Olivers Far Eastern Tales

There was a 2 day trip to Panagatan Island on the weekend ... 5 deep Nitrox dives (so deep my SmartCom was beeping permanently) with mobula rays, a few mantas, two whale sharks (one at the surface) and a lot of other interesting things. We overtook a school of melon head dolphins on the way to Panagatan. There was a weird japanese guy on the boat ... Sato san. Really funny. The boat wasn't that good, and neither was the food, but the dive sites were just great. Boat was just a big Bangka, and due to the weather no one could sleep outside the cabin.
After that, things went quiet at Calypso but they still managed to organise all the dives. On one dive I was alone with the dive master, but luckily there was a dive master trainee in the shop, so they did have enough people for all the trips.
Travel from Boracay to Sabang was easy but took some time. Took a bangka to Caticlan before 7am, then got a ticket on the RoRo-Ferry from Caticlan to Roxas on Mindoro. That was actually a pretty good boat (for the Philippines) and didn't sink on the whole passage, even though it was really a RoRo ferry. That connection is part of the "Nautical Highway", which comprises of a set of matching ferry connections between the main islands (and of bus lines using these ferries - it's now possible to take a bus from Manila to Davao, even though it still takes a lot of time). Apparently, the Filipinos are serious about making the Nautical Highway work. From Roxas, there was a minibus connection to Calapan (one could buy the tickets on the boat), which was pretty fast. Onwards from Calapan I took a jeepney to Puerto Galera. That was actually a surprise - jeepneys look a bit like home made flatbed trucks with benches mounted on them, but the jeepney was actually quite new, in good shape, and it was surprisingly fast (good acceleration and good brakes as well). Those jeepneys have tires for bad terrain (probably they are 4wd but I doubt it), and they can go on very bad roads or on mud tracks through the mountains. From Puerto Galera, another Jeepney to Sabang Beach. There, I settled in "Sonny's Inn", which appears to be more of a facility for long term visitors. But it suits me. The room is quite big, with kitchen and a comfortable wicker chair. Clean and tidy. Dive shop "Dive Sabang" has sort of low season but diving is good.
oliver.bonten 3:47 PM - [Link]
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Diving is good, but not spectacular. Would still prefer the Perhentian Islands. But people say that the visibility used to be much better until a week or two ago (monsoon is expected in another 1 or 2 weeks). Otherwise, Boracay is quite built up and developed. The beach is beautiful, but certainly crowded (and was much more crowded the weeks before). Dive shop is running out of customers so there is an increasing risk of dives being cancelled. :-( I hope this improves during the weekend. But it's probably more like a place for couples and not so much for hard core divers. A lot of Asian couples are spending their honeymoon here.
oliver.bonten 2:10 PM - [Link]
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This went off with a story book start. Smoother than I expected. It took me just under 24 hrs to get from home to Boracay, with nothing after Manila pre-booked. I expected to be there maybe 2 hours before sunset. I was there shortly after noon. Left home around 8 to catch my flight at 11:20, almost 14 hours of flight to Taipei. 14 hours in a plane is pretty long. The plane was 10 minutes late and with my originally 55 Minutes connection time, I already expected to arrive in Manila without luggage. But the planes were only 2 or 3 gates apart, and when I sat in the plane to Manila, I could watch them loading my luggage into the plane, which was good. I was surrounded by a bunch of other Germans who seemed to be headed straight for Angeles city. Chiang Kai Shek airport looks quite old and has the musty smell of an aged aircon system. Same applies to Manila's Ninoy Aquino Airport, so it has definitely already been around before it was named after Ninoy Aquino. Reached Manila around 10am, and then it took me less than 1 hour to get through immigration & customs, change money and get per taxi to the domestic airport. I asked for the next available flight for Boracay (my concern was that it may be only for the next day), and they told me I could get aboard the 12:20 flight. That was around 11. When I checked in, they offered me to get a seat on the 11:30 flight, which was "not fully booked". Turned out there were only 3 passengers on this flight. The plane was a 40 seater turboprop. Then, from the airport, it took a 30 peso motorbike ride to the pier, 20 peso pier charge and another 19 pesos for the boat to Boracay - price seems to be in inverse proportion to importance. Well, I checked in at the dive shop, found a room (Boracay is surprisingly expensive), walked around, ate, drank, and after now more than 24 hours was rather tired.
oliver.bonten 12:52 PM - [Link]
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It's almost 1,5 years since my last visit to Asia and since my last immersion into the Big Blue. About time to go again! Between project and project, between work and more work, I somehow managed to squeeze in four weeks of leave. This year, it's going to the Philippines again. Now the observant reader might ask: why again the Philippines, when I disliked my last visit there so much? But the Philippines are big and have a variety of different diving areas, so I thought I'd give it another try. This time I'm going to Boracay and to Sabang Beach, and those places are said to be a bit more lively than Moalboal or Alona Beach. Well, Alona was not so bad. Moalboal was a boring place. I hate it when in Asian restaurants in Asia you can taste the Maggi cubes in the curry. I'm still looking for a place that is like Langkawi on land and like the Perhentians under water ...
Holiday preparations were a bit hectic. I replaced some of my diving gear earlier this year on the Boot fair in D㉳eldorf, including my old regulator (which is out of maintenance) and my old dive bag, which had completely corroded zippers. Now, three days before the trip, I discovered that my good old Aladin was out of battery. It takes 5 weeks to have the battery replaced, and Uwatec doesn't service the old models anymore anyway. Big problem. Dive computer rental for 4 weeks costs about the same as buying a small one. So I had to do a last minute trip to the two dive shops near Frankfurt and buy a new one ... I chose a SmartCom this time, not wireless like the Aladin, but essentially the same, with storage space for 50 hours of diving (the Aladin could only store 200 Minutes) and an infrared transmitter (Aladin was using fickle cable connections which often fail). The SmartCom can talk to my iPaq, so that's another advantage. Lucky I discovered the battery failure while still here.
Then I packed my luggage, put the new dive bag onto the bathroom scales, and it read 35kg. Not good. Finally I decided on dumping my old "big" camera, that's 7kg for camera and flash, and another kilo for the two sets of batteries (for the flash). It would have been the last trip for the big camera, since the next one I'm going to buy is smaller and better (my current small camera is still smaller, so it has a chance of being of further use), so it was a tough decision, but it became much easier when I compared the last pictures I took with the big camera and the last ones I took with the small camera. True, for the big one I have a macro converter, and the Philippines are macro country (under water), but it doesn't help if the flash constantly overexposes at short distances. This means I'm travelling a bit underequipped in terms of photography, so it's good I didn't choose one of those expensive world class places with all the big fish and great visibility.
oliver.bonten 9:33 PM - [Link]
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