Welcome June! It's already been half a year?! Wow, time really passes by quickly these days...  I've been busy planning my upcoming wedding (happening next year!), travelling to a couple of countries with Z for leisure and for our recent pre-wedding photoshoot! We had such a good time! Travelling is always a joy for me (and i believe for everyone else too, right) and I'm just one of those travelers who NEED to plan an itinerary for every day. If I didn't have any plans for the day, I'd feel it's been wasted away.... haha. i hope i'm not the only one like this.......

Anyway, I wanted to blog about my last diving trip to Cebu, Malapascua. Well, it ain't recent now that it's almost a year ago (oops..), but i'm still gonna pen it down! For fellow divers like me, I think we all like to go to Adex Diving Expo to check out special dive deals or equipment going on sale. Personally, I think we always get quite good deals at such fairs and being the dive organiser for our diving group, i'm always on a lookout for travel opportunities for our group. I chanced upon Deveocean Divers at the fair and I managed to secure a pretty sweet deal at 4D3N + 6 dives at $299 pp. Yes, it includes our resort accommodation for 3 nights and 6 dives! There are different accommodation types, so if you opt for the Deluxe rooms, it'll be more costly. I think it's a steal! So always keep your eyes peeled for Adex specials. Equipment rental is additional at P1000 per day, torch (for night dive) at P300 per dive, dive computer at P700 per day. There's also a bunch of "surcharge" if you dive at certain sites.

Malapascua is known for Thresher Sharks, so it is a MUST DO to dive at the Monal Shoal which is essentially a Thresher shark cleaning station. The Monal Shoal has a Shark Protection Plan fee of P50 per diver per dive. It is a super early morning dive at 5am if im not mistaken. The other surcharges/fees are a compulsory Marine Sanctuary at P150, Night dive at P180, Gato Island day trip at P350, Kimud Shoal at P350, Dona Marilyn Wreck at P500, Kalangaman island at P500. All prices are per diver per day. The day trips and island dives are subjected to weather conditions, and sad to say we didn't get a chance to go on those due to unfavourable sea conditions during our stay. Nonetheless, we were happy with our dives each day.

Our trip started with us landing at Mactan-Cebu airport at 415am on 9 Aug (yay, happy national day to SG). Not the best timing to arrive, but given that we have a long journey ahead of us to get to the sea port, it's bearable. Met up with Patsy (my awesome mate from uni) and Steven and they got us hooked up with their aunt's transportation company, so we got ourselves a comfy Hi-Ace van with their driver. p.s. anyone who's heading to malapascua from cebu, hit me up, i'll get you guys good rates from patsy's aunt. It's a 3.5 hrs drive from the airport to Maya-Malapascua ferry terminal, so be prepared for a longgggg ride. We stopped several times along the road to get coffee/sim card/snacks from 7-11 and lunch at Jollibee.

Once we arrived at the ferry terminal, there was a fee of P100 per passenger for the ferry, and you could hop on to any boat that comes along afterwards. It's a pretty big traditional boat, so it can fit quite a number. There'll definitely be others sharing the boat since they're going to the island for work/visit friends etc. The only issue with this kind of ferry transfer is that there is no problem getting to malapascua, but coming back to Cebu, there isn't such a system where you pay P100 and wait for the boat to come. It's like a touting system on the island and you're more likely to pay extra for "the whole boat". We'll get to that later....
Anyway, the ferry ride was about 45min to malapascua and everyone caught some sleepy winks during then.

The local guys on the island grounds will try to help you carry your luggage and get tips from you afterwards. If you're feeling lazy or generous, feel free to get their help. btw, you will be landing on sandy beach, so if you're bring a trolley luggage, you're gonna have a hard time dragging it on the sand.


We took a short walk from the beach landing point to our dive resort, which is approximately 10min away. The island is pretty small, so the shops are close by one another, and you'll see the same faces quite often. Most of the dive resorts are operating on the beach front, so it's relatively easy to spot your dive shop. We managed to find our Devocean Divers pretty quickly, and met up with the manager in charge who introduced us to our Dive Master for the trip. As the resort staff set up our rooms and got it in order for check in, we had our dive briefing, filling up of forms, checking dive license etc. Be mindful that you have to be AOW certified in order to do the thresher shark dive as it is beyond 18m (which is the limit for OW divers)! There are 4 dives each day, rain or shine. It's up to you to plan your dives according to the package you have (or pay extra if you want to dive more). Day 1 will only be a check dive, no other dives involved. Since it was around noon when we arrived, we had our check dive at 2pm, so it was free & easy for a couple of hours for us.

Checked in to our individual cottages/rooms and set out to explore the island on foot. First thing we needed to get was DRINKING WATER! There's a main mini-mart on the island, within walking distance to the beach (it's at the back) and it has almost everything you need. There are several smaller marts along the beach front but they have limited items (water, snacks, cup noodles, sunscreen mainly). Ohyes, bring along your own sunscreen, it is quite expensive there!


Check dive done and dusted!

Back on land and started planning where to go for dinner. I had previously researched online that there's a dainty local restaurant that has very yummy home cooked food, so we decided to try that out. It's called "Ging-ging's Restaurant" and here's the location of it 84H8+5F Daanbantayan, Cebu, Philippines We went early since we wanted to have some drinks after dinner, butttttt, the dinner took super long!!! I reckon we waited at least 45min or 1 hour for our food to arrive. It was cheap, no doubt, and yummy, but the waiting time was such a killer! My advice for anyone who wants to dine there; go early and expect a long waiting time. Had some drinks after dinner that night, and boy it hit us hard the next day when we went for our morning dive. #deeplyregretful 


Day 2 - we woke up super early at 4am to prepare for our morning dive with the thresher sharks at 5am. It was an exciting moment for me since I came here specially to see them. I've been told that there may not be thresher shark sightings during every dive, but fingers crossed we'll be able to see them. We were super lucky to have sighted a number of threshers on both of our morning dives!!

As the Monal Shoal is a cleaning station, there is actually a rope that marks the boundary for divers. You'll have to kneel/sit/ float and observe from behind the rope so as not to alarm the sharks during their cleaning and frighten them away. yeah below is a bad example of Zach crossing the boundary, and you can see our DM in the background asking him to come back. haha.

photo credits Dive Magazine UK

I was feeling a little seasick after my first morning dive, so I opted out of the afternoon dives, and retreated back to my room to sleep while the rest went on with their dives. Woke up again at noon to eat my breakfast which Zach & Cindy has kindly ordered for me. Feeling better after my nap, we decided to explore the Lighthouse. Initially, the plan was to go cliff diving but heard that it was closed off due to bad weather conditions and sharp rocks beneath. We hired some locals on bikes to bring us up, and they were waiting at the foot to fetch us back... I can't quite remember the price but it wasn't expensive. Stumbled upon some beach and spent some time there too.



We were not due back for a dive until the evening for our night dive. I thought that we were all going for night dive, but turns out we were doing the Sunset dive instead. Luckily we all got back right before the dive crew departed, so we got our stuff together quickly. The reason why you would want to do a sunset dive is to actually catch a glimpse of this tiny fish doing "boom boom". The dive spot called Light House Reef is where you can catch Mandarin Fish mating around sunset. It is quite challenging to take a photo of these shy fish without disturbing them, they easily go back hiding in the reef. Too bad i didn't have a proper camera to capture macro photos.... But even still, it was super difficult to get a nice clean shot with sooooo many people gathering around/above you.



Yeap. Look at how many divers are crowding around that coral watching the Mandarin Fish mating. hahahaha. We stayed for about a good 20min here, as this was the highlight of the sunset dive. Some of us got bored after awhile and started roaming around nearby. One of our friends didn't wear his contact lens for this dive and he couldn't see the tiny fish at all and gave up crowding around the coral. hahaha! After the fish went back into hiding, we moved off to other areas as it got darker and spotted some cute critters along the way.

That was the end of our sunset dive for Day 2. Check out my video on hunting for Mandarin Fishes during our evening dive.