C. who say the diving on the west coast of Canada is brilliant. Who would have thought?

Ting and Tata were great guides and Ocean Vida was a great place to stay.

We moved onto our next stop, Moalboal and Turtle Bay with a stop in Cebu to buy a dive computer. It might seem a luxury to buy a dive computer but it is necessity when diving so much. The computer is worn on your wrist and Tata kindly used his instructor’s discount to get us 30% off.

The computer keeps track of how deep you dive, tells you how long you can stay underwater and how long your decompression stop should be. This prevents decompression sickness (the bends). Without a computer, we’d have to use the tables and they are VERY conservative, too conservative. We’d hardly have any time underwater. I felt more comfortable having the computer especially since we were diving a fair bit.

Turtle Bay resort was located on the southern west coast of Cebu Island which surprised Ian and I as we had thought we were headed to an island. All of our accommodations were about 55 dollars a night – at this resort, we stayed in a lovely bungalow –

We arrived late so we met Rubin, our dive master, got our gear ready for the next day, and settled in for the night.