The Weird and the Wonderful at Lembeh Strait

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Lembeh is famous for its "muck diving". Not the most appealing sounding diving and I was definitely skeptical. Muck diving is basically how it sounds. Forget colorful coral formations and shaols of tropical fish. Muck diving in Lembeh involves diving along a black sandy sea bed in often 5-meter visibility looking for the strange little inhabitants that call it home.

We stayed at Two Fish resort located at Lembeh island, which is a short 15 minute boat ride from the heavily industrial port town on Bitung. Looking around at all of the huge ships in port and the factories along the coast, it was hard to believe that there'd be any life at all under the ocean.

A couple of hours after arriving we went out for our first dive. We jumped in and followed our guide, Handry, down to the murky, black sand, litter strewn ocean floor. No coral. No fish. No color. What were we doing? However, I soon started to understand the appeal of muck diving. You just have to ignore the overall scene and keep your head to the sand, looking for the small creatures. We saw lots of the stranger fish varieties such as colorful frog fish, 3 types of seahorses, and scorpion fish. There were also lots of color-changing cuttlefish and amazing nudibranches, which are like slugs but they can be outrageously colorful and pretty. We loved the especially strange and rare things, such as the Ambon scorpion fish and the hairy flog fish which constantly yawns. No-one has ever been ever to figure out a scientific reason why!

The night dives were particularly fun, with eels freaking out and putting on a show and a coconut crab running along on its eight tentacles, carrying it's coconut like a shell. On every night dive there were more strange-looking crustaceans than I'd like to think about, including the decorator crabs running around covered in pieces of coral and leaves for camouflage, and a huge crab with bright blue legs that could run like an athlete - creepy!

By the end of our three days at Lembeh we'd done ten dives each and become muck-diving fans. The funny thing was that a few of the Lembeh sites actually had coral, but paradoxically, those were the sites that failed to hold our attention as they were pretty but they just weren't weird enough!

We rented a camera on the last day so most of the photos on here are mine. A few things a "stole" from the internet as we didn't see them on the last day with the camera.

After all of that diving, we needed to take a day off to allow our bodies to off-gas (get rid of the nitrogen build up) before our flights home. We decided to take a trip to the Tomohon market, famous for its macabre cuisine. We began by wandering past stalls selling fish, vegetables, and flowers. It all looked like any other SE Asian market. When we got close to the animal area, however, I could guess where we were immediately. The first clues were the big meat hooks and bloody scales hanging from the concrete structure. Pretty soon we saw some pigs' trotters followed by the heads. As we walked through, trying not to breathe the stench too deeply, I saw dead dog on a table, plus a couple of dogs' heads. They were all blackened from the blow torch used to cook them. On the ground close by was a cage of sorry-looking dogs, awaiting their fate. Now, I'm no dog-lover but I have to say that I couldn't help but feel sorry for them. On through the market we walked, past tables of de-winged bats with their mouths wide open in a final cry for help, and past part of a once-huge snake. For the rest of the day, I have to admit that we avoided the local eateries and stuck to vegetarian food in Pizza Hut, just in case!

The next morning we headed to the airport and went our separate ways. Scott has a gruelling schedule of a 15-hour stop over the Jakarta, followed by a 12-hour stop in Manila, then a few hours in Taipei. He's not sure if it is worth leaving the airport at all , but that's a LOT of time to kill.

I'm luckier. I had a flight to Bali yesterday followed by a half-day of shopping and pool lounging. Right now, I'm all packed up and getting ready to board my flight to Taipei, where I'll meet up with Scott for the final leg to Los Angeles airport. The real world of stress and deadlines is fast-approaching for me, and Scott will soon be on the job hunt again. Still, we can't complain about the bad economy. It was the bad economy that spurred this trip and I wouldn't change that for anything.

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