It’s been wonderful to see Brandon Geithner back with us again. Brandon did his OW course many years ago with Alli and he felt it was time to get back to the beach and upgrade his diving skills. Congratulations on your Advanced Open Water and Nitrox certifications! Not only did Brandon come back, but he also brought along his dad, Klaus….

Klaus was keen to do the Open Water Course even before he got here. Klaus is 76 years young and has spent lots of time in the water, but he always wanted to be able to spend more time under the water and not have to come up all the time.  Over the next four days, Klaus did the course with Ruben and left here with a big smile on his face along with his certification. A very special congratulations to Klaus from all of us here at Asia Divers…you rocked it!

3 days to go to the March IDC – and we are getting our “office” ready.. 🙂

With the PADI Instructor Development Course starting in just 3 days, our instructor candidates have all by now completed their online studies – either at home or by the pool – what a relaxing way to get through some of the theory instead of sitting in a classroom. We can’t wait to get in the water – and as you can see – we have prepared our “office” already…

Wonderful diving conditions at the moment – great viz and a number of “critter alerts”, from pygmy seahorses to frogfishes, turtles and more.

Special request for an April eIDC

Based on a number of requests, we are thinking of adding another 10 days eIDC program in the second half of April. If anyone else is interested, please email us at idc@asiadivers.com

Congratulations to Pamela Jonsson who has become a PADI Open Water diver. She’s now ready to jump into those frosty Swedish lakes! Alli, Klaus and Pamala decided to celebrate the moment with something yummy!

It’s been great fun having John and Kate Hughes with us recently. They’ve been awesome to dive with and have some great times up in the bar. Congrats to John, who did his PPB course with Pete, but wishes he did it on his first day, instead of his last day…

It has been great couple of weeks for us to dive, chart and party with these awesome people from Canada: Jacqui, Wayne, Keith, Richard, Kelly, Darron, Anthony, Tanis, Mona, Robert, Jared, Joan and Kristy (who felt a bit sad of having to leave the group earlier). Congratulations to Darron, Joan and Tanis to join the 100 dives club and Kelly to hit 300 dives during this trip–glad to see everyone’s enthusiasm of diving! With mostly beautiful weather, a few more layers and of course lots of mango daiquiris and Jacquilas, we all kept ourselves warm and had so much fun together. The only thing is they will have to come back and bring a Canadian flag next time;)

Kristy sad to be leaving the group early…

Diver City SCUBA Inc., a local dive shop in Manitoba, Canada owned and operated by Jacqui and Wayne opened in 2013. One thing about Manitoba divers is they love to travel to dive and have a good time!

So Jacqui organizes trips usually twice a year for the group. Previously travelling to Bonaire, the Bahamas, Cozumel Mexico, Honduras, and now to Puerto Galera!

Diving, having fun and training all levels from Open Water to Padi Tech. What are they up to next? Check out www.divercityscuba.ca or like them on facebook to find out!

“ I also want to thank everyone at Asia divers for making our visit an amazing an most memorable time. Missing you guys already!!”

Jacqui, Diver City SCUA Inc.  731 St. Mary’s Rd., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 204-257-2822

This month’s Monday News cover photo is by award winning underwater photographer, Gino Symus who has been diving here with us a few times over the past couple years. You can always recognize Gino underwater because he dives with two very big cameras and one is tethered on to him and floating above. Makes it very easy for us to keep an eye on him! We always enjoy diving with Gino because he is so careful not to touch anything while he is taking photos

“I started diving in 1997. Same time I started up a bakery. Two years later I bought my first underwater camera…Since then I got really fascinated by the creatures under water. The diving was a good cure the get rid off the stress from work. I try to visit all the best dive destinations in the world. My most favorite dive destinations are Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa and British Columbia.  Now almost 20 years and 2900 dives further, I’m getting more passionate by photography. Since 2.5 year I try to make competition with the pictures and I had a few good results. 5th best photographer in the Hucycup competition and 1st place behavior and 3rd place reefscapes were the most important with a nice reward. I was wondering If I would get tired of this for myself but until now my love for the ocean and the critters is still growing. It’s a pleasure to see that the pictures I make get appreciated by many divers. And with this feeling I like to dive and photograph many more years….” Gino

Fantastic to have our good friends from Manila here this weekend (Ike, Eve, Brigitte, Bob) and diving along with our new friends Lance and Brad. They got up to all sorts of fun adventures both above and below water level. Wishing Bob and Brigitte all the best in their big move back to the U.S. We’ll miss you, but suspect that you will be back! A big congrats to Lance too for getting his AOW and Nitrox certifications on this trip. Looks like you had a couple of good instructors

It was a bit of an unlucky day for one of our guests who had left here recently. Unfortunately he had lost his underwater camera at the Boulders on his last dive, and no one could fine it. So, many days later we’re out there and Alli mentioned to everyone to have a look round for it. BINGO….it was found!!  Martin and Arjan “Candyman” found it at the same time. They we’re both laughing because they say “it was a German and a Dutchman who will make the Frenchman very happy today”.  Cedric and Juliette are very happy to know that his camera will come back home to Singapore soon.

Striking the Charlie’s Angels pose, Alli, Maggie and Debra before a dive to the clams to search for seahorses.

Ian happily enjoyed a bit of underwater nudity as he became the photographer for a milestone 100^th dive for Margaret and Cen. Although they lost a few things during this blistery session they did have a lot of fun…

Debra Gauthier was making it very clear to Alli... “this is what happens when you turn my air off and make me flood and clear my mask!” Refresher course done and now it is time to visit all the fishes in the deep blue sea!