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Diving Cambodia means Sihanoukville

August 25th, 2009 | Posted by NK in Cambodia - (2 Comments)

I have now been doing a bit of reseach on diving Cambodia and I have “only” found diving operations in the beautiful beach city Sihanoukville – all diving in Cambodia seems to start at Sihanoukville.

In Sihanoukville there are 4 diving centers:

Scuba Nation Diving Center
At Serendipity Beach
Scuba Nation offers PADI Open Water Courses at US 455 and boat trip with 2 fun dives at US 85.

The Dive Shop Cambodia
At Serendipity Beach Road
The Dive Shop Cambodia offers PADI Open Water Courses at US 330, but I can’t find their prices for fun dives at the website..

EcoSea Dive Center
At Occhuteal Beach or downtown + several other places.
EcoSea Dive Center is one of the cheapest dive centers in Sihanoukville with PADI Open Water Courses at US 295 and boat trip with 2 fun dives at US 65.

Diving And More
In Downtown
Diving and More  is offering PADI Open Water Courses at US 245 and 2 fun dives at US 70.

That was the rough details, but as I find diving also being a social sport my choice of who to dive with depends mostly on where I like the persons the most…  I mean you have to spend both time on the boat and in the water, so better find some cool people to join.

I really looking forward to check out the diving around Sihanoukville sometimes around end of October – not really sure when exactly we’ll arrive. First we’ll spend a couple of days around Angkor Wat – it should be so beautiful! And on our way down to Sihanoukville we’ll of course take a couple of days in the capital Phnom Penh.

Diving Cambodia in October

July 11th, 2009 | Posted by NK in Cambodia - (5 Comments)

Heading for Cambodia in October and I’m sure there’s going to be some diving included in the trip, as always…

Cambodia is not know for being a big diving country and the diving should be pretty underdeveloped, which in fact could be interesting – I’m sure there will be no queuing at the dive sites.

The diving in Cambodia should mainly from Sihanoukville – if you hear about any other dive hubs do tell me please – and there seems to be only a few dive operators there. I will be back with more information when I start my research on Cambodia diving…

The dive sites are around 1,5 – 2 hours outside Sihanoukville and has names like Koh Rong, Condor Reef, Koh Tang, Koh Mano,  Koh Prins and more…
Gonna be interesting to dive the best of them!

Sharks of the World on iPhone

July 8th, 2009 | Posted by NK in Stuff - (1 Comments)

The original “Sharks of the World Field Guide” by Save Our Seas Foundation is now ready for the iPhone as a free application.
All 440 species of sharks are in there, so it should soon be a must bring for diving trips…  maybe not in Denmark..

The Sharks of the World Field Guide can be found in the App Store, search for “Sharks Guide” which is also the name of it in App Store.

Last week was really busy.

First the Emergency First Response (EFR) course Thursday and then Rescue Diver theory for 5 hours Friday evening.
Before that I had the joy of reading the Rescue Diver book – a really interesting book full of good examples.
The theory exam wasn’t that difficult, probably because our instructor Michael Jensen was really great and  I did spend a lot of time reading the book (full day)…

Saturday and Sunday was booked for in-water exercises in the nice cold Danish water. I guess picking a weekend in the end of June was a good choice by me, because it was full sun and 26C, so I did in fact manage to sunburned in the forehead and on the nose (no shock) and with a 7mm wetsuit the was was nice…  but ALSO because  there was a lot to do in the exercises – in was far from the usually concept of lazy diving to not spend too much air…
The exercises was great fun, but also somewhat hard (at least) and I’m looking forward to do some extra practicing in some of the areas – I guess this Rescue Diver is just like getting a drivers license – then you’re ready to learn, but the big difference is that you dont really hope to get the posibility to try your Rescue Diver skills (that would mean that somebody is in serious problems..).
Anyway I’m very happy that I did take the Rescue Diver course and I do feel good about getting to know about this – it might come in handy one day..

And in the end of the last day we did a bit of fundiving on a small wreck called U3…

In June I’ll be back at the PADI-School-bench again doing first the Emergency First Response course and then just 2 days later the Rescue Diver course. And its going to be in the good cold Danish water around Køge – a little south of Copenhagen.

I’m looking very much forward to go diving again – even though its not “just” fun diving…  and especially the Rescue Diver course sound tough and really interesting with the focus on how to prevent problems and how to manage them if they do occur.

PADI describes the content as:

  • Self rescue
  • Recognizing and managing stress in other divers
  • Emergency management and equipment
  • Rescuing panicked divers
  • Rescuing unresponsive divers

And after taking the Rescue Diver course there’s further posibilites for education – maybe Divemaster in the future…  but let’s see..  on thing at the time..

White eyed Moray Eel

February 8th, 2009 | Posted by NK in Egypt - (0 Comments)

I have seen quite some Moray Eels while diving and I always enjoy it – of course they are not beautiful like Turtles, Dolphins and Stringrays, but there is a bit of danger about them…  just like diving with Sharks and Barracudas.
But even though some people describe Moray Eels like Vicious and evil, they are in fact more shy and they only attack people in self defense. And I have never been attacted by a Moray Eel….
And no, its not true either that their bite is poisonous, but their backwards pointing teeth are full of bacterias, so they can make a nasty wound.

And because they are shy when it comes to humans I usually see them hiding in their small caves.

White eyed Moray Eel hiding in the cave

And another picture of the hiding Moray Eel with white eyes

I have most of the time only spottet Moray Eels when they were hiding in their caves, but sometimes I have been so lucky seeing them swimming… and they do in fact have a rather fat body, not really what you would guess from when they just look out from their cave.

A fat Moray Eel swimming by

Barrel Coral at Aow Leuk Bay outside Koh Tao

February 8th, 2009 | Posted by NK in Thailand - (3 Comments)

I guess its the cold weather that makes me browse through some of the nice pictures from my diving trips…  and I just found some really good ones from diving with my friend Benjamin back in August 2007 – we spend some time diving at Koh Tao and had also a couple of great wreck dives outside Pattaya.

On one of our dives at Koh Tao the visibilty wasnt too great on the close west coast, so the skipper decided to take us round the south end to Aow Leuk Bay at the South East end of Koh Tao – quite a good choice, because the visibility was very nice and Aow Leuk Bay did have some nice stuff down there….  I especially remember this big Barrel Coral,

Barrel Coral at Aow Leuk Bay, Koh Tao

Jellyfish got eaten by the fishes

January 31st, 2009 | Posted by NK in Egypt - (0 Comments)

At Ras Muhammed (the great underwater National Park close to the Sharm el Sheik in Egypt) I found some fishes busy eating a Jellyfish.
I must admit that I have never seen (or heard of) fishes eating Jellyfishes before – is that normal?

Benjamin Knudsen diving at Koh Tao

December 1st, 2008 | Posted by NK in Thailand - (0 Comments)

Meet my good friend Benjamin Knudsen – I was on a Thailand trip with him back in August 2007.

At this picture he’s showing how much he loves the diving at Koh Tao.

Diving at Mosede Strand in Denmark

November 19th, 2008 | Posted by NK in Denmark - (0 Comments)

Back in August 2008 I was on my first dive in Denmark ever and it was at beach dive at Mosede Strand 20 km south of Copenhagen.
The visibility was in fact better than I could hope for and I might even try diving in Denmark even though its not to compare to diving at Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt or Koh Tao in Egypt, but even so close to beach and boats we did see crabs and had a nice first dives for my cousins who joined me.

Entering the water at Mosede Strand

I did of course bring my Sony camera in the underwater pack with me, even though I didn’t really know what to expect from the dive, but I did manage to make some social pictures of my cousins and Irina and I did also come across 2 crabs.

First Crab in the water around Mosede Strand

And another Crab

I must admit that the dive was better than expected, but not really much – the water in Denmark just hasn’t got that great visibility and there isn’t that much of a marine life. But I have heard that wreck diving should be rather good in Denmark – the waters of Denmark should in fact be full of wrecks in all sizes and with many special stories behind.

My cousins doing their first dive