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One of the main things that Chris and I wanted to do when we booked our trip was to dive in Borneo. We had heard from lots of people that it was one of the best places in the world to dive so we were both vry excited. The island of Sipadan is off the coast of Semporna (where we stayed) and is an oceanic island formed by living corals growing on top of an extinct undersea volcano, which rises 600m from the seabed.
The word 'Semporna' means perfect which is nothing short of hysterical. Chris and I travelled from Kota Kinabalu on an overnight bus (10 hours) and turned up in Semporna at 3am. The bus journey was horrendous. The roads were very windy going around and up and down hills. Chris was on the outside leather seat and could barely stay on! We thought we would pass the time by reading but half an hour into the journey (starting at 7.30pm) the driver switched off all the lights. We were then subjected to a Jackie Chan movie followed by several hours of local pop music stations, which sounded all the same to us. They eventually turned the tv off and I thought we might be able to finally get some shut eye, but to our dismay the 'fully reclining seats' went about an inch backwards so made that impossible. I think the bus driver must have got whiff of the fact that the only tourists on board were trying to sleep, so he whacked 'The Best of Celine Dion' on the radio - which we had to endure twice through!! Don't you just love travelling.... Anyway, we finally arrived at 3am after no sleep, no dinner and feeling very jaded. What seemed like a friendly taxi driver greeted us on the bus and told us he was from the City Inn where we had booked and would take us there (hmmm, a likely story). So we willingly climbed in and he proceeded to drive several laps around Semporna (which is tiny) before arriving at our hotel, ensuring he could fully rip us off by making it look like a long journey! A scam we are now much wiser to.
The hotel we booked into was vile, so we checked out at first light the next day and headed to somewhere near the dive shops. The town is very grotty and I hated walking through it due to the stares and remarks from all the locals. I had experienced this in KL and KK but here was really bad. The men leered at me as if they had never seen a white girl before and the women just glared, throwing the worst evils I have ever seen. After being there a while I tried walking out in trousers and a long sleeved t-shirt to see if it was the amount of flesh exposed that was attracting attention, but it didn't work. Unfortunately it was the curse of the blond locks!! I seriously contemplated shaving off my hair by the end of our stay in Malaysia.
Anyway, after enquiring about diving with Sipadan Scuba we decided it would be best to do our Advanced Open Water PADI certificate first as this would allow us to dive deeper at Sipadan and see more of the big stuff! The course took two days to complete, 5 dives and we had to take certain elements that were compulsory and some we could choose. The deep dive (30m), navigation diving and drift diving were all compulsory elements of the course.
During the deep dive we had to take part in silly maths tasks which were timed, so they could see how well our bodies were coping. We had computers strapped to our wrists for the navigation dive and had to find our way around certain points and back to boat, making different paths. I liked having to do all those silly tasks but the diving for those two days at Sibuan and Bohey Dulang was great too. For our optional elements we chose underwater photography and peak performance buoyancy (sounds dull but it essential).
For our third day diving we headed out to the world famous Sipadan island. As the photos show the islands itself is beautiful, but underwater is even better! When we first got into the water and I put my head underneath I was so excited and couldn't wait to get down further. The water there was crystal clear, so warm and filled with amazing coral and thousands of colourful tropical fish. We did three dives that day at Barracuda Point, Turtle Patch and Turtle Tomb. We saw different things at each dive but throughout the day we saw schools of hundreds of barracuda, hundreds of jack fish, black and white tip reef sharks, napoleon wrasse, giant trevally, bumphead parrot fish (the ones with the crazy teeth) and loads of green turtles (which were my personal favourite - I think Chris preferred the sharks!).
After a long day of diving I can assure you that we were always starving. Next to the dive shop cafe was an amazing man called Edi who had a bbq most nights. For 20 Ringgits (4 pounds) you could eat as much as you want, and it was fantastic. He would bbq up fresh tuna steaks, squid, barracuda, prawns and blue marlin. It was every bit as good as it sounds and the best bit was the fact that Edi kept coming into the cafe and putting more food on our plates, force feeding up his freshest fish, "More fish Mr Chris, I have some lovely fresh marlin. No, you not full yet!"
The whole experience was totally incredible (as well as budget busting) and will be hard to beat as the highlight of our trip. We desperately wanted to stay and do more diving, but the age old problem of funds moved us forwards on our journey to the next destination......to Sandakan and the search for orangutans!
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