July 4 – July 10, 2016
Semporna, Malaysia
From a tourist/ traveler perspective, Semporna exists for one purpose – diving. I don’t think there is much else to do here. Sipadan island, accessible from Semporna apparently has the 2nd best dive site in the world. As a newly certified open water diver I had to at least get close to this site. I took a bus from Kinabatangan along with the cute British couple, Peg and Kobe. Uncle Tan’s had arranged our travel for us and we got passed off from random minibus to minibus without any discussion until we eventually made it to Semporna. It was hot and dirty and my knees hurt from being cramped in minibuses with too many people, luggage and Asian sized seats :-). I know I’m Asian but I think I’m more American sized. Luckily the hostel where I was staying was awesome, with a great view of the waterfront and a big spacious, clean dorm.
After asking around a bit, I learned that I actually could dive Sipadan even though it’s considered advanced. The dive operators suggested that I dive the other islands first to get more comfortable. I signed up for 2 days of diving at Mabul and Kapilai islands. Six dives in two days would more than double my total number of dives. I was a bit nervous but was determined to forge ahead. Just FYI, Sipadan is expensive to dive because of it’s popularity and you need a special permit because it is a protected site. The permit can be hard to get so plan ahead if you can.
The next morning, on the boat to Mabul island, I felt calm, collected and like I have ridiculously good fortune. I don’t know how I got this lucky. On the boat I chatted with a really nice French dude who’s a dive master that wanders around to different dive sites across the world. Apparently, a lot of dive masters do this. Interesting way to see the world! And on the way to Mabul we saw the sea gypsies. It is absolutely crazy to see their homes on stilts in the middle of the ocean and how they get around in little makeshift boats, some make out of discarded materials. I cannot imagine how they live the majority of their lives on water. Amazing!
I did pretty well and after the first day of diving I felt much more comfortable and decided that I couldn’t be this close to Sipadan and not dive there. So I signed up for 3 dives in Sipadan!!! The first day of diving was in Mabul island. The island itself is in really bad shape with tons of resorts, lodges, and sea gypsies. The beaches are littered with tons of garbage and there are way too many boardwalks. It’s really quite sad. The sea gypsies and some locals don’t quite understand the damage done by some of their practices, like dynamite fishing, using poison for fishing, and throwing their trash in the ocean. Some of the concerned locals told me that you can be fined for these activities but unfortunately the government doesn’t really enforce the laws.
Underwater this place is a paradise with colorful coral, tropical fishes, turtles, shellfish and invertebrates. On the 1st day I saw a cool cuttlefish, loads of nudibranchs, a field of chocolate chip sea stars and trigger fish. On our third dive we saw about 30 green turtles. They were all around us. Seeing them gently float by totally mellowed me out. I think I love diving.
On the second day, we went to Kapilai island. Kapilai has a fancy resort on stilts and not much else. The diving here is pretty amazing as well. Our first dive was at an artificial reef that’s still growing so not much there yet. I tried practicing my buoyancy control. I don’t do well when there are just a few big structures spread around and a bunch of sand in between. I keep sinking. The next dive was one of my favorites…I saw an octopus! It changed colors and texture right in front of us to blend with the coral. When it noticed we could still see it, it changed back and scurried away from us. Absolutely freaking amazing! I didn’t tape this obviously, but this is what we saw… :-o.
On the 3rd dive that day we had a very strong current and I drifted over a huge turtle the size of a coffee table. It was a magnificent day!
I had 2 free days before my last diving day in Sipadan. I did almost nothing during this time except updating the blog, editing pictures and trying to figure out where to go next and when. I did meet a very nice French lady that has a background very similar to my own. We chilled and had a good time together and decided to travel to Indonesia together…more on that later.
Sipadan dive day arrived and I was very excited. I was even friendly to the freshly certified couple that would be diving with me from an Asian country that doesn’t have the best reputation in South East Asia. They were traveling for a total of four days and they had just finished their PADI open water certification during the 3 previous days. And the 4th day they decided to dive Sipadan, a high difficulty dive site. Yeah. We got on the boat and there was another lady on the boat and her small child. She was wearing a white Marilyn Monroe-esque bathing suit with weird draping cloth all around. Apparently she did an “advanced” dive so that she could do an underwater photo shoot. She had a giant tiara…serenity now. Her instructor/husband…I’m not sure what was going on there…held her tank the whole dive and took pictures of her. Oh and she left her small child on the island with some random dude while she did her glamour shots dive…insanity now. Because glamour shots and her instructor needed the help of another dive master to get to 28 meters, all of the rest of the divers (7 people) were left with one dive master. When the other dive master joined us I somehow ended up with the couple I mentioned earlier. Within 2 minutes of us completing our descent to the appropriate depth, the wife freaked and ascended all the way to the top. The dive master went after her and as soon as he left the husband tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he was at 50 bar (which means low on air). We had just started!!! Thankfully, glamour shots was done with her glamour shots dive so they took this couple back to the boat and I was able to continue my dive with the dive master. We saw sharks, super cool table top coral, huge school of Jack fish and a lion fish. The next dive was only slightly less eventful…the special couple kept hitting me because my dive master was now doing a photo shoot for them and apparently my dive was getting in the way. They almost knocked out my regulator. This was at Barracuda point which is the second best dive site in the world. I think I liked the octopus dive better but this was pretty nice as well. The special couple ended their dive early again and I was sent to join the other group…yay! The dive was much more enjoyable once that happened. For the last dive I requested to be with the other group. This was the best dive of the day by far. We dived at Turtle Cave and actually got to go inside a cave. So amazing and a bit disorienting! After the cave we swam against a wall so above, below and to the left was just a large blue expanse of water with the occasional turtle floating by. I love, love, loved it. It felt like floating in space (I’ve never been to space but I’m pretty sure that’s how it would feel…with sea animals). Again we saw about 20 turtles. Someone even snapped pics of me with one. We also saw some cute cleaner shrimp and a couple large schools of jack fish. It was heavenly :-).
In summary, Semporna on land is not that spectacular, but the diving here makes it spectacularly adequate. Also, I know many other people from the Asian country that I’ve not named and they are absolutely wonderful…it’s just the tourists in the SEA countries that were insufferable. Their complete disregard for their surroundings was just shocking. They stepped on, kicked, and destroyed the coral, they didn’t listen to the dive masters, they threw trash in the ocean…I just could not understand it and was very frustrated by it. I wish there was some way to make them understand.
Oh while in Semporna, I ate at Bismillah restaurant almost every night. Good stuff!
I can’t remember what this was called now but it was delicious. Chicken with roti and egg.
Next stop, Indonesia!!
nomadshak 
The title of this one seems scandalous.
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