Coco Dive Centre

We hadn't decided on diving in Nha Trang, but at only USD40 for two fun dives, it was too good to be true. This was slightly less than their website price as it may have been a slow period.

During our initial enquiry, the people in the shop asked where we had dived before. When I told him about my Malaysian and Indonesian sites, he said that it wouldn't be anything like that ... so he prepared me not to be disappointed.

We had two dives, the first of which was at Moray Beach. It was quite a shallow dive (max depth of 15m) which allowed us to have a rather extended bottom time of 63 minutes and come up with half a tank. Visbility was variable ... it got rather murky in parts to the point where I lost interested. The fish life wasn't anything much to write about but the coral was quite interesting.

The second dive at Madonna Rock which included going through some passages and cave. It was quite pretty in the cave with quite a bit of fish.

Some good points about the diving experience:

- Very cheap diving.

- Nice mix of local and expat dive masters who set up your equipment and go through the checks with you. But they could tell you a bit more about the site before hopping into the water though.

- The biggest boat in Nha Trang so you won't get sea sick.

Not so good points:

- The local dive masters will offer to take underwater photos for you for USD10 and will encourage you to dive close to nice stuff, increasing the risk of damage to coral.

- In fact, I saw a chunk of coral snap off as it was hit by the dive master's tank.

- They also tend to touch soft coral and anemones as they show them to you; also tease the fish a little. In all, they try to maximise the entertainment value.