If you’re looking for cheap but spectacular scuba diving while in Indonesia, head for Lembeh Strait in northern Sulawesi – and if you’re looking to explore the area’s amazing diving from a luxury liveaboard, check out the Ocean Rover
I spent four weeks in Indonesia back in August and September, scuba diving on two liveaboards in northern Sulawesi and Komodo. It was, as you can imagine, a very arduous four weeks. Sulawesi is famous amongst scuba divers as possessing not one but two of the world’s best diving areas – Lembeh Strait, which is chock full of weird and wonderful creatures, and Bunaken National Park, which has incredible deep drop-offs very near to the shore, providing vast coral walls to explore.
A pipefish in Sulawesi
I began my Indonesian odyssey with a few days at NAD Lembeh Resort in Lembeh Strait to warm up for going on the liveaboards. NAD is a great little budget resort, where everything is included in the price. I paid $US 503 for 5 nights air con accommodation, 11 dives and 3 meals a day, plus 24 hour coffee, tea and water. I’ve written a full review of the NAD Lembeh Resort and Lembeh Strait diving on my dive blog, Divehappy.com. For divers on a budget, it is a fantastic place to go if you are into seeing incredibly exotic small creatures.
After diving Lembeh for 5 days, I headed off to join the Ocean Rover, one of Asia’s most famous liveaboards which used to run trips in Indonesia and Thailand but has now wholly relocated to Indonesia as it’s under new management. Roman Szalsay, the new Austrian owner, is an excellent host and has maintained the extremely high standards of the boat. While the Ocean Rover also explores Lembeh and Bunakan, it also heads further north up the less widely explored Sangihe archipelago. For a rundown of what I thought of the boat, see my Ocean Rover trip report on Divehappy, along with the first page of Sulawesi underwater photos.
I’m still putting together a trip report on my Komodo trip on S/Y Siren, but you can see an amazing underwater Komodo video shot by my friend Ai Futaki, who is an accomplished freediver and who I met on the trip.
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