Scuba diving on Bunaken Island offers the best wall diving on earth. The best critter diving in the sea is in Lembeh Strait. If you have to choose between Mabul Island (off of Borneo) or Lembeh Strait go for Lembeh. Lembeh has many more dive sites there and the quality of diving is much better. If you want to dive with Mantas go to Sangalaki off the Indonesia coast of Borneo. Of all the diving places I have ever been (all over the world) the area around Sangalaki is my favorite. There are a lot of dive operators in North Sulawesi to choose from. Try to pick a dive operator that does not have more then max 4 people per guide. This means the dive boat is going to be a small wooden boat most likly. Stay with a dive lodge and try to avoid a live aboard since most live aboard don’t know the sites well.

Bring your own scuba diving gear too. When diving in Asia I use a Scubapro s600 regulator with a MK 25 first stage. When traveling I use a lightweight BC by Cressi. I always use a 5mm or 7mm full wetsuit even if the water is really warm. If you are doing four 100 minuet dives a day then you will need the warmth. Use an RGBM dive computer like a Suunto. The RGBM dive computers are much better then the Buhlmann based computer at predicting DCI on multiday mutidive diving. Now I am using a Canon S50 powershot camera but I will be buying a Canon 10D with an underwater housing and strobe. I can easily take 50 pictures on every dive.

Keep away from places like the perhentian islands, Thailand, The gili islands and Bali if you don’t have your own boat. The so called dive guides are usually western kids that are doing there dive master course and can’t find their asses with both hands! These areas can offer good diving but not at the well know dive sites. There are so overly dived that all the sea life is dead or degenerated.

Avoid diving with morons that talk about DIR equipment and DIR diving. It is obvious that these scuba divers are more into gear and macho moaning then marine life. Drysuit divers that book a packet trip with max 14 days from Europe or the States and don’t have any regard for the marine life. Their call sign is a huge expensive BC wing like Halcyon or Dive Rite wrapped around a puny 12 litter tank. No suntan, they stress about currents, don’t know names of fish and critters and have horrible bouncy.

The other guides (Dive Masters) wanted to go to Batu Kapal next to Bunaken. The dive is a 60 meter deep swim though. Turned out the DIR god could not dive at all.