Diving Debbie's Beach and Rainbow Reef

Today I set off with a bunch of hardcore divers from all over Europe to check out some of the wonders of the Na Trang underwater world.

Having gained my Advanced Open Water certificate in Sharm El Sheik in Egypt last December as well as diving various sites off the coast of Thailand in previous years, I'd heard good things about the Vietnam marine life so decided to enrol on three dives for the mere cost of $85 with Rainbow Divers who are PADI certified.

We set off on the first day at 7am and anchored the boat some 40 minutes from the Na Trang harbour to explore Rainbow Reef.

I did this dive with a guy called Ross from Torquay who recently moved out to Vietnam to become an instructor, a Dutch guy Jens and Hans the German.

After a quick refresher dive, I soon got back into the swing of things and we went for a 14 metre dive that lasted around 45 minutes underwater. Visibility wasn't the best due to the time of year but amongst the rich array of spectacular coral I managed to spot a blue starfish, velvet starfish, pin cushion starfish, long-spined sea urchin, cuttle fish, five or six grouper, a large Harlequin sweetlips, some clown anemonfish, a racoon butterfly fish, an amazingly thin trumpetfish, some humbug and a pufferfish as well as lots of unique angel fish I couldn't quite name.

For the next two dives we headed to a deeper spot called Debbie's Beach where I dived down to a depth of 30 meters with a dive time of 35 minutes. The coral at this site was similarly stunning (despite the 4 meters visibility) and I also managed to spot a large barracuda, over 400 white fusilier's circling above us, several humphead parrotfish, moon wrasse and a stunning picasso triggerfish.

Afterwards I went out for a rare meal consisting of Mountain Hedgehog, Civet Cat and fresh grilled Tiger Prawns washed down with a few ice cold Saigon beers with Ross and another girl in our group called Yindi from Leeds.

Yindi has been working as a barrister in Hong Kong for the past 6 months and decided to travel the coast of Vietnam before transfering to London. We then ventured over to a really cool bar nearby for some fresh Dalat red wine with some others and then hit the sack.

A great day and lots of new friends made :)

Posted via email from Jeremy Lloyd Travel Diaries