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ok so blog number two on this rubbish keyboard, i think im doing quite well! so we had some disapointments as we arrived in a town called HELL, oops i meant lahad datu. It really was a hole, and to be honest we both have a very sunny disposition travelling and make the best of anything but really some towns in sabah are so bad!! put it this way, the highlight was a display cabinet of coke cans from across the world in a small shopping complex) our room had three bins full of moving mould and what can only be described as a urinal in the corner!!loverrrly. so we though lets hot foot it off to the jungle again. we wanted to go to danum valley, which is unspoilt rainforest and inaccessible apart for scientists and researchers but we'd heard if you asked nicely you could stay in the research quarters. Turns out they were full with bona fide researchers so we could complain!! we tried our other jungle option, The Tabin, which had Amazing platforms with tents on them in the rainforest canopy but these were under maintenance and the other accomodation was 100 pounds a night!!so a bit dissapointed we trudged back to our grime hole to contemplate where we could go! Our spirits brightened considerably when we saw Rosey and Andy, one of the couples we met at Kinabatangan at the hostel, and we al decided to get the hell out of hell and ramble off to Semporna, the jumping off point for only THE BEST DIVE SITE IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD!!! sorry getting ahead of myself there! spent a night in semporna but we were itching to get to Mabul, the nearest island to Sipadan. to paraphrase Borat, wowaaaweeewaah!!! it was sooooo beautiful, what a gem! we decided to go with a local family company, again in a homestay type setup, a stilt house over the water and before i talk about the diving, snorkelling and island, oh my gosh the FOOD!!!! i felt awful as i forgot to mention i was vegetarian, and had resigned myself to vegetable fried rice three meals a day for a week. How wrong i was. i have two words for you all. ROAST POTATOES!!! yes every lunchtime i had a veritable feast of tofu, roast tatties, vegetables, roasted!!! i ate like a king the entire week i was so lucky! my meals were making everyone wish they were veggie!! so anyway our dives on Sipadan were incredible!!! the best thing ive ever experienced in my life! the only downside is that we will have to retire from diving as any other dive site will pale in comparison! I literally cannot explain the crazy experience that was diving sipdan - Turtles EVERYWHERE massive giant hawksbilland green turtles, so beautiful wimming all around us, asleep in the croral, we swam with them stroked them what an experience! at one point i had about 7 turtles to myself! and the sharks!!! Sharks everywhere, we only saw two on our first dive but after that everywhere, you can tell by the pictures how close we were, some white tip which werent aggressive but a couple which were a bit mean and rather large! shoals of thousands of jackfish which we swam through and massive groupers and bumphead parrotfish and napoleon wrasse; each fish the size of me!! and the variety of fish all the colours of the rainbow it was like being dropped into a giant tropical fish tank i felt like i had been given shots of adrenalin all week! the snorkelling was also top class, almost as good as the diving, hovering over the edge of the reef over a 900m shelf drop was exhilarating! We also did a wreck dive at a sand bar Kapali where there were crocodile fish, frog fish and a 2metre moray eel, please google some of these fish they are truly bizarre! snorkelling at Mabal was great too, we spend every early evening out there, and getting the local kids to push Chris and Andy off the jetty! the island itself was beautiful, and walking around it hanging out with the hundreds of very cute and crazy local kids was so much fun all they want is their picture taken and to do breakdancing! had a few drunk evenings with our intructor madz mad dog (as he insited on being called) and the old guitar came out and some love songs we had not heard since the early 90's (i guess things take some time to get to Borneo!)which was a treat! Probably the best week of our lives, although im quite aware i have said such a thing on many blogs!!! im sure ive left lots out but ive bored everyone quite enough, we now have 3 days left in Borneo and off to our last national park tommorow before flying back to KL. Miss you all, but one month today we are home, i cant quite believe how fast the last 8 months have gone! lots of love to you all XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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