Coron, the wreck diving capital of the Philippines

The reason for people ( tourists ) to come here is the world top class wreck diving, island hopping on the way to El Nido town ( going north back to Manila or further south to Palawan. Coron town is the biggest settlement in Busuanga island and most of the traffic is to/ from here, but more about that and what else to see on my entries later.

Before leaving Finland I did my normal searching for a reliable Dive Operator. Most of the Finnish people are adviced to go to Rocksteady or Sea Dive. Sea dive has also their own accommodation, bar ( yes, we are from Finland) and restaurant. But, after a bit of reading I wanted to search more and I found Neptune Dive Center. After reading their blog I was sold! Friendly and rapid reply to my mail, small groups promise, new operator with new equipment and in mails some more good information about arrivals etc. Even a notice that Coron Town usually arranges a huge fireworks on New Years Eve, that are impressive compared to the size of the town. Nice.

Most of the wrecks are sunk on the 24th of September 1944 by fighters and dive bombers of US task force 38. There are a lot to choose from (there were 14 of sunken Japanese cargo ships, that had assembled to this area) but mostly there are 8 popular ones to go to. Recreational diving, as the average depth is somewhere near 24- 30m. Some of them reach the max depth of 43m, so, if you're into heavy stuff with mixed gas and depths, this is your place to be. The length of the wrecks can be 160m. Penetration to wrecks is also allowed for advanced divers with more experience.

We made our way to Coron Bacpackers hostel, checked in and I went to tell to Neptune that I was ill and my diving had to be delayed. After a nice talk at the center, I hoped to get a reef dive for my first dive, and on day 4 of the year 2013 our ´bangha´ (outrigger boat) left the town. I was not sure what kind of challenge I was about to have since my last dive had been Sipadan area more than 2 years ago, and it had not been a too good experience in whole.

My first 2 dives to 1st Atan Reef and 2nd Neptune Wall in Coron Bay were crap. Mostly because I was panickly checking my air consumption, fixing my BCD (too big) or just doing anything other things you might name, than diving or relaxing. After Sipadan, also the visibility was a shock. In here, that day it was from 7- 10m, but that of course depends on the weather. We (there was 4 of us, and 2 DMs) did the dives with a 3,2mm full body suit. The water temperature is around 28 degrees of Celsius. Still, on the second dive I felt cold. My own estimation was that I will be ok again after 3 dives, and I was. Also, I decided to do only 2 dives a day, which was a good decision but I was not able to have one dive free day in between and my last dive was a bit exhausting since I had a disagreement with my mask at Lusong Coral Garden (6th dive), lost a lot of air in stupid struggle. BUT I am happy that I seem to know my limits.

The wrecks then. First dive on second day was Kogyo Maru, length 144m and depth 34m bottom, lies sideways. I still was suffering from some ear problems and it was easier all together with a size smaller BCD. A wreck with easy penetration, enough light, even though we used torches. Inside cement bags, bulldozer and a tractor. When you penetrate the ship, you cannot really tell what is what unless told, since you are so close to the objects. We went through a small hole through the cargo rooms, oh, excitement! A bit intimidating at first because of the visibility and sudden darkness after reef dives.

Second was Olympia Maru, length 144m max depth 30m and It was better. I figured out my problems (1kg too much weight on me) and we made a practical joke by taking down a floating flipflop from sea surface. We descented quickly, there was a boat filled with Korean divers arriving at the same time and we did not want to be stuck in the narrow sections with them. The visibility was not more than 10m but since the place was shallower, the lighting conditions were nicer. I had the impression that this wreck was more sympathetic, maybe because we finned in the place where the boat crew had been sleeping. The rest of the time we hovered above some Korean divers and watched them struggle through the wreck in total chaos and who ended up attacking our 5m depth decompression bottle below the boat like crazy men to oatmeal porridge.

Last dive day was again with DM Roberto. I hoped I had had a dive free day, but as the situation with our Cuyo island steel boat leaving time, made me jump in the water third day in a row. I suggested we do a wreck and reef combined. Wreck was Morazan Maru, and it was easily the best dive site I went to. Lots of natural light, only one spot inside where torch was needed and I felt good examining slowly the lighting conditions and the shades of sea water against the wreck openings and the fish in between. Beautiful. Very relaxed dive with right amount of weights and I was easily controlling my buoyancy through the smallest openings. Visibility inside the wreck was maybe 15m and the views from the different openings to another spaces were spectacular. I am sure to dream of that in the future.

All in all I would say, that for a person, who has only been reef diving before and done no night dives, wreck diving can be extremely intimidating. But for a diver that has somewhat experience, it is a great way (with a good dive master) to explore more of your strengths. If you are not sure about your buoyancy, do not go, or do not penetrate. I can fully understand the thrill it gives for some sort of people, but in my opinion it is not for beginners under 20 dives. I would have not had the guts then. Also, if you happen to be a Finnish person who has had at least some murky dives in Finnish waters while working your buoyancy in this 6m darkness and handling a torch, this might be the right task for you.

There are about 15 Dive Operators around the town and I can surely say, that Neptune has earned all the 5 stars (*****). It may not be the cheapest in town, but there are a limit of 4-5 divers on one boat, and a dive master leads 2 divers. In my case I consider myself super lucky, I was able to dive 2 days alone with a local DM, Ronaldo, who knows every wreck by heart after 20 years of experience in the area. And could go there blindfolded. I felt safe to follow him through the smallest ventilation channels or cracks. Neptunes equipment is new and well maintained and the amount of the guests keeps the standard high - less persons on board, better food! The boatmen were cooking. Also, after seeing the amount of divers some other dive masters from some other dive shops needed to handle...huh. Another plus was the extra air bottle below the dive boat in 5m, for safety especially on wreck sites. Also, in Neptune, the DM fills in the dive info for statistics, but also fills in the amount of the dives the guest has done. Just in case your dive log book goes missing, you can get the a statement about how many dives you have before, plus the dives you did with them (and where) all combined. Clever!

Money and setting up

Finally, after a weird and tiring week working (and not even finished yet)  I came to think about some more practicalities; buying some currency. As you see above, I got some, but only some. Actually I did not even open the plastic bag filled with money because I got pissed off. Some of us know, that there are limited places to "change money", or "buy currency" (whatever way of saying you want to use) in my town. This one above is the usual place. I also did an internet search about same matter and guess what I found out right now; only this place and my own bank provide services like this...I mean, yes, every bank in Finland buy and sell currency for sure, but seem s like they do not inform that in internet as a service. Well done!

Let´s call the place where I went, "*orex", in this text. There has been many times when the service has been working wonderfully. Not his time though, or maybe I am just getting old and cranky and demanding. On Monday I went there, stepped in ans asked kindly if they have Philippine Pesos. They did not, but no problem, since they say they deliver whatever currency you might want in 48 hours. And on their web pages they tell  that the reservation should be done at least 2 days before the departure/need, so they can make it. I made a reservation for 15 000 PHP that is about 300€. They said I should come in app. 3 days to get the amount, on  Thursday or  Friday. Very well. I also told them I can wait until the 28th for the money, but it is nice to get it sooner.

On Wednesday I was confused, thought it already was Thursday and went there. I got to hear that it was not Thursday yet (damn right) and I was only getting 10 000 PHP the next day. Excuse me?  Yesterday I went back to get my "less money than I ordered". I got lot of explanations why this had happened. I guess I was pretty tough customer at that time and asking simply what do we do about the remaining 5000 PHP I had ordered. More explanations. I mean, I do not even care that much, but what if I had been someone who is going on his/hers first trip ever? And based on this, I can say that *orex company does not follow they own delivery terms.

Later, I got a call from *orex. A man explained just a little bit more again and told me that they are T R Y I N G to get the remaining money to me by 28th of December, on our departure day. I was also adviced to take 100€ notes with me, so I can easily change the money in the destination...wonderful advice, for someone who has been travelling quite a bit. It is now only about that fact that they did not deliver. That´s why I am demanding.

It is sad that the next time I will go to my own bank to buy the currencies, even if the bank working hours are not as flexible as the ones with *orex.  

But some nice things as well.
I finally got something I have desired for a long time; a brand new snorkel! Made by Cressi and at the same time I got new neoprene socks for my fins. The Agua Lung fins have been tested in the pool, but cannot wait to get them to sea. The purchase was made in a new scuba shop in Tampere,  Oxygene Diving.

Tawau

23.05.2010 Tawau / Blog entry on my computer

Finally alone. Finally on the road again.

I am happy about my decision to leave Semporna. All on all it was not my place, and definitely not my place to go through Dive Master training. Sweden has not paid me anything yet, and I am sort of money. The rest of the trip will go with strict budget.

I am not having second thoughts anymore about Dive Master training. I am going to do it, some day, if not now. I have to admit that my expectations of my own stamina was wrong. I have to face the fact that almost 35 years old may not recover 15 kilos weight loss that happened over 2 months, in a very short time. The exhausting weather did not help nor did the sun burns. I was also surprised how easy it was to make me upset during the Rescue Course. It has been said that it is the best course there is...but I could say that for me it was like living hell. Every morning getting to the boat to Mabul from Semporna just made me more upset and I had lost all my ability to enjoy diving as well as learning something new. It was a horrible experience, nothing more. Still I think I have some abilities that a good DM needs. I believe I am a people person. And my Rescue Diver burn marks are fading day after a day.

Nella and her mother joined me at breakfast. I suddenly felt too shy to speak German, but I tried my best at that moment. I need a bit more time to be fluent. However, I was capable to communicate in some way, still I was not satisfied.

When I went to pick up my bags from hostel Ebu said that she is sorry that I was leaving. Both she and Lady Gaga (one of the reception young ladies) hugged me and hoped to see me again. For them, I could go back. It seems that I have been the one of the guests to be talking with them the most. One guy opened up one evening and told about some of his bad experiences, some others as well. I did not see Linda or Helen to say good bye to them.

Seems that the Semporna hostels small ants have been hiding in my backpack and now they cover my bed again. It feels strange to have my own toilet and shower, not to have a bar downstairs and not to have a wireless internet connection. I enjoy it. I enjoy the soda water I was able to find in a supermarket. I enjoyed the Pizza Hut triple cheese pizza with no regrets. Three weeks without cheese, and now that I am sailing to south, no one knows when I am able to get cheese again. Yes, I am fairly easy to please.

Peeling and leaving

It is time to say good bye to Semporna. Pay all my bills and hit the road again to south, to Indonesian state Kalimantan. All my friends are about to leave as well, so, I decided also to move on.

Unfortunately not with Nella. She got her symptoms back and flew her mother on an adventure of a lifetime. Her mom has arrived today and I am hoping to meet her as well.

I also found out that my sunburns are the second stage burns and they need 2 to 3 weeks to heal. Not very nice. At least not when it is combined with mosquito bites. After the water bubbles on my skin; I am now peeling off and look totally disgusting. I have been trying to hide myself under long sleeves both outside and in the water.

Today I made some unfortunate money transfers that did not get through. I was able to pay my hostel, but the diving is now waiting. Hopefully the transactions will show tomorrow, and I am able to go. I did succeed with the money transaction with some other money though. Nella gave me a huge bunch of bills in an envelope and told me to hand them over to some Belgian guys that would arrive by boat from Mabul resort. The Belgians had given Nella almost 1000€ worth of money to be exchanged by the time they arrived and she asked me to deliver the amount. Now it is out of my hands, the guys got their money and everything is ok. I have been really thinking that while travelling the people tend to help more with that kind of things and REALLY trust. I have been loaning my stuff all over and today I need to get them back together again for packing, but it does not bother me too much, because, me too, I trust. And besides, why not, if I have a book that can help someone, if I have a laptop that someone can use in a cafe to read the news and emails, why not?

Crossing borders to Indonesian side seems to be made quite hard. No information anywhere...at the moment I am going to get there to see it myself, how to get from Tawau to Tarakan and then later on further. When I find that out, I will put all the information online to help someone else who is making the same trip!


So, making the long story short, I will continue with diving stuff. I made through the Rescue Diver Course. And the first aid. Then I needed some time to think over what I was about to do. I decided to take a few days of fun diving and see, if I got back to myself in the water. I did. I did not make it ll the way to Sipadan, but I dot not regret it. There was a lot of talk about the experience in there; some said it is totally over estimated, some said it was the best dives if their lives. For me, I think everything after my night dive will be less interesting.

The night dive was amazing. I was diving with Flem, and his 2 Advanced course students Luke&Kate who were taking their night dive specialty. It was great to somehow take part in the course, to remember what are the important things and just listen. When we descended, Flem asked us to sit on the sandy bottom, to turn off out torches by pointing them closely to our bodies and then play with the water. The water was full of curious shrimps. And when you waved your hand in the water, they flashed as if they were fireflies. Beautiful. When we started our very slow dive, we discovered the incredible amount of crap that people throw to the water. Millions of plastic bags hovering in the water among the jellyfish that were size of a bucket, diameter something like 50cm. Ouch! We saw huge boxing-shrimps, crabs of all kinds, sleeping fish etc.

After a while Flem pointed out a flamboyant cuttlefish and we took our time to follow it with our torches. What happened was, that it lead us to some seahorses and stopped something like half a meter from them. At first it was tough decision to decide which animal to look at, but when the seahorse started giving birth to some little seahorses, it was an easy choice. A very very very rare sight!! This will be hard to beat at any dive. Maybe a manatee would be the next one to be wait.

Oh, my.

Yes. I feel like a huge failure. And I know I should just think about not to demand this much of myself...but still. I cannot remember a time in my life when I have felt like I am not able to do anything right. No excuses, I suck.

It was overwhelming. I was grilled much more than other students. I did not pass the course. I have to do one day more. My stress reaction kicked in big time, paralyzed when I had to do something, and apparently, when I did react, it was always something wrong. I try to remember what Sari wrote me about her Dive Master course. That she was almost tortured, but she survived it. And I, I keep thinking about my first days when I was learning to be a lighting technician...my help then was to have a very supportive teacher. I should stop comparing myself with other to this extend.

It does not help if I am painfully honest about stuff. Well, on the other hand it does help because I can talk about my problems and there has been a lot of help offered. I have also allies; Swedish Linda and American Helen are just adorable. With Linda we discussed a lot about atmospheres in here (weid for a new comer) and about the whole Scandinavian behavior. It seems that in general we ARE slower to to react and act on things. In Finland the way is almost to neglect when something is happening, maybe as a survival mechanism. Then again, facing fears should be a moment of self growth. Also, all my readers who have met me while travelling cannot say that I was lacking care for people or that I was unfriendly...but apparently these skills I failed to show on my course. Weird isn´t it?

All in all the last 2 days of the course was fun (except the fact that I burned myself badly of course, and decided to take this day off to cure my skin, think stuff over and take my day 4 of Rescue Diver tomorrow). We played scenarios in real time. The moment we four students stepped out of the boat in Mabul, there were about 10 victims already in the water and we needed to rush to rescue them. At first, like I normally do, I just stood there thinking "are you kidding me"! The second scenario was in water on a "fun dive". Ash, Ben and Big-Ben shot down in a second and started acting like fools, and fools that were totally drunk. They stole each others fins, took their weight belts off, started opening our tank belts so our tanks were not secured anymore and then took of all in different directions. Big-Ben even tried to put a stone fish in his pocket and other Ben assisted himself out of his BCD took the octopus in his mouth and rode on his tank as if it was a horse.


After lunch we had zero time to get to water and save both of the 2 Bens who had been seen on the right side of the Jetty but now were missing. A drowning victim will get a brain damage in 10 minutes, we had to find them in that timeline. The last dive was also a fun dive and the DMT´s and Ash were only mentioned to play around for a few minutes, but decided that it was cool to play along a bit longer..and it was 30 min. During that time and a bit after we saw five huge turtles from close,a ghost pipe fish and one fish that Ben claimed to be a star gazer.

The other Dive Master Trainees had completed their course and they had a "final snorkel test" last night. A bucket of booze through a snorkel until they puke. Not really my idea of having fun though, but the others were having hilarious time.

The beginning in Semporna

After the long period of stressing, carrying stuff, hailing a taxi, getting to bus I was finally sitting in a long distance bus from KK to my final destination Semporna, in the North East corner of Borneo island. During my ride I slept a lot getting rid of my jet lag but had the opportunity to observe the Mt. Kinabalu as we drove next to it and also the many many hectares of rain forest cut down from the places of new palm oil plantation and factories. Razor sharp edges and lines of emptiness on the same spots that used to be lush forest with diversity and undergrowth.

The first night was sleepless as I tried to get adjusted to heat by switching off the air condition...at the moment it works fine without!

My first course morning in here started with my beloved rain. I woke up too early and went for a walk. The night shift guys were asleep in the computer lounge, so I did not want to wake them up and decided to sneak out from the restaurant door where people were preparing for our breakfast. I took a walk down to the water, took pictures and enjoyed the fresh air. As usual, I was the only westerner awake at that time. I had a confrontation with the police; the guys scrolled down the car windows and said good morning. The morning market was busy, and the local good-transportation method used was wheel barrel.

On Monday morning I went to the dive shop as advised and got a boat ride to Mabul, a resort island where me and Freddy (young Brit) took our Emergency First Response course. The place was super, the instructor Ash was nice...but the mean frustration kicked in. I felt like I was very bad, it looked like I had never known any English in my life and I was totally confused with the masses of new words I had to learn, and as usual I did not give myself nothing but hard time. Yes, passed the test, but I was still feeling bad about all the confusion. Ash tried to cheer me up by finding me an extra place to Sipadan fro next morning and convincing me that I should take another day off. I decided to turn down the Sipadan offer (yes, it was tempting...the previous day 2 whale shark spotting, but as my contact lens solution was in my hostel room...the choice was made easier) and to study today. I of course did my first plunge into the water, went snorkeling and it was relaxing, also saw 2 white pipe fishes!

Getting back to village was indeed a good choice! I met some more people, some employees and some DMT´s (Dive Master Trainees) that gave me a peek to what it was going to be. The Swedish 'soon to be' DM, told me that she had felt the same as me for the first 3 weeks after her arrival. Keeping up with English language can be hard for a non native, and sometimes the natives just cannot see the struggle. I felt so much better after talking to her. Things will sort out, eventually. The next task will be the 3 days on a Rescue Course with bad diving scenarios.

EFR course was an easy one, to my luck, but it is getting tougher from now on. I should focus more on having fun and not stressing out. And hopefully the Rescue course will be the BEST as everyone keeps telling me, and I certainly hope that the Videos are better than with first aid. Maybe the only thing I learned from that is that I should carry disposable plastic gloves, eye shield and ventilation barrier as well as a bio hazard waste bag at all times to prevent getting infected by HIV or Hepatitis B or C, if you get into a situation where I need to give first aid. Of course this is in America. Where else can you can get a law sue after helping someone? Well, on our course we learned the most valuable lesson and a sentence of all times; “ Hello, my name is ----, I am a emergency first responder. May I help you?” And when said no, you just walk away...

At all times, you should STOP, THINK and ACT. My name is Katja and I am a emergency first responder.