Another early day. Woke up at 8 a.m. and ready for the journey to Padang Bai. Deriving from two languages – padang is Balinese for grass and bai is Dutch for bay – PADANG BAI, the port for Lombok, nestles in a small cove with a white-sand beach lined with finishing boats.

Why did we choose Padang Bai?

Just north of Padang Bai is the Blue Lagoon, a treasure-trove of marine life. There are several different popular dive sites on the reef here and lots of hard and soft coral, including elephant and table corals – which attract eels, wrasses, turtles, flatheads amd lion fish – plus a good chance of spotting sharks!

Location:
4 sites located a few minutes off the eastern coast of Bali

Type of Dive:
Boat diving, Reef-diving, Wall-diving, Drift-diving

Depths:
10 – 40 metres

Visibility:
15 – 30 metres

Highlights:
Sharks! (Mimpang, Tepekong and Biaha); Cuttlefish, Leaf Scorpionfish, Crocodilefish (The Blue Lagoon); Tepekong’s Canyon and Wall; Many big pelagics; Did I mention the sharks?

Conditions:
Blue Lagoon: an easy dive site, gentle white sand slope, excellent marinelife. Mimpang, Tepekong, Biaha: currents can be tricky (up and down currents meeting horizontal currents) but on other days can be as calm as a mill-pond. Sometimes thermoclines around 20M.

Diving Seasons:
All year round, but can be difficult June to September

Distance:
~45 km northeast of Kuta (2 hours)

Our Dive Master, Agus

It was a 2 hours journey from Sanur to Padang Bay. Our dive master, Agus, is a young helpful guy certified with Platinum Diver. This is the first time I heard about Platinum diver. It just simply means that he has done more than 1 million dives.

Agus was indeed very helpful and friendly that we were very happy with him. He even helped to fix our dive bag ^_^ and he was the first dive master that helped to fill up our dive log -_-”. You might ask how many dive masters we have met. Well, my boyfriend has done about 20 dives and he said so.

So if anyone of you planning to take any diving package in Bali, I strongly recommend you to look for Agus.

You can contact Agus via his blog: cupliz-diver.blogspot.com

My Underwater Camera

I couldn’t find marine casing for my Sony T100 digicam so I had no choice and got myself a cheap RM70 underwater film camera. It was a huge mistake that I made. Firstly, even though the camera came with the film in it which can take only 20 pictures, I couldn’t get the type of film anywhere at all. Secondly, the picture quality sucks due to poor flashlight it has. So I didn’t take any nice pictures at all in Padang Bai … How sad… I actually spotted some interesting fishes and how I wish I have them recorded in my camera.

Our Dive Sites

We did 2 dives this day in Padang Bai. First boat dive in the morning at Tanjung Bunggil with the depth of 21m, visibility 20m and underwater temparature 29 degree celcius. Second boat dive in the afternoon at Blue Lagoon with the depth of 18m, visibility 20m and underwater temparature 29 degree celcius.

After diving, we checked in Hotel Puri Rai and spent a night at Padang Bai.

Next day, as usual, woke up at 8 a.m. and started the journey heading towards Tulamben.

Why Tulamben?

This is the site of the most popular dive in Bali, the Liberty wreck, attracting thousands of visitors every year. The Liberty wreck lies almost parallel to the beach, on a sandy slope about 30m offshore, and is encrusted with soft coral, gorgonians and hydrozoans plus a new hard corals, providing a wonderful habitat for around three hundreds species of reef fish that live on the wreck and over a hundred species that visit from deeper water.

History about Liberty Wreck

Built in 1915 in the US as a cargo steamship, the 120-meter-long Liberty was carrying a cargo of rubber and rail parts when she was torpedoed on January 11, 1942m 15km southwest of Lombok. Attempts to tow her to port at Sinaraja failed and she filled up with water and was beached at Tulamben.

In 1963, earth tremours accompanying the eruption of Gunung Agung shifted the hull off the beach into deep water. Up to a hundred of divers a day now visit the site.

The Fun Began Here

Since I had no more underwater camera, I rented one in Bali. And I am very happy with the pictures taken. (Mostly taken by Agus though :-p … well, it requires skill to take good pictures underwater, especially when we couldn’t stand or stay still underwater). Thanks Agus that he volunteered to take our pictures after seeing the crappy pictures that I took in the first dive.

Angel Fish

Trigger Fish
Goby
Not Sure
Moosh Idol
Clown Fish
Somekind of Worm
A Big School of Tuna Fish Silver Travelly (thanks le-corp for correcting it) ~ Yummy…
Little Mermaid

Here we entered the sea ~~

We fed the Surgeon Fish!!