Here're were seen enjoying our complementary welcome drinx at Tauch Terminal. Behind is the ultra-delux room that we stayed in.

Tulamben is a tiny, poor little town. Looks to have grown up because of the shipwreck. In WWII a Japanese submarine torpedoed the USS Liberty, a us navy transport, while it was at anchor in a harbor. Noone was killed, the ship was damaged but not sunk. It was towed to Singaraja, but the harbor was too full to unload the liberty, so they beached it here at Tulamben and manually unloaded the supplies, with the intention of repairing it later. We’ll, time passed, the war ended, the ship was up on the beach. Then in 1962 gunung agung erupted, the lava reached the ship and pushed it out into the ocean. Lava probably didn’t help the local agriculture either.

Anyway, 150meter long ship is now on its side in between 15-20 meters of water, meaning that until recently its bow and stern showed above the water. All that iron acts as a reef, promotes coral growth, causes the ship to become festooned with fish, and that attracts divers. The divers need food, new facemasks, fins, oxygen tank refills, beds, ect, so the town now sports many hotels for divers.

The first we visited was Mimpy (Balinese for dream.) Being low season, they had no guests. Their standard room wasn’t so great and was $80/night! The bungalows were $100+, and they wouldn’t move much on the price (just 20%). Oh well. I’d have stayed in a bungalow for $50.
We visited a few others recommended by our driver. The rest were geared toward diving, with prominently 3meter deep swimming pools (for instruction and testing), and lots of large rectangular tiled baths for cleaning diving gear. The prices ranged from $10 to $25 for these spots, but they were kinda, sorta really dirty. Finally visited Tauch Terminal. You can look it up on the internets. A german diver resort francise. They had guests, and a nice room on the grass with ocean view, hot water, ac, etc, for $64. They also wouldn’t move on the price, but it was the nicest spot yet, and did I mention that they had guests, books to read, and clearly were the only folks in town with diving business.

At the lesser hotels the room rate depended on whether you’d go diving with them. Diving support is the lifeblood of this town. Room rates pale in comparison to a single piece of diving gear, so that’s the focus.

Only Tauch and Mimpy had swimmable pools, that was necessary for the kids.