Diving Pulau Weh, Aceh, Indonesia, January 2010

Background

I first learned about Pulau Weh from a good friend and published diving photographer David Lim a few years ago. Having seen many good photographs of the underwater environment at P Weh, I was attracted but somehow dissuaded by the lack of easy access then. In November 2009, I started thinking about the next dive trip with my daughter Ruth, and found out that we could get there through Air Asia via Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So P Weh became a very real option, and when both Eric and Song suggested independently that I should go to P Weh, it became a reality.

Reactions

When I told my friends we were going to Aceh for diving, the reactions were typically “You’re not afraid of the earth quakes, tsunamis?”, “Safe or not?”.

While at Banda Aceh Vincent Chong (of Pulau Weh Dive Resort) brought us around to visit two remnants of the December 2004 Tsunami – a big generator ship that had landed about 4 km in land, and a boat on top of a house, also about that distance from the sea. Other than that, there were no sign of the tsunami anywhere else, rebuilding seems fairly complete. Life appeared to be bustling.

Getting There

We flew Air Asia Singapore-Kuala Lumpur-Banda Aceh. Just note that Air Asia is a point-to-point budget airline, so leave plenty of time to go through immigration, collect your bags and check-in again. Also note that Air Asia is known to be very fond of changing its schedule, we got our Banda Aceh in-bound flight delayed by an hour, and out-bound brought forward by 2. We ended up with long airport lay overs. It could have easily been the other way around, so it is advisable to allow 3 hours for transit time.

Pre-booking for luggage is necessary, and the 15-kg per bag is enforced strictly. They were, however, less stringent on hand carries, so I took out my twin strobes in shoe bags (so they thought were shoes) and we made the weight limit.

There is a little-known fact that there is a clause on sports equipment max 15 kg for something like RM40, way cheaper than RM15 per kg excess charges (S$9/kg). Check that out if you're over the weight limits.

Accommodation and transfer
PWDR is as at January 2010 building its resort at a beach a short boat ride away from the current dive centre. For this trip, we put up at Nagoya Inn at Sabang, the "Kota" (city) of Pulau Weh. Said to be the best accommodation available at Sabang, Nagoya Inn is by Singapore standards basic, but clean and comfortable. Wifi broadband, a neccessity for many, is available at Nagoya Inn.

Each morning we would transfer to PWDR via a short car ride, then a 10-15min speed boat ride. We would spend the whole day based at the dive centre, making short speed boat rides to the dive sites, usually between 15 and 25mins away by speed boat. The whole day depends on whether we would be doing night dive, in which case we would arrive at Nagoya Inn passed 9pm.

Diving

Diving around P Weh is relatively easy, although there are a few sports with pretty strong currents (Arus Balee or "bastard's current" is one of them). Much of the dive sites are unspoilt, I did not see evidence of dynamic fishing, although at Pulau Rubiah there were some signs of tsunami damage.

Several prominent features come to mind for diving at Pulau Weh:

• there were millions of colourful anthias swimming all round.
• the seafans were large and the seafan gardens big.
• there was an abundance of moray eels, many of them very large.
• large fishes were seen in abundance, we swam regularly with big trevally, jacks, coral groupa, etc
• at many spots there were large schools of colourful powder blue surgeon fish, collared butterfly fish.
• the wrecks at Sabang Jetty were surprisingly rich in marine life.
  

It was said that given the right season you could dive with manta ray, mola mola, and a number of exotics. I guess we were here "out-of-season". Nevertheless, the large number of colourful fishes during all dives (except the muck dives at Hot Spring and Sabang Jetty) was a refreshing change from many other places that I have visited in the past few years.

Oh did I mention the food at PWDR was very good!

Pulau Weh is definitely worth a visit for diehard divers!

The 3 Stooges: 3 moray eels sharing a crevice

All photographs on this page: Fujifilm S2Pro, Tokina ATX 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 FE, Ikelite Housing, Ikelite DS-160, DS-125 strobes.

Dive Operator

Pulau Weh Dive Resort

KL office :32-1, Jalan Putra Indah 9/1D, Putra Heights, Subang Jaya Selangor, Malaysia

Indonesia Office : Lot 108, Pantai Iboih, Pulau Weh, Provinsi Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam,Sumatra Indonesia.

Tel / Fax: +603-5636 1176

H/P: +6016-330 3383, +6019-664 3318,

+6016-210 2267, +62819 3233 2328

Website

Others mentioned

Eric of Ocean2U helped arranged the diving trip.

Song of Oceanic Focus where I get most of my underwater photographic supplies.

Other dive operators

There are a number of other dive operators on Pulau Weh, with whom I have no experience so I would not comment.