Dumaguete Diving
Dumaguete is a great dive location if you are really looking to maximize your macro opportunities in muck diving, and if you want a 'quieter' vacation, it's the place for you because you won't be located in the middle of a big party town.
I visited on a group trip, and we chose to do a mix of diving between macro and wide angle Water temps were 79-82 degrees, with air temps in upper 70s to upper 80s, so I wore a 3MM wetsuit for most of the trip as I tend to get cold with us doing 4+ dives a day, and particularly with muck diving, you’re not moving a whole lot.
For dive locations, we chose to dive the Dauin coast, Siquijor Island, and Apo Island.
For macro, you will never lack for subjects. There was great muck diving and we were seeing frogfish of all varieties, scorpion fish, cuttlefish, nudies, ghost pipe fishes, mantis shrimp - and these were some of the most common critters we saw! We even saw a blue-ring octopus! Unless you're already well-trained and have developed an "eye" for spotting these subjects, you'll need the help of a good dive guide initially. Our guides also gave us tips for how to spot spot of the macro subjects, which was really helpful since it was the first time diving in the Philippines for several of us. Giant frogfish and reefs were wide angle highlights there.
For specialized dives we also opted to do the night dive to see mandarin fish matings. I found this to be probably the most difficult photography dive. Patience and fast reaction time was definitely key.
It's close enough to Cebu, that our whole group also did a half day trip to Cebu to snorkel with whale sharks, coordinated though our resort.
Other non-diving activities in the Dumaguete area included a visit to the Malapatay Market. The local market has a mix of food, handicrafts, and goods. There was also a livestock market.
For nightlife, about half of our group wanted to be out every night, and the other was more into staying in. If you were motivated to go out, from your resort you can cab to the boulevard area which has multiple restaurants, bars and clubs and you could walk up and down the area to determine which one fit your preferences.
