Mention Malapascua Island and two words come to mind - Thresher Shark. This is the only place where divers are able to consistently spot thresher sharks with a 99.7 percentage. That's pretty high considering sharks actually swim and the ocean is a huge ass place. Monad Shoal is the dive site to be in to view these magnificent creatures.
It's quite a bitch to travel to Malapascua from Kuala Lumpur. Thank God for the newly opened Air Asia 3 hour direct flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Cebu. Three hours to fly to Cebu.
Cebu Island
Have someone from the Malapascua Island dive centre pick you up from Cebu International Airport and drive you back to the island. This land journey is exactly 4 hours through 2 lane roads , construction and pesky lorries complete with jeepneys.Do tell your driver stop at a petrol kiosk convinience store and buy snacks because it's a long road ahead
San Mig
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The scenery along the way is meh.
By the time you arrive at the pier (sunset), you need to take another 30 minute bangka boatride to Malapascua Island. If the timing is right, a nice sunset hue will emerge as the bangka sails along the open sea.
Ride towards Malapascua Island
Before I continue on, the worst job anyone can have is probably the van driver from the pier. He's got to travel back and forth on a daily basis. How crazy is that???
Anyway, we arrived at had dinner. Generally, Pinoy food ain't the most delicious food on the planet. Be it their local or Westernized food - it's bad.
Bad to the bone
There are many dive centres on Malapascua Island. We chose a locally based Dive Centre. While the main highlight are thresher sharks, there are a good amount of critters found here as well especially the one and only rare psychedelic frogfish.
Apparently, there are a lot of frogfish species here. You must not miss diving at Gato Island.2 hours away from Malapascua and the diving there is quite good especially the swim throughs and encountering sharks.
Gato Island cliff jumping spot
It's freaking high. At least a 5 second freefall duration.
Wear clothes while jumping off the cliff because you'll be stung by jellyfishes
Pee on my arm !!!
Here's a video of the magnificent thresher shark :
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