Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Matt & Cat's Travels
hello!!!
after spending a day in kota kinabalu, which was a nice city but not what we wanted to see in borneo, we took an 11 hour bus ride to semporna which is just a sleepy coastal town... the next day we took a boat for about an hour to an island named mabul where we stayed in huts built on stilts out in the water! we did some snorkling one day--which was "alright", but after diving, seems pretty similar to looking into an aquarium... the next day we had the most incredible experience--we took a boat from mabul about 25 minutes to an island named sipadan. it was attacked by phillipino pirates about 5 years ago so no one is allowed to stay there overnight except the army, which doesn't sound like that bad of a station to me! it usually takes months of advanced planning to book a trip to sipadan, but we happened to be in the office when someone else cancelled so we jumped at the opportunity to dive one of the top 5 dive sites in the world! we did three dives that day--deepest depth of 25 meters! right when we dropped in the water for the first dive we were SURROUNDED by barracudas, other large yet-to-be-determined fish, and craziest of all, WHITE TIP SHARKS! one was HUGE too! we followed the current along a wall of amazing coral that made our dives in koh tao look like the sabine. the next dive was awesome because we saw sea turtles!!!! huge ones just gliding along and they didn't mind us getting too close! of course we saw a lot of other things too (sharks again) but we haven't looked at a fish book yet to get the names so those will have to wait... on our third and final dive that afternoon we dropped into a spot called "Drop Off" because it goes from 8 meters to a steep drop of 600 meters!!!! of course we didn't go anywhere near that far down (only about 22 meters), but it was sort of unnerving knowing (or not knowing) what was hiding below us! we were under for about 45 minutes... saw amazing schools of fish and turtles again--there was a cave that matt and our guide did a little exploring in, but i opted out of that... it was too dark for my liking and screamed claustrophobia... when we surfaced at the end, matt informed us all that we were above a LEOPARD SHARK!!!! so of course we all went back under and got SO CLOSE (within 2 meters!) from it before it swam away! it showed us it's mouth, which looked comfortingly small.................... when we surfaced again, our guide informed us that seeing a leopard shark is VERY rare!! some dive masters have been to sipadan more than three hundred times and have never seen one!!!! it was an unbelievably awesome way to wrap up our dive experience here!! we went back to semporna for one night and ate some good food.... jumped on a bus this morning to sandakan and plan on taking a jungle tour from here! we'll keep ya'll posted and be sure ya'll do the same! love & miss!--cat (& matt)- comments