I just cannot get enough diving in Bali. I was up in Tulamben Amed area a little over a week ago for 4 days of great dives and then a friend got a really cheap airfare to Bali to hang out, so we went up together and went diving on the Tulamben wreck and the drop off, two of my favorite Bali dive sites for two days. With our Bali cheap hotel rates of $6 a night for the two of us ,and the cheap food, plus a deal on the rental dive equipment, the mini vacation dive trip for 2 nights 3 days all inclusive was just a hair over $100 USD, so for $17.50 a day per person we got to do some of the best scuba diving in Asia, which has to be the cheapest diving in Asia that I have done since my dive holiday in Malaysia in the Perhentian islands last year, certainly much cheaper than the diving in Thailand in Koh Phi Phi.
The first day we snorkeled and promised ourselves that we would get up with the sunrise so that we could see the bump head parrot fish, which I had no idea are as large as they are. Well as these things go we ended up not getting in the water till almost 8am, but good enough to beat all the divers coming up from the Bali luxury hotels in Sanur Kuta and Nusa Doa. We had a great dive with excellent conditions, water temperature was around 28° good visablity but no Bump heads, but we had the Great barracuda just off the wreck in 15 meters of water. I swam really close to this monster fish and got a nice video on my Sony Cybershot with underwater housing. On the drop off which we did late in the afternoon we surprised a Bumphead in 30 meters and then when we went a little deeper we had a White Tip Shark, which I have a nice little video of that I will put up on you tube when I get a chance so you can enjoy as well.
On the 3rd day we did get up and into the water before 7am and the Bumphead parrot fish were just leaving right when we were dropping in so I got a nice parade video that I will also put on You Tube when I get a chance. We then went to the Drop off after a 1 hour surface interval nothing real spectacular but I did get a nice picture of an eel getting cleaned as well as some other good underwater photos of butterfly fishes including a latticed and a hump head and some banner fish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_WcY6aio8
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
EcoSea Asia
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Asia Eco Beach Resorts
Bali is as close to heaven as you are lucky to find as far as I am concerned.
More thoughts on the eco resort in Asia idea, I want to see how much help that I can get from the locals and have it be profitable for them finically as well as being a learning experience.
One of the things that I tried to do with EcoSea dive in Sihanoukville was to train my Khmer employees so that when they left EcoSea that their skills would be such that they would be able to make more money as they had valuable skills that they could use for the rest of their work careers and I feel that we succeed in doing that for many of the Cambodians that had worked for us in Sihanoukville over the years.
Being eco friendly is multi faceted and with a Asia eco beach resort on the Thailand Gulf one would need to be even more aware of the impact to make sure that you didn’t harm the ocean or the beachfront. I have seen a few eco resorts in Asia and for the most part they seem to be using the eco term more than really being a eco resort I hope that we will be able to do a better job of it.
Any comments please feel free to talk about any thing that you like just try
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
More thoughts on the eco resort in Asia idea, I want to see how much help that I can get from the locals and have it be profitable for them finically as well as being a learning experience.
One of the things that I tried to do with EcoSea dive in Sihanoukville was to train my Khmer employees so that when they left EcoSea that their skills would be such that they would be able to make more money as they had valuable skills that they could use for the rest of their work careers and I feel that we succeed in doing that for many of the Cambodians that had worked for us in Sihanoukville over the years.
Being eco friendly is multi faceted and with a Asia eco beach resort on the Thailand Gulf one would need to be even more aware of the impact to make sure that you didn’t harm the ocean or the beachfront. I have seen a few eco resorts in Asia and for the most part they seem to be using the eco term more than really being a eco resort I hope that we will be able to do a better job of it.
Any comments please feel free to talk about any thing that you like just try
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Eco Resort on beach accomodations in Asia
I was pointing out something that a diver that I was teaching the PADI deep diver course, which you get some of in the PADI Advanced open water course, had said, which lead me to Underwater Naturalist, which sparked in my brain and so I started talking about a dream of starting an eco resort in Asia. I have a couple of places in mind all ready, unfortunately both of these sites don’t have bamboo in the amounts that I will need to build a resort, so I will be looking into ways that I can start and encourage bamboo to grow. If you know any please share them with me in the comments thanks
We also talked about building buildings that don’t use cement for an eco resort on a Asia beach, on a tropical island. I was thinking originally that I would build concrete pads and then put tents on them for the first years and then as time went on I would build jungle huts using local materials and then for the final phase create luxury huts.
in a earlier blog post with Ema the engineering student from the UK, she brought up a very amazing fact that 10% of CO2 emissions is generated from the manufacture of cement. Ema stated To reduce it, we’re looking at replacing some of the cement in concrete with other products, such as fly ash (industrial byproduct) or alternatives to cement completely, such as magnesium oxide, although his is still being researched.. Increased proportion of aggregate can also reduce the amount of cement needed, and again recycled waste products such as sawdust or paper can be used.
So there is a lot of garbage that is floating around that ends up on the beach so we will research how much of this we can trap in the eco resort. Reduce reuse recycle. I will have more on this and as always your comments are welcome and encouraged we like to hear all opinions and will print all that are not rude ignorant or crass
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
We also talked about building buildings that don’t use cement for an eco resort on a Asia beach, on a tropical island. I was thinking originally that I would build concrete pads and then put tents on them for the first years and then as time went on I would build jungle huts using local materials and then for the final phase create luxury huts.
in a earlier blog post with Ema the engineering student from the UK, she brought up a very amazing fact that 10% of CO2 emissions is generated from the manufacture of cement. Ema stated To reduce it, we’re looking at replacing some of the cement in concrete with other products, such as fly ash (industrial byproduct) or alternatives to cement completely, such as magnesium oxide, although his is still being researched.. Increased proportion of aggregate can also reduce the amount of cement needed, and again recycled waste products such as sawdust or paper can be used.
So there is a lot of garbage that is floating around that ends up on the beach so we will research how much of this we can trap in the eco resort. Reduce reuse recycle. I will have more on this and as always your comments are welcome and encouraged we like to hear all opinions and will print all that are not rude ignorant or crass
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Scuba diving in Bali Eco Adventures in Asia
Off to go diving in Bali at the Tulamben wreck with a advanced open water diver from the UK Ema we were talking about engineering and she brought up a very amazing fact that 10% of CO2 emissions is generated from the manufacture of cement. The process basically involves cooking calcium carbonate at very high temperatures for very long times, and the byproduct is massive quantities of carbon dioxide.
To reduce it, we’re looking at replacing some of the cement in concrete with other products, such as fly ash (industrial byproduct) or alternatives to cement completely, such as magnesium oxide, although his is still being researched.. Increased proportion of aggregate can also reduce the amount of cement needed, and again recycled waste products such as sawdust or paper can be used. Bubbles of air can also reduce the amount of concrete used in a single block
The Bali diving in Tulemban is awsome Ema being a advanced open water diver was able to go deeper so we went down below the wreck and saw some excellent reef that even though we were deeper the colors were still quite vivid. We saw a Whip coral Gobbie while looking for the ghoost pipe fish.
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
To reduce it, we’re looking at replacing some of the cement in concrete with other products, such as fly ash (industrial byproduct) or alternatives to cement completely, such as magnesium oxide, although his is still being researched.. Increased proportion of aggregate can also reduce the amount of cement needed, and again recycled waste products such as sawdust or paper can be used. Bubbles of air can also reduce the amount of concrete used in a single block
The Bali diving in Tulemban is awsome Ema being a advanced open water diver was able to go deeper so we went down below the wreck and saw some excellent reef that even though we were deeper the colors were still quite vivid. We saw a Whip coral Gobbie while looking for the ghoost pipe fish.
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
Monday, August 11, 2008
Mola Mola Dive Bali Sunfish Adventure Diving Indonesia
Mola mola wow that is a mouthful there are two things I've always wanted to see and now I can take one of them off of my list for adventure diving. I've always wanted to see a whale shark which I think one time off the coast of Cambodia I actually did see one as I was sitting up on the top of my dive boat all I saw a large fin in the water and I said whale and then I said shark and I think that I was right both times. Yesterday while diving in Bali at Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembangan on the second of our three dives I get to get up close and personal with a mola mola we were maybe two or 3 meters away from the fish as it was being cleaned, we were in 30 meters of water so we drifted down to where the mola mola , which is sometimes called a sunfish, we were there for about three minutes and then we made our way back up to the entrance point, which at Crystal Bay what you do is say back roll in to the water and then swim over to the to the small little rock outcropping that's in the bay and you follow along until you get out into the deeper water and start looking for the mola mola, this can be a real adventure dive as sometimes the current in here is ripping so it is always a dive for advance open water or adventure divers or divers that have lots of lives in the log books were they can show that they have experience in difficult conditions because it really is not a place for a brand-new open water diver.
The diving in Bali is very much under rated I am absolutely amazed at the quality of the reef when I was in Cambodia when I was working with the Cambodia Department of Fisheries I had the opportunity of learning under the tutelage of some United Nations environmental program people that were from the University of Singapore to learn how to do line intersects transects which are called Litz which is a scientific way of measuring reefs to see how healthy they are and it's just amazing of the great majority of the reef at Nusa Lembangan and Nusa Penida what excellent shape that it's in where you have 85 -- 95% and it's up a combination of the probably 200 or 300 different types of sponges all sorts of sea valves, all sorts of fans, hard corals, soft corals and the one thing that you don't see is sea urchins which is a very good sign of a healthy reef I saw my first sea urchin yesterday which was hiding underneath a rock and I was kind of amazed to see the little fellow.
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
The diving in Bali is very much under rated I am absolutely amazed at the quality of the reef when I was in Cambodia when I was working with the Cambodia Department of Fisheries I had the opportunity of learning under the tutelage of some United Nations environmental program people that were from the University of Singapore to learn how to do line intersects transects which are called Litz which is a scientific way of measuring reefs to see how healthy they are and it's just amazing of the great majority of the reef at Nusa Lembangan and Nusa Penida what excellent shape that it's in where you have 85 -- 95% and it's up a combination of the probably 200 or 300 different types of sponges all sorts of sea valves, all sorts of fans, hard corals, soft corals and the one thing that you don't see is sea urchins which is a very good sign of a healthy reef I saw my first sea urchin yesterday which was hiding underneath a rock and I was kind of amazed to see the little fellow.
Please see our other blog Cheap Charlies Hotels Asia Blog
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