Derawan Dive Resort •  The Guide System •  Critter Country
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Derawan Island lies closer to the main land of Kalimantan – about one and a half hours of sailing from Nabucco. The dive resort is a good deal older than the Nabucco Resort and contains dive centre, equipment and souvenir shops, a large restaurant and a good deal of bungalow-like cabins that did seem rather worn down.

New luxury cabins were being built when we visited but ours had holes in the ceiling, useless air conditioner, torn mosquito nets and shapeless mattresses. But, as we found out, the diving did more than make up for this.

The restaurant was situated almost at the end of a long, long jetty (where the guest accommodations used to be), and the chef Harod, originally from Surabaya on Java, was a really friendly guy. He did become more and more desperate during our stay as we ate so little of his otherwise excellent food. Very varied and plentiful and inclusive all the water and fruit juice you could possible drink. Only beer and soft drinks were charged as extras.

In our room we had two large bottles of complimentary water that we could refill in the restaurant as often as we wished, and we could take of advantage of the tea and coffee machine 24 hours a day.

Normally Harod offered a large and varied buffet but we had a say in everything as we were the only guests on Derawan – apart from numerous rats incessantly darting back and forth across the rafters.
 

Apparently Derawan Dive Resort catered a lot for the Japanese dive market, and we had landed in between two dive groups so all was peaceful and quiet.

Derawan Dive Resort – or DDR – had at least four dive boats which could hold from six to 12-14 divers. A trip to Derawan included two guided boat dives per day as well as unlimited diving from the jetty – three of them guided if we wanted to. That brought the guided dives up to five per day included in the price – quite generous.

Trips to the giant mantas off Sangalaki, the jellyfish lake on Kakaban and to Big Fish Country at Nabucco Island would be charged as extras depending on how many divers wanted to go.
 

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