Sipadan and Mabul
Trip Start
Oct 24, 2007
1
12
16
Trip End
Nov 28, 2007
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Semporna,
Sabah,
Malaysia
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Once we were in Semporna, the prority was we had to find a hotel for the night then a dive company....we got our hotel with no problems....the dive company on the other hand was a bit of a problem. Every dive company seemed to be full, booked solid for a month. The ONLY one left was a local company by the name of "Uncle Chang's Dive Lodge."
On a side note, Sipidan is a national park, the gov't kicked the dive companies off the island back in 2004. All the dive lodges had to relocate in Semporna or a closer island named Mabul. Sipadan is run by the military and has only military personnel living there all the time. Dive boats some and go all day but can't stay on the island.
Anyway Uncle Chang's sounded a little hairy but we thought oh well, the diving is why were here, and how bad can the place be. The one place in Semporna that we almost stayed at had rats in the rooms...yeah we decided against that one. So after talking to the people from Chang's we got two days of diving all our accomodation and food for a super cheap price.
Big Fantasy and Sipidan
Sounds great! We slept one night in Semporna and got up fresh and ready to go.We jumped in a boat the next morning Mabul bound...about 45 minutes later and a torrential downpoor we arrived soaked and hungry. As we arrived we saw a small island surrounded by shacks on sticks sitting in the water, this was Mabul. It was kinda cool though, we docked right at the lodge. To put it mildly, Uncle Chang's had character...but we didn't know that yet. Regardless, we were hungry, wet and ready for anything. After we got our key for the room we opened the door and found a lovely room about ten square feet, three concave beds and a small fan on the wall, thats about it. We were CHANG'D!!(inside joke) Unfortunately Corey J. can't sleep unless its AC or really cool in the room. It was now obvious, we had to get really drunk so then it wouldn't matter what the room was like. It worked.
We walked round the island in about five minutes and found that there were some really nice resorts about, but none with the character of ours. There is about five hundred people living on the island...mostly Filippino. The island is filthy....garbage everywhere, we couldn't believe the polution on the island and in the ocean surrounding the island. Its truly amazing for a place that is only going to get more busy being the number three best dive site in the world. Every boat we went in over the three days had to stop at some point because the props got tangled with trash. I couldn't believe it.
Fast Forward to the diving...I will say only this, the diving was like nothing i have seen before.
Diving
Massive turtles, reef sharks and a plethora of sea life. I will leave it at that, because i can't begin to account for everything we saw. But one thing I will mention is kind of funny, the story is Mike (Big Fantasy) is somewhat of what some would call an "air pig." He's a big guy, with big lungs and he can basically drain his bottle in a matter of minutes. After about twelve minutes on our first dive, he was on our Dive masters secondary air regulator. For the lamen people...Mike was now breathing off our Dive Masters air bottle because his was empty. It was the funniest thing to see, they looked like two turtles connected during sex. The best part was every dive was like that, Mike runs out of air and Amang(Dive Master) mounts him hahaha!! It became just a commonality.Sipadan is a gorgeous island, there is a huge reef surrounding the island and the drop off is farther down than i could see. We went to Thirty meters, and all i could see was black below. The reef is a limestone wall covered in plants and coral that completely surrounds the island....quite magnificent.
Uncle Chang's turned out to be a truly memorable place to stay...i always say you can have a blast anywhere, you just have to have the right people. It was true, our last night all the people that work there and all of the travellers got together for a jam session, the drums and guitars came out and not to mention the "illegal" Filippino rum made a lengthy appearance. We all got absolutely destroyed the night before our last beautiful day. There was about 15 guests including us and about twenty locals there, unbelievable time. Anyway If i were to reccomend a place to stay when diving in Sipadan, it would be there at Uncle Chang's Dive Lodge. I guarantee no other "fancy" dive resort had as much fun as we did. The next morning was somewhat of a different story however. I think Corey threw up in his regulator at some point during the first dive.
Anyway that is about the recap for the last few days, the next step is to head to Kuala Lumpur for a day then make our way to Bali. From there who knows, wherever we feel like going i guess. There are lots of islands in Indonesia, shouldn't be a problem.
Take care, and to everyone thank you for the comments and emails, its nice to know someone reads these things.
Cheers
C
Sorry i have tonnes of pictures....unfortunately this computer can't download them....sorry!!
