Wicked Diving Liveaboard Komodo
This was my first liveaboard in Indonesia and I very much hope it won't be my last. In searching for liveaboards in Komodo, the fact is there are some very, very nice (and expensive) ones, with all the creature comforts you can think of, and then the local ones where you sleep out on the deck under the stars. Not being super flush with cash but not wanting to sleep under the stars, your choices become limited. Enter Wicked Diving. They are a successful company that recently expanded from their Similan Island liveaboards to Komodo. They are a professional dive operation that offers slightly cheaper alternatives to the fancier liveaboards. They split their trips into 2, 3 day trips which you can link together if you'd like to do 6. They mostly do the same route, repeating a couple of dive sites, so I'd say if you want to splash out for 6 nights, unless you're super budget conscious, you should go for a boat that stays out all 6 or 7 nights instead. We did 3 nights (time and budget constraints) and were happy to see what we saw and certainly wanted more. The diving in Komodo is excellent. I think Wicked could benefit from a few more years in Komodo to get a better feel for the dive sites, but they were fantastic nonetheless. The dive masters handled the currents superbly and everyone was very concerned with avoiding reef damage and keeping people from harassing Manta Rays. The quarters are somewhat small but perfectly adequate. No A/C. Food is fine. No Nitrox on board as far as I recall.
Basically, a very very good option for the middle-budget minded person.
