Sipadan

Trip Start Oct 15, 2008
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Trip End Nov 14, 2008


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Flag of Malaysia  , Sabah,
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

A train from KL to Johor, a night in Johor (not particularly exciting despite the locals trying to convince us otherwise 'cos it's sooo close to Singapore...), a flight to Kota Kinabalu (Borneo), 10 hours in the airport for the 'connecting' flight to Tawau and a further jeep drive to Semporna, and we arrive, very exhausted but with one mission in mind - Sipadan.  You will find no photographs in this section because, to be honest the place we stayed was a dump and we didn't want to waste the memory space on the camera, and for the diving, well, it's just best not to take an ordinary camera in the water!  But for those of you who dive you will understand why we put up with it all, because at the end of the day we got our pass and we dived Sipadan!
For those of you who don't dive, let us try to make you understand... In three days we traveled from KL to KK to Semporna and back to KK, stopping for just one day to do just one activity, diving.  Sipadan is a protected island and reef about 2 hours speed boat ride off the east coast main land of Borneo, it is a limestone pinnacle covered by coral reef and coral deposits.  Being so far from the coast it is one of the only oceanic islands in the area with near vertical 600m drop-offs on all sides.  It enjoys the torrent of a variety of currents so marine life absolutely flourishes around the island - basically they have fish, lots of fish!  On the three dives we had (after gaining our passes from the registry office under false names and nationalities) we swam in 28oC waters, 35m visibility, over and along 600m walls, with and against currents and saw numerous hawksbill turtles, black tip reef sharks, schools of moorish idols, tuna, barracuda, jack fish and much much more, not to mention the colours of the corals!.  Imagine all the David Attenborough series where they have shown an abundance of marine life swimming around pristine corals and reefs and you think wow... that's where we dived!
Of course we had to take a second speed boat because the first broke down, then we had to endure an hour of the fiercest rain and slamming waves either of us have ever experienced in an open top boat and then sit out our surface intervals in the cold (by cold we mean 27oC, which after 3 months of acclimatising to 30oC+, that was actually bloody cold!).  But, like we said, we dived Sipadan!
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