I enjoy backpacking and diving around South East Asia, mostly to Indonesia and the Philippines.
Diving from Labuanbajo, Flores into the Komodo National Park is awesome, spectacular corals, lots of fish, and seasonal mantas - dozens at a time! I've visited there 3 times as I like it so much. There's a trip report I wrote a few months ago at this forum:
Komodo / Labuanbajo. I dived with
Reefseekers who were very good, run by Kath and Ernest, a brit couple.
I also went to Alor island in the east of Indonesia for a bit of diving - beautiful place, great if you want an 'away from it all' experience. See
Alor Trip report for another trip report I wrote.
I did my Open Water course in the Togean Islands, Sulawesi back in 2002, a very pretty place, then I ran out of time and never managed to dive Manado / Bunaken / Lembeh, such is life...
I'm planning a trip to Pulau Weh, an island off the north tip Sumatra which is meant to be good.
The Philippines has some great diving - better to fly into Cebu instead of Manila, less hectic. From Cebu city lots of options..
Off the north tip of Cebu is Malapascua island (there's a possibility of seeing threasher sharks, maybe manta rays, and diving at Gato island, especially the 'tunnel dive' under the island, to a cavern with lots of whitetip sharks is something special). Plus its a really pretty island with nice beaches. I dived with the Sea Explorers dive shop, they were good. See their website for an overview of the region:
Sea Explorers
On the west coast of Cebu is Moalboal town (nice diving, not so much big stuff in my experience, but decent low key nightlife, resteraunts, etc).
A 2 hour ferry trip east is Bohol, I've only seen Alona beach, Panglao island, which was not bad if a bit commercialised for my tastes. Good diving around Balicasaig island. I also hired a moped from there for the day and went exploring Bohol, past the Loboc river, then the Chocolate Hills, which was a good day out.
Or south you can make your way to Dumaguete, on Negros (good seafront / promenade / resteraunts / university town), from there make your way to Apo island - the best diving and corals I've seen in the Philippines - visited there twice myself! See
Apo Island Liberty Community Lodge
If you fly into Manila, you can fly to El Nido (Palawan), which is amazingly beautiful abovewater - all those islands and beaches, but the diving there was not brilliant. There's also Coron, or the Busuanga islands (off the north tip of Palawan), which has its WWII Japanese wrecks, which were interesting. There's a good overview of Palawan at this website:
Philippines holiday destinations
A few pics from my trips at
bora_horza's photos and albums on webshots Hope this helps, have fun...