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Published: March 21st 2013
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Waiting
For the bus ? Never asked him The flight to the Philippines was so nice , mainly because of the price, about 100 US$ for a 3 hour flight with Air Asia . Air Asia is Malaysian airline that has low costs but high quality of flying within Asia and beyond to Australia , India and they used to fly to the UK but the high UK airport taxes put a stop to that , shame really . The aircraft are immaculate , the food cheap and the service second to none , always on time and regular flights all over the place sometimes they have special offers , I flew from KL to Singapore or 12 US $ once , an hour flight what a bargain ! They also spnoser QPR rangers for some reason ! .
I landed at Clark Int in the Pampagna province of Angeles. The hotel , booked online was cheap cheap and the standard was average but with mega friendly staff . I had no idea where I was in relation to the rest of the Philippines so I had to do some investigation via internet and the hotel staff . Angeles is a diump , a right dodgy place .
Dive dive dive !
All the gear , no idea . thats me ! The hotel doorman carreid a big pistol and he looked like he would use it as well. I wanted to go town exploring, it was only a 10 min walk away and as I left at dusk he told me to get a tuc tuc , I replied ll be alright thanks ! He then smiled a and made a throast cutting action with his finger ! What can he mean ? Anyway I started to walk the dark way to the city and ran back to the hotel to get a tuc tuc straight away ! The way was laden with dodgy looking characters just waiting for someone like me to cross their paths !
Angeles is a place where the US army had been stationed and is full with ex pats in their late 70´s all with young girls old enough to be ther grand or maybe great granddaughters , funny old place I remeber seeing one guy who should have been dead a long time ago in his shorts white legs , sandles and socks up to his knees with 2 of the most prettiest looking young 20 year olds one on each arm , he
Captain Pugwash
He really should be at school you know . looked happy but very silly !
I decided to head to Subic Bay , a place I will never forget to do some wreck diving . It was only a 3 hour bus ride away and soon I was there ready to rock and roll .
I found a dive center and asked about diving ( obviously ), well since nobody else was there I could start striaght away ! So the next day I went with Henry the young Philippine dive master ( not very good englsih ) on a 1 hour speed boat ride captained by a young lad of about 14 to a secret dive place only to be found with a GPRS thingy and marked with a small buoy the size of a football , right in the middle of nowhere. He told me that on other dive sites the locals come and steal the rope used to anchor the buoys , they steal anything here he told me with a wry smile , I just looked at my bag with my wallet and camera in it ! But since my wallet is always empty except for a few quid ( I never carry
Happy
Just me the sea and sun. ( and the 2 other guys ) loads of cash or Credit cards , passport etc ) I was nt too worried .
I had to do 2 dives since it was not profitable for them to take me so far for one dive , it only cost about 20 quid for a 45 min dive so I was not bothered in fact I would have loved to have done 3 but was not allowed due to saftey measures , depth etc etc .
The dives today were to a spanish galleon from the 17th century ! absoloutly amazing the hull was intact and I could swimm in and out of her , I even took a piece of the hull , it had iron ribs and a piece was easy to tear of ( secretly ) The fish were amazing the porcupine fish with its poison spikes were everywhere and rays, sharks and fish all colours and sizes really amazing I wish my camera was a real underwater one but it is only good for 10m max and we were at 25 m
Back to the dive center and it is so good , some kids comes out and grabs your kit ,
Where to dive ?
A not very professional brochure of the dive sites, just shows how uncommercial it all is , love it me ! we were taught on the course to rinse everything , empty the tanks etc etc but here it is all done for you and they then shove a beer under your nose !
I looked at the various dive sites and choose to go to see some US wrecks, sunk in WW2 by the Japs , this was a must .. there was also an aircraft carrier USS Enterpirse ( I think it was called ) but she was down at 40 m Myself and Henry were only licensed to go to 30 M and the PADI dive rules are very strict so this was out because they need a specialst to dive that , but surely here money buys everything ? I will ask tomorrow I thought .
That eveing was spent at the hotel , there was no downtown here really but this was a Phillipine tourist area , just loads of Phillipinos on holidays and they wre so freindly and great fun .
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