Excellent diving in Philippines

Many divers we have talked with have recommended Philippines as a great diving destination. So because we have very flexible plans we decided to go there. We took a Tiger airways (very good and cheap airline. Better than Air Asia) flight from Singapore to Cebu City. There are over 3000 islands in Philippines and Visaya islands are the best places for scuba diving. We dove in two destinations: in small Malapascua island and in South Leyte. We spent little bit over one week in each island and did over 20 dives. Immediately after first dive we were thinking why we have't been there before, diving was so much better than for example in Thailand, where it still is ok...

Philipinian panga. We went also to dive with this kind of boat.

We dove with Evolution in Malapascua island.

Our bungalow in Malapascua island.

Maija has a new puppy friend.

Olli has a new friend, Barbara.

The coral was in excellent condition and it was colorful, especially soft coral in Gato island (near Malapascua) and Napantao (in Leyte), which were the best places. Napantao divesite was also like a fish soup, huge schools of all kind of fish. We also saw a frogfish first time, in Leyte there was many of them during every dive.

Divers were more experienced in Philippines than other places we have been. That maybe one reason the coral is still in so good condition because usually experienced divers are better controlling their buoyancy and they don't kick coral. It was pleasure to dive with good divers, every dive we did was over 60 minutes and nobody was too close and kicking each others. Dive guides were locals with many thousands of dives in same sites so they found a lot of cool staff (like Pygmi seahorses etc.)

Macro life is very rich. We saw all kind of nudibranchs during every dive. Many we haven't seen before.

Sponge snail

Pygmi seahorse . Can you find it? (it is about 1cm long)

Robust Ghost Pipefish

Porkypinefish

In Malapascua island there is a dive site called Monad shoal where there is a cleaning station for Thresher sharks. Sharks are there early (6-7 am) in every morning. The dive is basically that you go to 24 meters and watch sharks swimming around. We saw 4-5 thresher sharks, they are very beautiful! We did a Nitrox course the previous day so we dove with Nitrox (32% oxygen instead of 21% in normal air) and we got longer bottom time (about 1 hour) than with normal air (with which you can stay only about 20 min in that depth).

Thresher shark

Tresher shark

From Leyte to Cebu city we took a big slow boat where was a bed for every customer.

Philippines is less touristic than Thailand for example but traveling around is still easy enough. Diving as told is absolutely brilliant, one of the best we have done all over the world. Food is terrible so if you are looking for culinaristic experiences Philippines is not the place to go ;) There is not same kind of traditional kitchen like in Thailand for example. The least bad food we had were pizza and pasta in an authentic italian restaurant in Malapascua island ;)

Philippines was first place we didn't have internet connection excluding our hotel in Cebu city. It can be good but in our case it was difficult because we had plan to make some hotel bookings etc... For example in Leyte they said that they have a connection but it was useless cause it was so slow you couldn't even check your emails.

In the future we'll rather spend (diving) holidays in Philippines than Thailand or Malaysia.

- Maija & Olli