Scuba Diving Hoi An – The Coral Alive By Day!

Even though I spent nearly all of April in Vietnam, I somehow managed to miss out on the popular dive sites in Nha Trang. For one reason or another, I just didn’t make it there.

I did manage to squeeze in one day of diving while in Hoi An in between getting some shirts, dresses, and pants tailored.

I went out with Cham Island Diving and while it wasn’t the best dive company I’ve ever used nor was diving in Hoi An anything spectacular, it was still good to be out in the water again since it’s been eight long months since my trip to Roatan, Honduras.

I did two dives and froze by butt off on the first dive. I miscalculated the temperature of the water.

Note to self: Use Google next time instead of doing any calculations in my head! If I had Googled “22C to F”, I would have gotten “71.6 degrees F” instead of an erroneous 80 F derived from fudged up brain math and I would have brought my thicker wet suit instead of a thin 3 mil meant for more tropical waters. It was the first time I ever had to end a dive due to being cold.

On my second dive, I borrowed another 3 mil to go over my own and was much more comfortable.

The visibility was pretty low at 25 to 30 feet (8 to 9 meters). This was due to a storm having just passed by the day before and something about the dive season having just started.

After our two dives, we were taken ashore to Cham Island for a lovely lunch and a bit of chill time on the beach and relaxing on hammocks.

 

Between the crappy visibility, forgetting the flash diffuser for my underwater camera, and issues with my ears equalizing, this might have been the best photo I took:

Oh! The cool thing about these dives, and it took me awhile to realize it, was that the coral was all alive!

Not that they were dead to begin with. But during day dives, you usually only see the hard structures of the coral, not the soft polyps that emerge from the many holes of the coral as they normally only come out at night to feed – a sight that makes night diving so spectacular.

I leave you with this short video which gives a better sense of the dive experience and the live coral!