My Favourite South East Asia Dive Sites

I took my open water certification at Pulau Dayang near Tioman and follow up by advance diver certification at Redang Island at 2007. I had only dive a few great dive sites around South East Asia (SEA), which is Sipadan, Similan, Tulamben, Tioman and Bunaken, that I will describe the geographical site and also the highlight of each dive experience.

My first introduction dive site would be Tioman Island. This was my first dive after my OWD and also my recent dive logged at Tioman. I believe this was the best dive sites that I love most that I can find at Peninsula Malaysia. The first dive was at Labas Rock and Sea Fan Garden that I like most. A little adventure dive through the rock and later amaze with the magnificent sea fan garden and many beautiful fishes.

After I complete my advance diver certification, then I visited Bali with some diving trip which is my second dive site introduction, Tulamben wreck dive. The wreck dive is a majestic view of the USS Liberty warship that stores a huge bio diversity of corals and fishes. Even though I only make 2 dives but I really didn’t manage to see everything but even the 30% coverage of the wreck was already worth a diving. I will definitely going back Bali for my second Tulamben and Nusa Penida diving.

My advance diving actually make me active with diving recently. On the same year after visiting Bali, then here come my third introduction dive site, which is my favorite dive site and I consider it the best so far, “Sipadan Island”. Beside Sipadan, there are 2 beautiful island Mabul and Kapalai that shore beautiful site as well that make the whole dive trip a wonderful experience. Even though Mabul is a dive sites that actually saw many beautiful macro sea creatures but the highlight was Sipadan Island wall dive. The first dive site ‘Drop off’ that make me amaze with shark and green turtles, then diving towards ‘Barracuda point’ which later saw a school of barracuda fish swim round the site.

After 3 months from Sipadan, I took a long break during Chinese New Year to visit Thailand to dive at Similan Island. Similan comprise of an archipelago of small islands that make many of its dive site strategic too. It was a dive on board and I stay on the boat for 2 nights.

My last introduction dive sites would be Bunaken Island at Manado situated at Sulawesi Indonesia. Manado is a great places for wall and muck diving (muck mean volcanic black sand) but I only manage to do few wall dive at Bunaken but not Lembeh Straits for muck diving. It was a waste but doing the wall dive at Bunaken is a great experience too.