Recommendation:
Excellent beginner or advanced dive. No suitable shallows for intro-diving "pool session" lesson. Undiveable only on rare Autumn days grouped around typhoons. Excellent corals, visibility, macro photo opportunities, and large animal availability.

Lau Lau Beach on other websites: photo gallery at Saipandiver.smugmug.com Shorediving.com saipanscuba.blogspot.com

Getting down there is rough...or was, back when I dove there in the mid- to late-90s.  The dirt road is, or was, long and washed-out, particularly in Autumn. With a little luck and a lot of labor, the road leading to LauLau is paved now.  If you're only as lucky as me, though, you're facing a long rough road made of washed out coral dust.  It's a dirt road made slippery, with large stones and steep steep hills. I've even been there with a government truck that we had to abandon because the cliffside portion we were on was crumbling.
Since the rent-a-car agencies would either laugh or cry if you tried to take a rent-a-car towncar down there, you're best off renting a jeep or tagging along with a diveshop van, a local friend with 4 wheel drive, or the next invading navy.

The remoteness and lack of facilities will cause a good diver to take precautions. Let someone know you'll be there, and roughly when you'll be back. Bring drinking water, a cellphone, a save-a-dive repair kit, and a first aid kit. Check your gas, engine strength, and tires.

Once you get down to the divesite, placed dead-center in the Bay, park in the grassy field in the forest. Don't park on the pebbly beach, or you may be killing unseen turtle-eggs.  Besides, it's a rare vehicle that can get out of the soft pebbly beach sand once the tires have dug in. 

Try to park on the concrete pad under the red van pictured in the map, or at least near the security guard so your valuables won't become someone else's souvenir. 

The guard's mostly there to protect cars and the property within, while you're diving.  He's not, as far as I know, lifeguard-trained.)

Absolutely do not park on the beach, nor walk along the beach to the left past the concrete blocks.

Do your dive briefing on the beach before putting on hot, heavy scuba gear.  Be sure the car's locked as long as it's out of your line-of-sight.

The water's not usually clear enough to see the bottom terrain, but you can at least see the two most popular entry points. These are in shallow ankle-high water 10 meters from shore. With luck, you'll see others making their entries and exits, easing the burden of explaining how it's done. Note that you have the option of doing walk-in, back-roll, or giant-stride entries here, and that the walk out to the entry points is across flat water and a flat, hard, featureless bottom. It's a VERY forgiving, inviting site, except for its extreme lack of manmade conveniences !

Now's a good time to choose your entry point, or . The generally accepted exit point is at the rope, and perhaps it's a good idea for beginners to experience the exit point at the beginning of the dive too, but it's murky and creepy. Open water classes generally enter here, work their way out through the blinding silty murk to a pretty coral wall at , and then move off to the flat, silty plain at . Certified divers looking for fun should almost certainly do a giant stride entry at the "sports entrance" , then move outward through overhangs into the sandy-bottomed coral canyons. Fun divers should not use this area for exiting, though-- it's best to exit at .

Gear up almost fully at the car. Leave your mask in your fin's footpocket (unless it's a prescription lens that you need to see above water), and let the chest-strap on your vest hold the fins (pass the strap through the fins' heelstrap), leaving your hands free. Turn your air on fully, and mostly-inflate your BCD so if you fall, you're cushioned and will float. Be sure your fins are not the barefoot full-foot kind because if you're walking barefoot or fin-footed out to the entry point, it's rough going. Felt-sole "tabi" reef-walker boots are best for most beach diving. Put your weight belt on now, too, and do your buddy-gear-check now before you lock up the car.

Start walking in hot, heavy gear down to the beach.

Show the exit chain and rope to your divebuddies, even if you're going to enter at the Sports Entrance. Explain that the exit will be murky and hand-over-hand along the rope from to .

Entering a t the Sports Entrance, either do a giant-stride entry along the sides, or a walk-in entry at the nearest part. There's a small overhead portion as you twist and turn through the narrow canyons out to the wide room-like sandy-bottomed area.

Entering a t the normal entry/exit point, you'll probably want to have your divers sit down, hold the rope, and slide out and down into the 5m/15-foot-deep murky valley. Warn your group to stay together and stay on that rope-- it's too easy to get lost and disoriented in that area. If the rope is missing, please notify the local pro diveshop association.

If you're in a small, high-quality open water dive lesson, your instructor will probably bring you to but you may be distracted by fun divers, sargent-major fish hoping to be fed, and seaturtles flying by. Also, it's difficult or impossible to drag a dive float through the narrow canyons from the sports entrance out to . Most open water instructors will instead opt to drag a dive float out to the slightly silty, boring, safe plains at .

Fun divers, night divers, and photographers should play in the valley at , in clown-town, and in the deeper areas below . Off to the left is also very attractive, with abundant candlestick corals and living spider shells. Divers here will often see big life: Napoleon wrasses, turtles, eagle rays, and at night, safe reef sharks and cuttlefish. Beware of frequent scorpion fish.

Any dive should probably end with a trip beachward along the pipe . Along the pipe you'll see a large, photogenic basket anenome. Your goal is the pretty coral wall at , which is frequented by large schools of unicorn surgeonfish and other schooling fish. Use the rope and stay with your group from to .