Itinerary & Blog Page
Detailed Itinerary| 18 Mar | Changi
Airport Terminal 2,
Singapore (0925hrs) -> Male Airport (1215hrs). 2 hours road trip and a quick boat transfer .... we were in Lembeh Resort by 1500hrs Sock and I were assigned Room 4B which was in the older wing of the resort.    Nice spacious bedroom, seperate coffee table room with bar fridge & in-room water dispenser, outdoor & indoor private showers and a large balcony over looking the mountain and the straits.   SC and Sus got assigned Room 12 which were the newer room with the BEST VIEW ... at the price of a long climb up 200+ steps each time you forget to bring something out of the room. PHEW!   Around the resort grounds   The Dive Center Each room was allocated a storage area for our dive gear. All gears were tagged so that the dive guides could identify, setup and load your gear to the correct boat each morning. At the end of the day, they would then wash your gear and return it to your storage area.    Nitrox analysing was a breeze. You just have to witness the process while the guides analyse your tank, tag/label the tanks, log the O2%. Just sign on the dotted line in the logbook :> COOL SERVICE! The Camera Room Very spacious and well equiped with toolbox, power stablizer to protect your chargers from any electic spikes, camera towels get changed daily (or alternate days), air gun to blow dry your rig in between dives ... etc It ended up that this is the place you visit most often, before breakfast to setup the camera, in between dives to change and charge batteries and after dinner to download a day's worth of pictures and charge more batteries.    We felt totally at ease leaving our setup in the camera room overnight as everyone's rig was bigger than ours !! No prizes for guessing which of the setups does not belongs to us !    |
| 19 Mar |    Dive 1: Nudi Retreat 2 10 pygmy seahorses in 1 sea fan ... an excellent start for the trip. Ornate ghost pipefish (yellow) Dive 2: Pante Parigi Flamboyant cuttlefish, juv filefish, frogfish and the usual suspects buried under the black sand (devil fish, mantis shrimp ...etc) Dive 3: TK 1 Emperor shrimp on sea cucumber and all 3 colors (blue, black, yellow) of ribbon eel in 1 dive site    |
| 20 May | Dive 4: Critter Hunt One of my favourite sites for nudis and black coral shrimps. Dive 5: Tanjung Kubur Seahorses - thorny yellow, red and white. Tozuema shrimps, popcorn shrimps, cockadoo waspfish ...and the Wonderpus Dive 6: Jahir 2 Finger dragonet, ornate ghost pipefish (black)    Typical resort day at the pool for Sock ... lying down    |
| 21 May | Dive 7: Hairball too Snowflake moray eel, orang utan crab, yellow humpback scorpion fish ... etc Dive 8: Rojos 2 Tozeuma shrimp (red), spider crabs, jaw fish ... etc Dive 9: Tandu rusa "Long leg octopus" ... with its cools mimic of a flounder Dive 10: Lembeh Resort House Reef (Night Dive) pygmy cuttlefish, decorator crabs, lots of finds in the seagrass, catfish ... etc    Sunset and preparing for night dive ...    |
| 22 May | Dive
11: Dante's Wall Blue water wall dive for a change. Longnose hawkfish in black coral (these guys a just too fast to photograph) Excellent soft coral formation. Banana nudi at 30m. Dive 12: Jiko Yance 2 tiger cowies, crabs in feather stars, variety of nudis ...etc Dive 13: Sea Grass Site is just off the house reef of lembeh resort. Typical muck dive Dive 14: Aer Prang 1 (Night Dive) Excellent night dive watching the bobbit worm in action ! helmet shell crawling on the sea floors, weird looking umbrella nudibranch the size of a palm.    |
| 23 May | Dive
15: Aw Shucks Another must visit site ... ornate ghost pipefish, orange frogfish,wonderpus ...etc Dive 16: Magic Rock Excellent soft coral ... who says lembeh is all muck Dive 17: Nudi Falls Vis was really bad on this dive. We were at 2.5m trying to photograph 2 frogfishes and we could not see the surface. Phew ! Dive 18: Sarena Besar (Night Dive) Night dives in lembeh are a must-do ... bob-tail squid (1cm), bubble shell with luminous mantle, giant crab with sponge on back which keeps crashing into SC camera, spanish dancers ... etc    Happy Divers !    |
| 24 May | Dive 19: Nudi Retreat 1 One last look at the pygmy for this trip. Could not find the yellow one, but found the red ones in other fans. Soft coral carb was so well camoflage that i could not figure out where it was in a total focused photograph. Dive 12: Magic Crack Everyone came to say good bye for the final dive :> Mimic octopus, white-pinkish seahorse, hairy octopus, Eel Blenny ... see you next time.    |
| 25 May | Packed and ready to go home  1000hrs Transfer from Lembeh Resort to Airport. 1345hrs Flight home to Singapore |