October 26, 2025
Thursday, October 23rd we arrived in the Port of Bitung, Indonesia to huge fan fare despite the pouring rain. Turns out we were the first cruise ship to visit this Port in a long time!
The immigration staff and local dignitaries came on board the Ship in droves. While all the attention was great, the immigration process took many hours longer than normal. Eleven of us below ( L clockwise R - Ben, Phil, Kim, Alionia, Ed & Sue, Lucia, Whitney & Doug and Bosco & I ) had booked a get away to neighboring Budaken Island and our start was delayed about 4 hours. Regardless, we got there for a nice little getaway. We had about a 90 minute drive across the island and then another 30 minutes by boat to the Resort.
The locals were so friendly and kids so curious about us strangers, yelling out hellos and where do you come from at us. They wanted to know my name and I would ask them theirs and get huge smiles and giggles when I tried to guess their ages. So sweet!
Raja Laut Dive Resort has a total of 7 cottages - our group took 5 of them and there was a German couple and 2 Swiss Girlfriends checked into the other cabins. We ate all our meals together - a very nice, chill group. Below shows our simple but comfy cottage.
The main attraction for Bosco & I to this getaway was the chance to try out scuba diving for the first time. Most of the others in our group have been PADI dive certified for a while, Sue & Ed used to be masters / teachers. Whitney & Phil have dived for most of their lives and the rest have done off and on. So we were excited to try out with this group. Bosco and I prepared by watching 5 hours of PADI dive instructional videos and reading thru the 200 + page manual and taking several progress quizzes - all to understand the basics and be somewhat familiar with the terms and task involved in the weeks prior to arriving at the resort. Both of us had some apprehensions, since we had no idea if we had the skill sets or what it was really going to be like under water. Both of us are comfortable in the water and really enjoy snorkeling, so thought this was the natural next step.
These are the only photo's I have of our dive experience, curtesy of Whitney! I had taken some with an old iPhone in a water tight case, but sadly that old phone is now not showing any signs of life! Cheap case! Bummer, my roll off shots from boat were very cool. I also am trying to figure out best camera to use for all this water activity - hoping I can have my cousin bring me a good one when she comes out to visit in a month! I did two dives, the first one, intro did not go too well because my mask was not good, keep fogging and filling with water. We were also in open water, with a strong current and the shallowest area was about 15 feet and we had communication issues. We were in the water about an hour then came up and talked through things. I decided to do a second dive to see if we could progress things and while the experience was much better with a new mask, there was still some communication issues and some scary moments for me, not really knowing what I was doing. Again I was down another hour and this time descended to about 54 feet, and it was amazing down there, so many turtles and the most beautiful colors in a reef I have seen to date. But I was exhausted, and not feeling great at all about how the experience was progressing with this dive master. So we made the decision to stop our training dives and just snorkel the next day and leave the resort early. Our hope is we can continue training elsewhere, there are so many opportunities to do this, in this part of the world, and no reason to rush through. Below are some photos of this magical area and I am also going to post another residents video of the turtles in this National Marine Park, she was at a neighboring resort.
