nice set of dives in Nha Trang

[Peter]

Colin says:
Very nice set of dives in Nha Trang. The situation turned out to be very French. We found another couchsurfing opportunity with this guy who owned and operated a dive shop and had gave us a room to crash. He sold us on a great deal $160 to get our advanced certification — so we did. We got 5 dives with a great instructor, incidentally from Chicago soon heading on his way to East Timor. For our advanced we chose 4 skills, underwater navigation, peak buoyancy performance, fish identification, and deep diving. The underwater terrain around Nha Trang is great — not so much in the way of underwater life, all though it seemed that everyone but us saw some sea turtles. WTF!? The highlight for me were the caves. We swam through two sets of caves on our way back to the surface from our deep dive at 28m. Very very cool. Each cave was packed with fish. Its was like flying around a mountain top but underwater. The limestone cliffs shoot straight out of the water and what you see above the surface is almost a direct translation of what is below. There were so many features to explore. The caves were so dark with only a tiny hole of light at the ends. Swimming through was intensely psychedelic. The colors exploded from everywhere with the return of sunlight. Too bad you only have a tank of air.
Alix says:

Excellent diving I must say indeed! We did 5 dives in two days and completed our Advanced Scuba Certification. Nice. Went with a company called Scuba Dive (real creative name huh? makes it easy to find though) which we found via couchsurfing.
Impressive dives. Vietnam in general hasn’t blown up on the tourist circuit like Thailand so you can find a great many things not over-trekked, this includes the ocean. Coral Garden and Pipe Beach were great spots but my fav dive spot was Madonna Rock where we started deep down at 28 meters (80ish feet) and swam through some totally rad caves crammed with fish! The underwater terrain was kinda like hiking in the mountains, only underwater. Swimming through crevasses, going up and down over huge rocks covered in coral, around bends and feeling the current drift you along. And a great variety of both soft and hard corals, corals I hadn’t seen before. I got bullied by a stinker clown fish, he he he, those rascals, being all protective over their coral homes, acting like they are shark size when really they are palm size! No sea turtle sightings even though they had just released a bunch into the sea - I guess I am destined not to see one. Well, plenty of other sea life to be mesmerized by, saw another octopus too!