Dive Holidays Philippines

Hello dear diving friends, for almost 15 years I regularly spend my Dive Holidays Philippines. In this and the following reports I tell you about my experiences with diving in the Philippines. Please do not take everything that is written dead seriously, does not affect me on the correctness of all information.

How it all started, or the first time

The first time I came into contact with the Philippines was in 2004. Until then I knew where the country is on maps, but nothing more and I thought that diving can not be anything special. For me, there were only Indonesia, Thailand, the Maldives or our cold, but very interesting waters in Switzerland.
For my first Dive Holidays Philippines I went to Sabang on Mindoro. Of course you can get lot many information on the internet, but what you will get we did not know.
As soon as we arrived in Manila we went by car to Batangas, I never forget the ride on the “Highway”, right the “Slow Lane” left the “Fast Lane” and our driver very often used the “very fast lane”, in Switzerland this is the breakdown strip. Without any insury we arrived in Batangas and went by ferry to Sabang.

We where warmly welcomed in our Resort, The Garden of Eden. The room was at the very end of the resort, pretty high up on the hillside. The thought probably all Swiss living in the mountains and are therefore half mountain goats that fits then already. I found Sabang to be extremely interesting at that time, the mix of diving, rest, good food and nightlife was right. Today, it seems to be different, the red light milieu has been increased. I can not confirm this because I only stayed in 2004 and 2005 in Sabang.

The dive sites

The diving was super organized, we dived in small groups, so that everything ran expeditiously, the groups started in time slightly offset to each other, so there was no traffic jam inside the Dive Base.
Sabang is more known for small animals. You do not look for big fish in vain. But I was totally excited, I’ve never seen so many different night snails, seahorses, cuttlefish, etc. The dive sites are in no way behind the top dive sites in Indonesia or Thailand, and the most beautiful trips to the dive sites took only a few minutes. When I compare this with our dives in Thailand where we leave the hotel at 7am and return home at 5pm after 2 dives, we were able to do here 3 dives a day and still had enough time to rest in between.

Of course there are also negative reports, eg. from divers who wanted to do the photos at any price or the group who cut pieces from one of those beautiful tons of swarms with a knife to take it home as a souvenir. The highlight was the one who reinfaste everywhere with his gloves to collect any shells, stones, etc., he then got the “right hole”, his finger was literally pierced by a mantis shrimp. What did we laugh out of schadenfreude, one only said, you are right and hopefully your finger rots. I hope it was a lesson.
I am sure that the majority of divers but decently and cautiously deals with the underwater world, it’s just a pity that a few, excuse my expression, “idiots” have no respect and bring scuba diving into disrepute.

Conclusion after the first time, the dive sites are fantastic. The price / performance ratio is unbeatable. For 3 weeks Philippines one got maybe then 2 weeks in Indonesia, Maldives or the like commanded. Back home and book the next trip to the Philippines.