Tour:
Macro Diving at Lembeh in Indonesia. 
September 2010 

Accommodation:
Divers Lodge, Lembeh is located at the end of Lembeh Straight (on the left hand side if you face the harbour jetty). Most rooms are on the hill and I had a great big room with a nice view of the harbour, a ceiling fan and ensuite bathroom. All meals were good in Indonesian style. 
www.diverslodgelembeh.com

Diving:
All diving were boat dives except Mandarin Mating, shore dive at house reef with own boat and own dive guide. Every day around 7:30am and was back at 7:00pm for dinner. I did 4-5 dives a day.

Ken's Rating 
Overall: 4 out of 5 
Resort: 4 out of 5
Dive Operator: 4 out of 5
Dive Guide: 5 out of 5
Diving Activity: 4 out of 5
Marine Life: 4 out of 5
Visibility: 3 out of 5 

Lembeh is located on the North of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. It is world famous for underwater macro photography diving. It has so many varieties of creatures from weird looking frogfish or anglerfish to different beautiful nudibranchs. Also, from tiny creatures like pygmy seahorses to skeleton shrimps where you might need a magnifying glass to see them. Macro diving, also called muck diving by a lot of divers is my favourite type of diving and type of photography too. I had planned this trip for the past 8 months and I enjoyed every single dive.  

I booked 7 days, 6 nights with unlimited diving with Divers Lodge, Lembeh which included all meals, accommodation, dives, pick up and drop off to and from the airport, own boat and own dive guide. It cost 920 Euro and I did 26 dives in total. 

My journey was from 8 - 15 September 2010. I flew with Singapore Airlines from Sydney to Singapore, it took about 8 hours to get there. I stayed there for 2 nights as there was a long wait of 10 hours for a connection to Manado/Lembeh. So it was better to stop in Singapore and do some sightseeing and shopping for diving gear or underwater camera add-on gear. The prices were good and cheaper than Sydney. 

It only took about 3 hours from Singapore to Manado Airport in Indonesia. The dive resort picked me up by car and it took about 90 minutes to get to Lembeh Harbour. I then changed to a small boat and it took about 30 minutes to get to the resort.  
Divers Lodge, Lembeh is located at the end of Lembeh Straight (on the left hand side if you face the harbour jetty). Most rooms are on the hill and I had a great big room with a nice view of the harbour, a ceiling fan and ensuite bathroom. 

All meals were good in Indonesian style. I started my breakfast around 6:30am. I could have pancakes or Indonesian fried rice. Lunch was on the boat with rice, noodles, curry and stir-fry meat and veggies. Then, dinner with all resort guests at 7pm. It was great to meet new friends and talk about what we had seen after dinner. 

I started my dives every day around 7:30am and was back at 7:00pm for dinner. As me and my buddy had booked the unlimited dives, we had our own boat and own dive guide. I did 4-5 dives a day. 
I saw different nudibranchs, flamboyant cuttlefish, wonderpus, rhinopias and many different anglerfish. For more details please check out my Lembeh photos. 

In my opinion, I think this resort was a bit far from all the popular dive sites and took about 30-45 minutes to get to the dive site. I had to stay around the dive sites until the end of the day if I wanted to do 4-5 dives a day. A lot of other resorts are closer to popular dive sites with good facilities like a swimming pool and restaurants and only take 5-10 minutes to get to the dive site and back.  
So I think the next time I would like to try a resort which is closer to the dive sites and easier to go back and forth. Then I can enjoy all the facilities at a resort like swimming, drinking and eating food at the resort after each dive.  
But on the other hand you can’t beat a big room with a great view, cheaper package, own guide and own boat too. Also, good Indonesian food and all guests having dinner at the same time. So, I enjoyed meeting new friends and sharing experiences.