Question on sangalaki dive lodge

Just heard that the once closed Sangalaki Dive Lodge ia now re-opened. The resort is now jointly managed by the prevoius owner and Rainbow Dive from Vietnam. Has anyone tried it after it's re-open??

Rin

Did you get there? They still owe me money from when the temporarily closed and my trip was cancelled.....hmmm

I must have been really lucky. I was there in feb 2005 and the diving was amazing.

The Island is a true and pure Paradise. The Resort left a bit to wish for back then.

Hopefully the new team gets it going, because it is a great place.

/Erik

My wife and I spent 10 days on Sangalaki (back when it was run by Borneo Divers). We recommended it to a bunch of friends because the diving was so good. Unfortunately a number of friends we know who did go over the last couple of years had horrible experiences because of the management, the lack of upkeep for the resort, and the poor quality food (which was never that good to begin with).

W/Rainbow Divers taking over (who I've dived with in Vietnam) I would expect them to get things right. However, realize that from an infrastructure perspective they don't have much to work with. The huts are primitive (but comfortable - w/the exception of the mosquitoes at night), the plumbing was "fragile," and there seemed to be something always needing repair (compressor, of which luckily there were 2, etc.).

On the positive side the diving is incredible. The reason we wanted to dive Sangalaki was for the mantas. We spent 7 days only coming across 1-2 a day (with the dive master telling us that this was really strange, never happened before, etc.). I was starting to believe that we had been sold the classic "oh you should have been her last week/month/season - they were everywhere..." until we went out for the afternoon dive on day 7 - there's a dive site in about 40 ft. of water where on the outgoing tide the mantas come in to get cleaned. Sure enough - after diving this site earlier in the week and getting skunked (multiple times) on this afternoon it was pretty much an endless parade of mantas (counted over 40).

The part of Sangalaki we didn't expect (that was pretty amazing) were the nesting sea turtles underneath the huts every night. All the huts are built on stilts to accommodate nesting sites right underneath them. Occasionally you would get woken up by a female hitting one of the stilts w/her flippers as she was digging the nest. There were a couple of times in the morning we helped the resort staff free exhausted females from exposed tree roots, bushes, etc. Several nests hatched while we were there (helped herd the baby turtles down to the water) - my wife still thinks these experiences were one of best of any trip we've taken.

The salt water lake (w/stingless jellyfish + snakes) at Kakaban is also pretty unique (and close to Sangalaki).

Getting there was not easy - Singapore to Balikpapan (overnight there), small plane to Berau, 3 hr boat ride to the island, but it was worth it. I hope they can re-establish this as a passable resort - we would consider going back.