Two months ago, from the 1st to the 7th January, Haze and I traveled to the Philippines for a dive trip at Anilao. The week long trip includes two nights at Manila and four nights at Anilao, Batangas. In this entry I’m going to talk a bit about the journey and Arthur’s Place, the resort we stayed while at Anilao.
Anilao is a pretty popular diving destination in the Philippines due to its proximity from Manila, as well as the myriad of underwater creatures the various dive sites has to offer. If you love macro (those small stuff like nudibranch, crabs, shrimps, etc), you will love Anilao.
I’ll be posting plenty of underwater photos on subsequent posts.
all smiles, driving to Anilao took about two hours
We flew Cebu Pacific and spent New Year’s day at Rich, my ex-colleague’s place at Manila.
On the next day, we drove about 2 hours to Anilao on a journey that’s about 75% highway and 25% slow moving busy town-roads. Our destination was Arthur’s Place where we will meet up with Dave, Caterina and others diving buddies (we dove together at Similan Islands and Tenggol Island)
Arthur’s place, love the lawn and the gazebo
Arthur’s Place has about a dozen rooms facing a lawn with a gazebo in the middle. The restaurant is located “upstairs”, while the dive center is half a level down, right next to the beach. It isn’t exactly luxury, but the rooms are clean, and comes with hot water and air conditioning.
Once we have our equipments set up for the first day, the helpers at the resort made sure we had fresh tanks of air for every dive, and transferring of equipment from boat to dive center’s usually taken care of as well. The level of service is excellent.
Dive center at Arthur’s Place
Our dive guide was Richard, the guy knows practically everything about dive sites at Anilao. All we had to do was telling him what we wanted to see, and he’ll know exactly which dive side and be able to locate that particular frog fish that’s only 2cm across, or the one sea fan with pygmy seahorse out of the hundreds of sea fans underwater.
If you are going to Arthur’s Place, I highly recommend getting Richard as your dive guide.
the pebble beach, not real sandy, but still a lovely view
The beach in front of Arthur’s Place isn’t exactly superb. The beach is made of broken corals, pebbles, and sand. A pair of booty is very useful if you want to take a stroll by the seaside. This is typical of beaches around Anilao and not limited to this stretch at Arthur’s Place.
Water is generally clear and you can snorkel or dive right from here.
awesome sunset everyday at Arthur’s Place
Arthur’s place faces west, which means post-card worthy sunset view every evening. We had the privilege of enjoying four golden sunsets here, and each time it takes your breath away.
some of the food we had, plenty of choices to last a week
Everything here is ala-carte basis, and that includes room, diving (per dive depending on number of divers, distance of dive sites), and best of all – food. The restaurant at Arthur’s Place carries a pretty decent menu offering traditional dishes such as steamed fish, chicken adobo, bangus (milk fish for breakfast), to Western entries such as their very delicious bacon cheese burger.
The prices are from around 80 to 200 Philippines Peso per dish, while on a slightly high side for Philippines, we had no qualms about how they tastes and looked forward to every meal.
KY, Haze, and Rich, partner in compressed air breathing
Over all we spent about RM 2,500 for 4 nights of accommodation, food, and around 20 dives for myself and Haze. It was money well spent and the trip was only made better by the excellent hospitality by Rich and San San.
Looking forward to doing this again. Underwater photos coming soon.
wow this place looks really nice. so envious of your diving trips!
eiling: you can do it too!
ooo, you went to Anilau also, some of my friends went last year . .
eh eh.. RM2.5k each for 20 dives is pretty cheap eh as far as all my crazy friend diver does, they will never achieve that figure. .
taufulou: haha that 20 dives is for 2 person not just one lor.
that fish cooked and served on your plate might have been one of the fishes that you met underwater while diving, heheh. anyways, sounds like a lot of fun 😀
Sean: I won’t have a problem with that. lol
Awesome dives right!!! Now all 3 of us been anilaoded!!!! Let’s go again!!
Terence: haha ya best!
last time i go dive i saw NEMO!
i call out “NEMO NEMO” but stoopid fush then swam away 🙁
uummmmmmm……. uncle ah?
that 2nd to last pic looks like fried NEMO and his friend…. gulp
immature: fish are also food. lol
Hi KY, does Arthur’s Place provide unlimited shore dives?
Hi.. I’m planning to visit Anilao (diving trip) somewhere in November. Which place do you recommend to stay and dive with affordable price?
Mira: i’ve only been to Arthur’s place, and we loved it.