Spending a week in Amed (Bali) was not appealing to my non-scuba diver friends. The area is popular for scuba divers and freedivers. It’s a fishing village on Bali’s East coast that hosts numerous scuba diving and freediving schools/centres, bars, restaurants, and small-medium scale resorts.

As I arrived in late 2021, during the ongoing pandemic era with numerous travel restrictions that, thankfully, I managed to cope with, Amed appeared deserted and empty. The restaurants and bars along the streets and beach had to close by 9 pm, and some even shut down earlier. Having been to Amed multiple times before the pandemic, I had never seen the desolate village. To my surprise, I was the only guest in the dive resort. It felt strange, especially on the first night, as all the staff left the resort after 9 pm, leaving me alone in a vast and empty property!

Dive sites in Amed are popular for freediving as well. Numerous schools to learn freediving are available along the coast. I met three freedivers who stayed in Amed during the pandemic. They claimed the area was comfortable and also beautiful to dive in. The advantage to doing freediving was that we would not depend on dive centres to rent the tanks and not have much hassle with the diving equipment. As curious as I am to do the freediving, in the end, I decided to continue with my scuba 😀 I wanted to stay long underwater!!

While dive sites for scuba diving in Amed offered exciting sights. Mostly tiny little critters such as nudibranchs, baby frogfish, and shrimps. The following video is about baby frogfish that are less than 2 cm! Thanks to the fantastic eyes of my dive guide, Bli Botol!

We also visited a dive site where the stingrays were rested. It was sort of a cleaning station for the rays. At least I saw more than ten stingrays!

If you are in Bali and love water sports like scuba diving or freediving, Amed is a place to visit!