By Tom
After reading the wonderful post, we were looking for places to stay for muck snorkeling in Lembeh Strait on Sulawesi. We want to add that as a stop on our upcoming Indonesia snorkeling trip.
After contacting most of the dive resorts in the area only one, Lembeh Resort, recommended muck snorkeling. All the other places said it’s not that interesting, critters are hard to see, not good for snorkelers.
We are looking for additional feedback on Lembeh muck snorkeling experiences and thoughts on places to stay that lead a good trip of this type.
Try Dive into Lembeh, they have hot tubs on the bungalow decks, a great house reef, and they are snorkeler friendly, as well as more reasonable than the resort you mentioned. We spent a week there May 2023 and I seriously recommend it.
Thanks for the pointer. I reached out to Dive into Lembeh and they told me, “If you are into snorkeling then Lembeh may not be your best choice as not all dive sites are suitable for snorkeling.” That said, it sounds like you had a good time snorkeling there last year.
We stayed at Lembeh Resort and did much snorkeling in 2022. The resort, staff, accommodations, and meals were absolutely amazing! Yes, muck snorkeling is a bit different, but that being said, we saw a wide variety of fish, sting rays, crabs, shrimp, corals, etc. We’d go back in a heartbeat. Let me know if I can give you more info.
Linda, I would love to hear about your snorkeling while you stayed at Lembeh Resort. Can you tell where you went, how you got there, and any other tips?
Thank you.
I’ve done some research and come across the dive center Two Fish Divers. Not only do they specifically cater for snorkelers to join the dive boats and go to the same sites around the channel (as opposed to just “snorkeling available on our house reef” as I’ve noticed on a few other resorts’ pages), but they do so for a very reasonable price: 200,000 IDR for two morning snorkels or 300,000 IDR for three afternoon snorkels.
My wife and I stayed at Two Fish Divers in Lembeh in 2024. The resort is not lux, but it is very nice, good food and had a great staff. The house reef is OK, but not amazing, but there is good snorkeling to be found in the area. When we were there we were the only snorkelers, everyone else was diving.
In general, I would not recommend going out on dive boat trips as snorkelers. We have done this over the years and often it is not a good experience for the snorkelers. The pacing on a dive boat is different – shorter times in the water and long surface intervals between dives. Sites are often deeper than ideal for snorkelers…etc.
We found the dive staff at Two Fish totally centered around diving, they didn’t know what to do with us as snorkelers. They kept saying house reef or come out on this dive trip. We joined one dive trip and it wasn’t a good experience for all the reasons I mentioned above. We talked with the local dive master and then the offsite Two Fish operations manager about this issue. For the next few days we hired their small boat (the one used for transfers), with Yuli and Adit. So for 600,000 IDR = $35 US per day we had our own private boat and crew! Between the research I had done on local reefs and Yuli and Adit’s local knowledge we found some great spots and enjoyed the rest of our stay there.
For more info see my post about our trip.