Sipadan

Since Air Malaysia cancelled our direct flight from Manila to Kota Kinabalu, we had to go via Kuala Lumpur – the equivalent of going from London to Madrid via Athens. We overnighted in a functional hostel before taking the early flight across Sabah (north east Borneo) to Tawau. There was too much cloud cover to see the jungle from the plane, but when we descended into Tawau, we could see the rain forest was completely replaced by neat rows of Palm Oil plantations as far as the horizon (and presumably beyond). Also the hour long drive to Semporna (for the boat to Mabul) was entirely through plantation. Environmental groups are concerned about the destruction of wildlife habitation and loss of biodiversity, but Malaysia is the world's largest exporter of Palm Oil, so there are huge economic interests.















The oceanic island of Sipadan, sitting on top of a 600m limestone stack, is generally regarded as one of the world's top dive sites. After three days without diving, we were chomping on the regulator to get back in the water.

Sipadan itself no longer has any resorts on it, and the island is controlled by the Malaysian navy, complete with green speed boats and automatic weapons. I imagine the heavy military presences is party to do with the kidnap of 21 staff and guests from a Sipadan resort, by a Filipino islamist group in 2000. We stayed at Borneo Divers on nearby Mabul – a good midrange option. Other options include a converted oil rig which is parked about 200m off shore in front of Borneo Divers, and huts on stilts out from the beach. Given the limited permits for Sipadan (120 daily), our place managed to get enough for everyone to dive Sipadan everyday.















The diving schedule was 2 dives in the morning around Sipadan, then a afternoon dive somewhere around Mabul or Kapalai. After registering on Sipadan we started our first dive. As soon a we hit the water there was a turtle swimming round us. The turtles round here are quite used to divers, so don't swim off if you get too near, but rather just get on with their own thing (which is mainly sleeping). The sheer amount of marine life is staggering – on the second dive there was nowhere to look that you couldn't see turtles.





























So this brings me on to my first rant: We had 11 divers in the group (the dive master, camera man, and 9 guests), but normally people space themselves out, so it doesn't feel too crowded. Not this time – between inexperienced divers not being able to control their buoyancy (or their fins), and plain selfish ones who'd cut you up to get a shot, or swim in front of everyone else's shot for their own me-in-front-of-shark/turtle shot, the whole thing was rather stressful (I felt more relax in the pitch black inside a wreck in Coron). The worst offender I will call the Russian.















The boat group changed a bit for the second day, but still had the Russia, who insisted on completely ignoring the dive master and swimming off in random directions. When with the group, he assaulted several turtles – tried to pull one off a rock, knocked on the back of another's shell, and finally kicked one in the face – I've never seen someone getting so many underwater bollockings (and completely ignore them).















The second day was relatively cold, and the driving rain on the boat back to Mabul made the 20 minute journey seem like a hour. This didn't do anything to improve Kirsten's stinking cold so unfortunately she had to bow out of the afternoon dive – a muck dive beneath Seaventures' oil rig. Muck dives are so called because you look for critters that live around the relatively low visibility sandy bottom. My fish identification is pretty awful, but I think there was a crocodile fish, a stonefish, a Lionfish, a couple of Moray Eels, and a tiny sea horse (although I'm not convinced about this last one, frankly it could have been anything). I also did a sunset dive, and finally saw Mandarin fish. I think the problem is that I've been looking for something, well fish sized, when in fact they are about 1cm long.















Day three was back to warm sunny weather and a small group (including the Russian). This gave excellent light for photography, and the sea life was very cooperative with six turtles sitting below the boat on the second dive and the school of thousands of barracuda showing up bang on time at the end of the first dive.

We hired a camera for the second a third day; an ancient 3 megapixle Canon, but given the plethora of marine life, you'd have to be an imbecile to not come back with good photos. Anyway, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.