Many hours of work but now nearlng completion

Bright enough under water to keep the fish happy.

For some weeks now we have been witness to the construction of our new pontoon, which has been taking shape on the rocky shore next to Asia Divers. Like a giant meccano set it has slowly but surely materialized in to a marvel of engineering. Our new 12m X 12m Pontoon had been built on a wooden temporary scaffold and needed to be lowered so that it could be launched on the night of January 10th on the high tide. Allan came up with an ingenious way to remove the scaffold and lower the entire pontoon in preparation for the launch. Sand bags were positioned  as temporary supports, allowing the scaffolding to be removed, then the sand was slowly released from the bags lowering the pontoon to the ground. It’s just like ancient Egypt!

We are all thrilled with the new pontoon already. Because of it’s size, all of our boats can be tied up to it, which makes it easy to load up the boats with equipment and divers, even when the dive shop is very busy. No more waiting for a boat to leave to bring in another one! Check out the new ramp as well. It’s a very easy access from the pontoon to the pier.

All ready and in position for dive boats.

photo by: Mike Barrow

Want to try something new? Tech Asia is going full speed ahead into 2012 with a packed program of Wreck diving activities, Scooter courses and dives, and all levels of Trimix training. One or two spots still exist on trips overseas to fantastic wrecks such as the HMS repulse in the South China Sea, and HMS Hermes in Sri Lanka. Have a look at their calendar here

El Galleon finished off 2011 with great food, fine wine, and fantastic friends.  A spectacular fireworks display topped it all off as we rang in the New Year in The Point. It’s been a great year for us and we are looking forward to this year especially because 2012 is Asia Divers 25th Anniversary year!!  We’ll have all sorts of things going on over the year and we’ll keep you posted on it all right here in our blog.

The photo is of the gang all done up for our recent 60’s Night Celebration on the Platform. It was a great turn out and everyone rocked the platform. Watch out for more exciting events coming up soon.

Party revelers at our Christmas 60s night

Looking forward to Christmas.

The start of December always brings excitement of the upcoming holiday. The resort is all decked out for the festivities and preparations are in the works for what will be a wonderful Christmas in paradise! We are looking forward to seeing many old friends and ringing in the New Year with you all. It all kicked off with our staff Christmas party at Talipanan beach yesterday.  You can read more about those escapades in next weeks’ Monday newsletter. Check out the photos above and below: The waitresses and Point bar staff are all decked out in new uniforms. Don’t they look great?!

The new uniforms look festive.

After much huffing and puffing though the problem has been found and we can publish again.

Work on our new pontoon is going well and when in place will conciderably ease congestion at the end of our pier. Rumor has it this will be in place for Christmas. Fingers crossed.

Allison attended DEMA 2011 for Asia Divers

DEMA 2011, was another great opportunity to see what was new in the dive industry and to catch up with many of the good friends we have in the USA, this year was Orlando. This was Alli’s first time to attend and she spent lots of time running around with Allan and Tommy getting introduced to many of our wholesalers that we work with. There were several exciting seminars to attend that we all attended and have walked away with a few new ideas to bring back to the beach. It was especially good to meet up with the PADI team and as always they had a lot of great ideas they were busting to share with us. We also had some fun times with the Waterproof gang and a very nice dinner hosted by David from Cressi. As always, we look forward to the next dive show where again we will be able to spread the word and meet up with new and old friends

DEMA 2011, was another great opportunity to see what was new in the dive industry and to catch up with many of the good friends we have in the USA, this year was Orlando. This was Alli’s first time to attend and she spent lots of time running around with Allan and Tommy getting introduced to many of our wholesalers that we work with. There were several exciting seminars to attend that we all attended and have walked away with a few new ideas to bring back to the beach. It was especially good to meet up with the PADI team and as always they had a lot of great ideas they were busting to share with us. We also had some fun times with the Waterproof gang and a very nice dinner hosted by David from Cressi. As always, we look forward to the next dive show where again we will be able to spread the word and meet up with new and old friends.

Allison and Allan at DEMA 2011

September 24
Left Karratha for Port Headland only two and a half hours away where we would stop, meet up with my brother Graham who I have not seen for years. The ride was nice, much of what we have seen on the previous days, very enjoyable. Riding into Port Headland you could see it was all mining and not much else. We stopped at an information center and called Graham, who said stay where you and and don’t go anywhere. During our five [more]

September 22

Exmouth Navy Pier, what can I say, wow, wow ,wow, what an awesome experience. They say the Navy Pier is one of the top ten best shore dives, I want to try the other nine, as this dive … [more]

July, 2011

Asia Divers latest success with PADI eLearning

Asia Divers, a PADI 5 Star Instructor Development Centre and Career Development Centre in Puerto Galera, Philippines have been taking advantage of PADI’s eLearning for the past couple of years.

Asia Divers Diving Manager and PADI IDC Staff Instructor, Allison Manis explains..

This was the first year that we had a school group complete their courses with eLearning.  A group of 30 students from Dubai did a combination of Open Water and Advanced.  Because they had all enrolled in PADI eLearning, we were able to get them through their courses more quickly and get them on fun dives earlier in their stay.

The group had much more fun diving instead of spending time in the classroom. It also meant that the group did over 285 extra scuba dives between them after they had completed their courses and they got to take full advantage of all the wonderful diving spots in Puerto Galera.

eLearning for a school group was very successful for us, and we are now working with another school group to do the same.

To find out more, contact Asia Divers Dive Resort at Small Lalaguna Beach, Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines.  Email:  admin@asiadivers.com
Tel 63(917)8145107, Tel/Fax 63-(43)2873205 or visit their website at www.asiadivers.com/

Visit padi.com/eLearning

PHOTO:  30 students from Dubai chose to enrol in PADI eLearning before diving with Asia Divers in Puerto Galera, Philippines.

Many of you will have noticed gradual improvements in recent months both in the El Galleon beach resort and in the web site promoting El Galleon and Asia Divers.

Now, we are happy and proud to release a new video all about the El Galleon resort, the diving and things other than diving you can enjoy when having a vacation with us.

Please see the movie and if you like what you see please pass this blog address http://blog.asiadivers.com to your friends.