Remote beaches and diving places - Rent a motorcycle

Southeast Asia is a paradise for people who loves beaches, snorkeling and of course scuba diving. There are anyway many nice places, where is not so easy to go. Also inside the area moving can be difficult or just have to take always some kind of taxi. For that problem motorcycle or scooter is a perfect solution. Just find the motorcycle rent company and check the bikes. After you have found the good one, check especially that tires and breaks are ok. 

If you have plan to ride longer trip, check and confirm there are also enough oil and other liquids. Check the bike has needed papers and confirm you have the phone number for the owner. After that you are ready to go. 

Palawan in Philippines has lots of beautiful remote beaches and it´s also good place for scuba diving. Beach in Port Barton. 

Puerto Princesa area is good place for scuba diving. Whitetip reef shark in small cave. 

There is possible to go snorkeling with whale sharks in Puerto Princesa. The season is usually from end of April to October.

Bohol area in Philippines is also great for motorcycling. Beautiful white sand Alone Beach.

There is possible to see rare tarsiers in Bohol.

Balicasag Island near Alona Beach is great place for scuba diving. There is possible to see lots of big sea turtles.

Phuket in Thailand is also very good place, where you can combine motorcycling and diving. The island is quite large, so motorcycle/scooter is very usefully way to go from place to another. Phuket has also many beautiful beaches around the island.

There are many diving destinations in Phuket area like Racha Yai, Racha Noi, Koh Phi Phi and Shark Point. Here is Leopard Shark in Shark Point.

Indonesia has also many interesting place to explore. One of those is Labuan Bajo in Komodo, where you can find twisty mountain roads for motorcycling and beautiful views. 

Komodo is also amazing diving destination. Huge schools of fishes, lots of shark and big rays. Also manta rays. 

Komodo dragons are of course also one must see in Komodo. 

Using motorcycle/scooter it´s so much easier to reach many places. As a bonus you will see so much more on the trip even the scuba diving is the main focus. 

Regards,
Mika

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Snorkeling day at Modessa Island in Palawan, Philippines

We did a day trip in Palawan from Roxas town to Modessa Island Resort. The beach on the island looks very beautiful.

View to another direction.

Modessa Island is a resort island, so there is possible to rent also cottages.

Home reef.

Reef has a lot of different kind of fishes.

Lyn snorkeling.

Lion fish.

Looking for Nemo?

Whole family.

Clam.

When I snorkeled on deeper area there happened something very cool. First came small school of jacks.

Then more and more.

Finally there was hundreds of jacks around me. Never seen so many jacks before when snorkeling. 

I have seen huge school of jacks especially in Tubbataha Reef in Philippines and in Pulau Mabul in Borneo Malaysia when diving, but never when snorkeling.

Resort has also dive center on the island, if you want to go diving.

I uploaded this short video clip from Modessa to Youtube. In the end you will see a video clip of the jacks in Modessa.

I really liked the island and I will go back for sure. 

Regards from Manila,

Mika

Island hopping and snorkeling day in Coron, Philippines

Old story. I wrote earlier in February something about wreck diving in Coron. The area is also great place for snorkeling and there are beautiful islands. Here is something from our island hopping day.

Our boat left from Coron town, which is the centre in Coron area. Some beach resort near the Coron town.

Our first stop was Cyc Island.

Mask, snorkel and fins and to the water. I Feeeel Good...!

Lyn snorkeling.

Second place was Coral Garden.

Same place under water.

Next place was beautiful Kayangan Lake. In fact it´s only hidden bay, but it´s called lake.

Not bad?

Same place from the view point. 

When continue walking the stairs down there is a real lake.

This place looks very cool under water. It´s like snorkeling in the stalagmite cave.

Small seashells.

Lyn dives.

And explores.

I have never seen this kind of rock formation under water before. 

I have everything "ok". 

Our next place was Coral Eden. There was a lot of mangroves.

Leaves under water.

Our last stop was Twin Peak Reef. There was also more fishes than other places. Some people saw there also turtle, but we missed it. 

I took small peace of bread to the water and I had a lots of friends.

Corals and fishes. 

Lyn was like a dolphin in the water.

Staghorn corals and reef fishes.

It was great snorkeling day in the beautiful places. Price for the full day trip was 850PHP/15,30€ per person including great meal. 

This was also my first real under water test for my new Canon Powershot G15 and Ikelite´s housing. Before the trip I tested the camera and housing only in the pool. Package seems to work well with out problems.

Regards from Manila,

Mika

Snorkeling day with the whale sharks in Donsol, Philippines

Whale shark - the biggest fish in the world. All the bigger creatures in the oceans are mammals. That´s the fact. I have swum and snorkeled with whale shark 4-5 time before in Philippines near Puerto Princesa in Palawan. Those days were very special. There are also some other places in Philippines where it´s possible to see whale sharks. The most famous one is Donsol near Legazpi City. Anyway like this map shows it´s possible to see whale sharks almost everywhere in the Philippines, if you are lucky.

Easiest way to go Donsol is to take a flight to Legazpi from Manila or Cebu. After flight by van or bus to Dolsol. Travel time is about 1h 20min. 

We went to Donsol on Friday 25th of March and our hotel was Vitton Beach Resort. Already on the hotel it was easy to see whale sharks are big thing in Donsol. 

Just in the neighbor of Vitton is Donsol tourist information center. That´s also the place where the whale shark trips have to book. There are three trips every day and each trip is three hours. First trip for everybody is 885PHP/16,90€. Next trips are 585PHP/11,10€. On the first trip everybody have pay permit for the area and that´s the reason why first trip is more expensive. Permit is valid about 1 week. We booked the trip for the next day.

I heard already before our trip to Donsol, that there has not been so many whale shark on this year. There has been several days that people haven´t seen any whale shark. Here you can check the calendar markings for January, February and March 2013. March and April is usually the peak season for the whale sharks in Donsol. 

January 2013

February 2013

March 2013

Our boat trip was on Saturday 26th of March. Morning was perfect. Blue sky and no wind. Sea was also very calm. We came to the tourist information center just little bit before 7am. Every boat take max 6 customers. In our boat was me and my girl friend, our friend Peter from Japan, couple from Germany and one guy from Spain. Everything was ready about 7:30am and jumped to the boat.

One of the best point in Donsol is that there is no need to ride on the boat first hour or two. Boats are immediately on the same area where the whale shark are also. Starting from the first minutes.

We joked with Peter that we will see whale shark in Saturday. Question is only how many and how long we have to wait the first one. 15min or even 30min. In fact our last evening plan worked very well. We were on the boat only about 20min was the first alert. Quickly mask, snorkel, fins and camera ready and then we sat on the edge of the boat. Then our boat man just rode us to correct place and our guide said: Everybody ready…? Yes! Jump NOW!!

Very soon we saw our giant underwater friend.

This whale shark was about 8m long. 

Huge pectoral fin.

Finally I was three times on the water and every time I could swim long time just beside the whale shark. Visibility in Donsol is usually not the best possible. Also in this time it was only few meter and it was impossible to take as good photos I wanted. Compared to Palawan there is huge difference in visibility.

Anyway it was great to see those majestic creatures again. It´s always something very special to see whale sharks close.

Regards from Manila,

Mika