Blogs from Sipadan, Sabah, Malaysia, Asia - page 7

Well I'm actually back in Kota Kinabalu but was in Sipadan yesterday. Will give a brief run down of the events of the last few days. Wednesday night, after getting no sleep the night before thanks to United woot, 7-1!! And little the day before thanks to awful sunburn on my back and sides. I was pretty tired and thought I would be able to sleep on the night bus, wrong. It's a proper coach but the roads are awful and incredibly bumpy, you get thrown around like anything. Not being able to lie on my back or sides meant travelling on this bus was very painful. They enforce segregation of tourists here, as i was the only white person on the bus i was left at the back on my tod. Pretty cool as actually ... read more

"Day 47 in the Big Brother world and Christophinoz is still alive but still nowhere near Oz...this week, apart from causing trouble, he has done the following..." Eventually flew to Kota Kinabalu ("KK"), the capital of the Sabah region of Malaysian in Borneo, from Bangkok with Air Asia after a 9 hour delay, 1 hour of which involved the pilot testing the engines just before we were initially due to take off!! Got off that plane faster than Ben Johnson after a visit to his 'chemist'. Oh, yeh...they found bits of the missing Adam Air plane flying internally in Indonesia on the 12th day... Arrived at KK at 3am so decided to sleep in the terminal, well, until some guy decided to fumigate it! Slept outside whilst trying to kill the kamikaze mossies with the sounds ... read more

Scott writes: Fresh from our 5 hour coach and minibus jaunt east across the country we arrive in Semporna around lunchtime in the sweltering heat. Semporna is the jump off town to a host of idlyic islands that boast world class diving and Pulau Sipidan being the piece de resisdence of them all. Apart from the chance to experience the diving there really isn't anything else to do or see in the town, which in itself, is a complete dive! However, the town does have a nice fruit and fish market but come on, you can't go walking around them for days going oohh what a lovely bunch of bananas and look at the size of those melons. I mean you can't can you. Although there was a certain festiveness about the people as it was ... read more

I dived Sipadan and Mabul Islands back in July last year, I write now in January 2007. So here is a diving photo feast for those that like that kind of thing... My usual descriptive stories will resume shortly... I had all kinds of creative prose lined up for this but... Sipadan: Turtles the size of Volkswagon Beatles glide by, Baracuda tornadoes twist and twirl while sharks dart by evil eyes twisting in all the wrong directions. Mabul: A macro wonder-world, where every cranny holds a treasure... But it is slightly false (the turtles are smaller but still big for turtles) - and reads like a hyperactive tour brochure... but photos do not lie. Except the ones which have been colour corrected... the ones with lots of water looked a little greener in the originals. More ... read more

At the end of a 3 week holiday in Sabah, climbing the fantastic Mount Kinabalu, seeing the orangutans and other wildlife we took a few days to go diving round the islands of mabul and sipadan. We stayed on Mabul island, and on approach we could not believe how clear the water was and how lucky we were with the accomodation and being on the beach. The company we dived with were very good and all the food was excellent buffet style. First dive just off mabul was incredible enough, turtles on our first dive, cuttlefish and thousands of small colourful fish. Unfortunately the camera did not do much justice to them. After we didnt think it would get that much better, Sipadan was fantastic, I was so elated under water with the coral, sharks, turtles ... read more