If you want a dive trip that cheap, not too far away from Jakarta, good visibility, good marine life, then Sangiang will probably on the top of the list of every dive shop in Jakarta.
It was at 6AM, when the people started to upload the gear to the cars. Tom and Mia go to pickup Cristian and Christian. The rest of the pack heading to Paku Pier at 6.30AM (30' late, but still manageable).
Pak Suhanda already waiting on his boat (Putra Dharma), we upload the gear and the food immediately and go to Sangiang. An embarrassing incident is happening here (at least for me and Cesil' hehehe'). We accidentally left 2 sets of regulator in Jakarta ups' &*#^ !@3#4' ' Time for plan B, 4 divers go first (Tom, Mia, Caca, Herryto) and me and Cesil will get the regulator from the whoever that comes up first '' this is ridiculous but it works'
Dive 1: Batu Mandi
It was a strong surge (even at 10m!!). The surge bring us left' right' left' right' at (I guess) 5m amplitude %^%#$ #@$*. We have to go deeper, but we are trapped in a strong current. Lucky for us that during that chaos we got the unicorn fish forming the defense formation and circling us!!! It was a nice view until suddenly the fishes start to ungroup and all of them heading for the same direction!!! %@#' ^%&*' current!!! Cesil and I tried to hide behind a huge coral formation on the bottom where the current is a little bit friendly. Here, we found a very small (15 mm) nudibranch ' Nembrotha kubaryana. After almost dumping 10-20 bars of air (#$@#!!!) I quit trying to take the photo' It was so bloody difficult to shoot in the surge and current!!! It was on the safety stop depth when we found a big ovulid, the length is +/- 15cm. We ended the dive after 40 minutes.
Lunch time!!!, heading to nice white sand of Sangiang for lunch and siesta'
Dive 2 Tanjung Bajo
Tanjung Bajo is my favorite spot in Sangiang, the coral life is good (even though not as good as Batu Mandi that we dive on the first dive) and virtually no current or surge. We found so many nudibranch in this spot, countless Pteraeolidia ianthina, flatworms, nudibranch from flabellina, philidia family and an unidentified species (at least by me ). I'll attach the picture in case you can help me to identify the beautiful creature.
Nitrox is recommended to dive in this spot, the best part is on 20+m depth. We are running out nitrogen time on this dive' after ignoring the singing divecomp for a while we finally agree to ascent to decompression zone at 6 meters. Found nothing on this depth and we end up the dive.
Go home'