During the summer of 2006 we went on the trip of a wreck junkie's life time to Truk Lagoon and straight on from there to Bikini Atoll. As we arrived at Chuuk International (!!!) Airport we were surprised to find Simon from Ribble Valley SAC hiding away at the front of the plane... small world Simon! He told us he had spent a few days diving in the Philippines on the way out to break up the journey and how good it had been. He also mentioned something about ladies in sensible shoes wrestling naked in a paddling pool full of jelly but we won't go there... after a visit to Asda and Toys-R-Us we fired up the computer to search for the cheapest flights out at Christmas but alas it was not to be due to the inflated prices at that time. So instead we flew out in the company of our vet and dive buddy Mike Holroyd on January 16th.for three weeks diving.
We began our trip with an overnight in frantic, noisy, polluted Manila where Martin threw away his socks and had to dobie his trainers for more than an hour after attempting to carry out his first dive of the trip down an open sewer! Not nice - perhaps we should have learnt the lyrics to Frank Zappa's "Stinkfoot" and serenaded him because Karaoke is certainly a Philippino pastime!!!
An’ my girl-friend cry "you got stink foot! stink foot, darlin’ Your stink foot puts a hurt on my nose! Stink foot! stink foot! I ain’t lyin’, Can you rinse it off, d’you suppose? " |
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From Manila we flew south to Coron the following day on a tiny 19 seat Dornier prop jet for nine days diving. On the face of it Coron appears to have many of the same types of wreck we had dived previously in Truk however the place itself is totally different - much friendlier, much cheaper and far, far nicer. And although there are not many artifacts left on the wrecks now they are still quite superb dives with amazing penetration possibilities.
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Our local guide Tantan (A.K.A. Tan Squared) took us on many deep penetrations into the wrecks... some swim throughs were literally from bow to stern without coming out. On one memorable penetration on the oil tanker Taiei Maru.we dropped down through a hole in the floor into a rust and silt brown-out then swam through a passageway between the oil storage tanks - simply super scary stuff! We also carried out deep penetrations into the only fighting ship at Coron, the Akitsushima. This is a giant seaplane tender which carried a flying boat very similar in size and design to the British Short Sunderland so you can perhaps imagine the size of the ship - vast! She had been bombed at Truk but had managed to escape during the night, only to be bombed again as she arrived at Coron and this time she sank. There is no trace now of the flying boat as the bomb hit the ship close by the plane and ripped her apart. The huge crane used for recovering the flying boat is still very obvious and although most of the guns have been removed the barrels of a triple AA installation can be seen close to the entrance we went in by. Sadly the visibility on the Akitsushima was never good enough to get many usable photographs. |
| Perhaps the clearest and most intact wreck is the
Kyokuzan Maru and she is also the best for viewing a few remaining artifacts.
This ship is a jeepney ride away across the island - an experience in itself
- and is in much clearer water. This is mainly because there are no pearl
oyster farms close by unlike on the south side of the island where the bulk
of the wrecks rest. She carried a general cargo including pottery and asbestos
and whilst I am unsure as to the wisdom of diving in a cloud of asbestos
dust I must say it creates an interesting and eerie effect - the white cloud
in the bottom of the hold is practically identical to dry ice!
Other highlights in this area are incredibly hard to chose from as every dive we carried out on the wrecks there had it's own certain something. We also had a night dive in a marine reserve where we managed to get literally covered in tiny shrimps - not nice when they are wiggling about in your ear canal! |
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So all in all Coron is an amazingly beautiful place
with superb dives on brilliant wrecks and we simply can't wait to go back.
Our thanks to everyone at
Seadive,
especially Jim and Chris Goll and our guide Tantan.
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We were sad to leave Coron but leave we had to so we
flew back up to Manila and continued north stopping over for a couple of
nights in Angeles City. And what fun we had there! Whilst the girlie bars
in the Philippines are not quite so in your face as their counterparts in
Thailand - for example the girls cannot dance topless or naked - they are
certainly a great night out and we enjoyed ourselves immensely! We wandered
around the mutiltude of bars literally spoilt for choice until we plumped
for one called "Typhoon" which had a great atmosphere and loads of fun people
generally having a great time - quite a contrast to the meat market approach
of some of the bigger bars. And what a pleasant change to spend a few days
lounging by the pool at Hotel Hana and recharging our batteries after 9 hard
days of diving. I'd like to say it was all sun, sea and San Miguel but the
sea was about 60 miles away! Oh well, you can't have everything I
suppose... |
Our next port of call was Subic Bay. Back in the 1990s Mount Pinatubo erupted and covered the whole area in ash whilst multiple earth quakes created mayhem in the town and mud slides devastated everything in sight. Until this time Subic had been a large American naval base but after the disaster they pulled out leaving the mess for the locals to clear up. It is built very much on the same lines as a small American town with linear blocks of buildings and quite frankly it has very little charm. The diving was not much better either despite the presence of one or two potentially amazing wrecks such as the former 16 inch gun pre-WW1 Dreadnought USS New York which served as a harbour guard and was scuttled as the Japs approached the Philippines to prevent the guns being captured. There is also a large WW2 era LST (tank landing craft), a couple of small freighters, a Vietnam war era American landing craft, a smashed up "Hell ship" and a large Japanese maru (freighter). The problem though was the appalling visibility - at times it was actually as bad as some very murky UK dives I have done - think Anglesey on a good day or the Breda with four or five boats full of divers moored over her and a summer plankton bloom thrown in for good measure then you'll not be far out. Neither was our sense of humour helped out by the fact that we were barred from diving the New York and the big Maru for the first three days due to the presence of a small American naval vessel in port - Uncle Sam's paranoia is really getting a bit OTT these days - oh how we cheered when it finally upped anchor and left. To cap it all during our penultimate day's diving in Subic our guide decided to remove his scuba underwater and then swim over to Tracy signalling an air-out situation. Cool as a cucumber sitting on an ice cube in a freezer she took control and carried out an assisted ascent up to 9 metres donating air with her octopus, whereupon he decided he was OK and spat out the octo, only to plummet back down to 15 metres before he could get his set back on again. |
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To say we were less than impressed with Master Dive at Subic is something of an understatement - it's not the dive centre staff or the owner, they were fine - they were friendly, helpful and pleasant, if a little hit and miss. No, it's the organisation of the dive facility. I'll not mention the home made anchor or finning at about 20 knots trying to keep up with the dive guide whilst he frantically tries to find the wreck. I won't mention the PADI (blooargh!) dive master having to use my Analox or him giving us a cylinder with 100% O2 in it when it was supposed to be a 50% deco mix. Or the O ring which went missing meaning that the second compressor charging whip could not be used because they had no spares. No, I won't mention any of those things. So if you read this and you are a diver then I won't suggest to you that perhaps you might chose a different dive outfit at Subic Bay... no. And I won't suggest that you don't bother going there at all and limit your diving instead to Coron - I mean why would you want to do that anyway aside from the fact that it's cheaper, friendlier and the diving is awesome in Coron? But that's not a good reason is it? I suppose in Coron you don't get woken up at 4 AM by a Fed-Ex jet taking off from your balcony... then again ten minutes later by another... then another, and another and another. Did I mention the Subic Seaplane commencing it's take off run at 6.45 AM daily? I thought not. No... in Coron it's just pig-sticking and Karaoke!
But I digress... with all the Subic Bay sites dived and some dived more than once, there was nothing else for it but to pack our bags early and de-fizz by the pool at the Hotel Hanah back in Angeles for an extra day before departing for Manila airport and ultimately home.
Sob...
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