On September 21 we took a bus from Kota Kinabalu to Semporna, it took us 11 hours to get there but the bus was very comfortable, it had USB charging station on every seat. We spent the night in Semporna… nothing to see in this town, just a stop for divers going to the islands around here.
On September 22 we crossed the street and checked-in with Scuba Junkies the company we chose to go diving with in Mabul Island. We got onto the boat at 8:30am and were transferred to Mabul Island where we got our diving equipment and sooner than we knew it we were in the water. We went diving three times today, all the dives were nice but the visibility was not the greatest. Let’s wait and see what other dive sites they have.
On September 23 we embarked on a challenge… find a diving shop that can take us to Sipadan, a famous island about 45 minutes from Mabul Island where the diving is supposed to be out of this world. Diving in Sipadan is restricted to a certain amount of permits per day and like anything else in third world countries it is controlled by the powerful and well connected resorts (also the most expensive ones). Scuba Junkie only gets 7 permits per day so you can understand the task at hand we have. We walked around the island talking to almost everybody and leaving our phone number with all the diving shops around; however we were not lucky enough to find anybody that had available spots for the next few days. We went to Sipadan Water Village and talked to the shop manager who said he might have a couple of spots for September 26 but he will confirm later.
During our walk through the village we talked to the locals, play with the kids and got a bit of a sense of people’s lives among the rich Asian tourists that flood this island in high season.
September 24 was another diving day, we went to 3 different spots around the island. Lots of different marine life we had not seen before, like the giant
moray and the flamboyant cuttlefish. Unfortunately the visibility is nowhere near what we experienced in the Philippines.
On September 25 we signed up for 3 more immersions. The first 2 were at
the nearby Kapalai Island. This “one resort island” offers lots of diving spots around it. The diving was good but the visibility is still disappointing; athough it was a bit better does not compare to other diving sites.
When we came back for lunch from Kapalai we found a message from Alan from Sipadan Water Village letting us know that there were a couple of spots available to go diving in Sipadan on September 26. Alan asked us to go there in the afternoon to finalize all the details… it looks like after all we will be diving in Sipadan.
In the afternoon we went diving at Seaventures Mabul, an old oil rig converted into a hotel. The visibility at this site was very poor, however there was a lot of big fish around the columns of the oil rig.
Once we arrived after our last dive we headed to talk to Alan and sure enough we were going to Sipadan. We selected our equipment, filled out all the paperwork required and got our new names… ah, yes, we will have to pretend to be somebody else because the permits are on someone else’s names, but that’s not a big deal!
Skuba Junkies has a sea turtle hatchery program, where the eggs from sea turtles that are laid around the island get transported to their beach so they can be protected from predators. We were very lucky because around 7:30pm we got a call to the beach to see the turtles hatched from one of the nests.
September 26 started quite early, we were on the boat by 7:00am on our way to Sipadan. We did 3 dives and they all lived up to the hype of Sipadan and what everybody talks about. I have to say that Barracuda point was my favourite because it involved a good drift, lots of fish, sharks, barracudas and a bit of danger… I will save this story for another day!
September 27 is our last day in Mabul Island, it is sad to say goodbye to this beautiful paradise but we will be moving on to our next experience. In the morning we went snorkelling around the resort. We left on the 4:00pm boat back to Semporna.
