Under the sea...

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We arrived in Mabul yesterday after a 45 min trip from Semporna (not a town to hang out in, an overnight stop to catch an early boat, although we found a cafe that sold pizza and baked bean toasties so it wasn't all bad!) in a boat skippered by William Wallace. Another Braveheart fan (Asia is full of them!). En route we passed three huge barges full of recently chopped down rainforest. The logging here is outrageous. William Wallace made us all take photos so that when we go home we can write to the Government to protest against it (all help greatly appreciated). We also passed an island called "Honeymoon Island" - it looked stunning, just a stretch of sand in the water with palm trees in the middle and a couple of huts. That's really getting away from it all.

The resort we are staying in is lovely, a real 'last stop before work' treat (life's hard, eh?). We struck it lucky and got a lodge right down on the beach next to the swimming pool. There are great views from the balcony but we've been too busy to relax and enjoy them (Mark's not even been in a hammock yet!).

Anyway, the whole point of being here is for the diving. We've been in a group with the 7 Singaporeans who came over on the boat with us and have treated us as part of the family. They are all way more experienced than us so it's great to see how real divers do it!

First dive we went off to Eel Garden, where we saw lots of garden eels, crocodile fish and huge turtles chilling at the bottom just lazily watching us pass by. Next dive, on the reef just off the beach, we saw loads more tropical fish as well as a moray eel, a frog fish and swimming turtles. Today we started off under the oil platform that sits just off the shore and is now used as another dive resort. There we saw Lion fish, pygmy seahorses and a huge shoal of fish swimming by. But the really exciting dives were this afternoon when we went off to Sipadan which sits on the edge of the continental shelf so there's a huge drop-off just off shore. We could see it on the way in, lovely tuquoise clear water on one side of the boat, complete darkness on the other! It was crazy! It's the first time that we've been diving somewhere that there's no bottom to stop us going too deep. There's nothing to judge your depth on as there was such good visibility and we could see much further down than we are qualified to go to. A couple of times I got a fright when I checked my depth gauge and quickly (obviously not quicker than recommended!) swam up a bit. The first part of the dive was just an amazing rush, it was so exciting. Much more exciting than the shoal of barracuda that passed us. We moved over the reef to see a leopard shark, white tipped reef sharks, more turtles, stunning coral and so much more. It was an amazing dive.

After an hour's break on the beach (we were only allowed on a small part of the beach as the island is now controlled by the army after a group of divers were kidnapped and held to ransom there in 2000) we had another dive, this time at 'the drop off' (that wasn't it before?!!!). Again this was a wall dive with no bottom, but we were old hat by this time! We got to go to into the entrance of a cavern to pose beside the danger sign and swim alongside some huge Barracuda. The reef we swam over towards the end was, again, amazing, as colourful as any prize garden with fish playing around. It was just like the reef in Finding Nemo. We all came back as high as kites and launched straight into the pool to sit at the pool bar and chatter non-stop.

Those of you who wish you were there are so lucky, we got a video made so we'll be able to go over these dives in fine detail with you when we get back! It's not just hours of photos you'll have to sit through, isn't that great?!!!!

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