Staying on the Reef
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2007
1
32
44
Trip End
Nov 23, 2008
Sabah,
Malaysia
Sunday, May 11, 2008
We left Brissy Sunday just after lunch (surprisingly not feeling too bad after a wedding!) and landed in Brunei 8 hours later only to have to wait at the airport for 3 hours for our connecting flight to KK. We spent 2 nights in KK eating a large amount of seafood and walking along the waterfront. It was sooooo hot and humid that we didn't really see much!
It was then back to the airport for a quick flight to Tawau on the east coast, a 70 min drive to Seporna and then a one hour boat ride to the dive resort of Kapalai
Yummy Dinner!!
. This dive resort is located on a shallow reef and the only form of land nearby is a sandbank. The resort was spectacular and we did 2 dives a day (too tired after that) starting at 9am. The weather was pretty crap whilst we were there so the boat rides to the dive sites were a little rough (quite fun at times!!) in the huge swells (we were saturated before we even got in the water) and our surface intervals were spent on Sipidan Island for an hour. There used to be a resort here but there was a terrorist attack on the tourists here (they say it is to preserve the island) and the resort now lies of Mabul Island (closer to Kapalai). We did 8 dives in total and saw over 15 turtles, 15 reef sharks, 2 large schools of barracuda, schools of jack and plenty of other fish. As it stormed every night the visibility wasn't very good (was still 10-15m though!) and we didn't get much sleep as you can imagine the sounds of waves crashing at the bottom of the chalets kept us awake. If a cyclone hit we would be in trouble!!!
After 5 days in luxury we headed back to Brunei (boat ride, bus ride and 2 flights later) which we found quite boring - yet again too hot to do much. And then on the 18th May it was back to London after two 8 hour flights.
