Bunaken Island in North Sulawesi, Indonesia

North Sulawesi in Indonesia has amazing coral reefs and deep walls for all level of divers. Bunaken National Marine Park is great place for diving, but the area itself is also very beautiful. There are five volcanoes, beautiful islands and of course Manado City. From Bunaken Island you can find also Living Colours Diving Resort. Resort has own peaceful place with sandy beach near the mangrove. I was there in September 2007 and I will never forget it.
Easiest way to go to Bunaken is first to fly from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur to Manado and then take a boat to Bunaken Island. Boat trip from Manado to island takes about 45min. If you go to Living Colours Diving Resort they come to pick up you already from Manado airport.
Dive Resort is very relax place and owned by Finnish couple. Resort has nice villas on the top of the hill and there is also very good restaurant.
One thing which I especially remember from Bunaken dives are huge turtles. Many times turtles are sleeping on the wall. Blacktip reefshark are also common near the walls.
Banded seasnake.
School of fishes.
North Sulawesi is also well-known of muck diving. Different kind of nudibranches are very common.
Even nudibraches are smiling in Bunaken.
Near Manado City lies old Manado Wreck.
After dives in the evening Safety Stop Bar is THE center point in Living Colours.

People who has visited in Living Colours remember for sure the evenings. The master of ceremonies himself is bartender Freddy who is funny guy and good singer. Dive masters play guitars on the beach and Freddy sings and serves the cold drinks and everybody has good time.
I fully recommend to trip to Bunaken and Living Colour Dive Resort. It's not only diving, but the whole atmosphere and feeling. Great place indeed!!

Turtles at Similan Islands

Old story. Best place for diving in Thailand is Similan Islands. It's about 100km from Phuket to north west on Andaman Sea. Dive trips to Similan Islands are usually liveaboard. Typical is five nights on the boat and four diving days. Four dives a day so 16 dives on the trip. I have been on this kind of diving safari twice. Feb 2006 and Feb 2007.

Similan Islands is not good only for diving. It's also superp for snorkeling. One of the most beautiful place there is Donald Duck Bay. There you can climb up to the hill where opens great view to the bay. I visited there in 2006.

After view point we had still time to wait for the next dive. Our boat was on the bay and we saw turtle very near of our boat. People threw bananas to the turtle and turtle ate it. Some of us jumped to the water snorkeling with the turtle. Of course me too. Turtle wasn't shy at all. It just swam around us.

Maybe temptation of banana was too much and it came to eat it also from the hand. Turtles really like bananas. Here you can see little bit banana it's mouth.

It came many times very close. I didn't need to use zoom at all.

There was also smaller turtle, but it didn't come to close.

Great snorkeling session!

Mika