Borneo

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Jungle

I arrived in Borneo without having read anything about the place as I'd spent a good deal of my time in Singapore fast asleep. I had thought that the island was an untouched jungle paradise and with this in mind, my vague plan was to spend a couple of weeks living in the trees with a family of orangutans. A quick chat with the staff at the very comfortable Step In Lodge in Kota Kinabalu shattered my dreams: a trip to see the orangutans at feeding time would only really take a day at most and no, you can't play with them. You're not allowed anywhere near them. Damn. So what was I going to do with the rest of my time in Borneo?

SCUBA

A bit like FBI Agent Jack Baer at the end of the film "The Usual Suspects", when he realises he's just been talking to Keyser Söze, everything fell into place for me as I glanced round the reception area of The Lodge:there were posters with pictures of people apparently breathing under water and waving at fish, what could this mean? After bit more FBI-style investigation I discovered that Borneo has some of the best dive sites in the world. All I needed to do now was learn to dive, so the next day I signed up for an Introduction to SCUBA dive.

KK Night Market

In the evening I followed the delicious smell of cooking and headed to KK's night market, just round the corner fromt the Step In Lodge. The sea front was full to bursting point with people selling sea food fresh from the boats and fish and chicken being barbecued. Further along were the stalls where you could buy any number of colourful fruits and vegetables, many of which I had never before seen. I couldn't resist for long and soon found myself tucking in to a delicious barbecued red snapper and some rice, all for less than two quid. For desert, I bought some rambutans and tucked in to a fresh coconut, before heading back to the lodge via a beer shop to have an early-ish night in preparation for my introductory SCUBA dive the next morning.

Turd

I was a bit nervous about the dive as the only time I'd come close to doing anything like it before was at Lake Bala in Wales during a school trip. It was a fun few days camping, but the the horrors of the fly-ridden latrine pit were too much for some of us city boys. One morning, Karl, one of the boys in my tent, told me he was going to use the lake instead.

After breakfast, we queued up for a go at SCUBA diving. It wasn't a great success as Paul, the lad who's turn was before mine finished off the air, unfortunately for him, while he was still a few metres below the surface. So I didn't get my turn. One air tank for 15 kids, I ask you. That's life at a comprehensive school. Anyway, it didn't sound like I'd missed much, as Paul, once he'd stopped coughing up lake, managed to splutter that all he'd seen was a human turd. Laughing, I told him I thought I knew whose it was. Ah, happy days.

Wowee! Breathing under water!

Fortunately, despite the island's toilets being in a disgraceful state, diving off Manukan, a short boat trip from Kota Kinabalu, was a vastly different experience. The water was beautifully clear and warm and I had my very own tank of air. After gearing up, my instructor, CJ, walked me off the edge of the beach and into the water. The first thing to do was to try breathing under water.

Sitting on the sandy sea bed a few metres from the island's shore with my head beneath the waves, every impulse in my body was screaming to get out of the water. It took an enormous effort to take my first breath under the sea. A couple of breaths later and I gave in to the voice in my head that was telling me I was going to drown and stood up, tearing off my face-mask and spitting out the regulator to gulp down some fresh air. To add to my problems, my face-mask was making me feel claustrophobic.

A couple of minutes of trying to do "yoga breathing" later, my next attempt was a much calmer affair. Once more sitting on the sea bed I realised that the sensation of wearing the mask and breathing just through my mouth was the same as when snorkling which is great fun. So, after a couple of safety exercises we were off on my first dive. It was great and I didn't see a single turd, just lots of fish. I decided to crack on with the PADI Open Water Diver qualification.

In the meantime, I got the chance to go on a boat dive, which involved rolling in off the side of the boat, James Bond-style, something I'd always wanted to do. Apart from a moment of breathing-under-the-water angst on the descent at 6M (Chris to brain: it's just like snorkling, it's just lke snorkling), the boat dive was fantastic with lots of colourful fish to see. I'd forgotten that at the end of a dive you usually perform what's called a safety stop and for a couple of seconds was confused as to why my dive-master was pulling me back down from the surface. It crossed my mind that perhaps he was having his own James Bond fantasy and that I was going to have to fight him with his own diving knife.

PADI

It took a few days to become a qualified Open Water diver which involved reading a boring book and watching a boring DVD that, because of some dodgy wiring, restarted everytime someone came into the classroom. To make matters worse, there was no remote to fast forward the sections I'd already viewed. However, the most difficult part of the training for me was swimming around under the water without a mask. It was horrible, but I got used to it eventually and with the exam successfully under my belt I was qualified for some diving.

Best dive site in the world.

The word amongst my new diving mates was that the island of Sipadan was the place to go. The island is a heavily guarded marine park and without a permit you can't dive. To save a bit of time I'd booked a place on a trip there before finishing my Open Water course, so the day after qualifying I was heading to one of the premier dive sites in the world!

An early morning flight took me and a fellow diver, Koichi from Japan, to Tawau where we boarded a bus to Semporna and then a boat for the trip to Mabul island, where the Borneo Divers have their resort. The route to Semporna took us past mile after mile of palm plantation. As far as the eye could see, the rain forest had been cleared to make way for the cash crop. Two hours on the boat to Mabul Island and I'd forgotten all about the devastation on the mainland and was excitedly looking forward to seeing some pristine diving sites. Us new arrivals were subjected to a stern introduction to the resort, delivered classroom-style with whiteboard, which you can imagine was just what we needed after an early morning flight, no breakfast, a coach trip and a boat ride. We just had time to chuck our bags into our rooms before being rushed to gear up in time for an orientation dive off Mabul Island.

Ropey rental equipment, great big fish

I rolled off the boat and into the water and noticed that there were air bubbles coming out of the regulator hose. "Don't worry", said the divemaster,"Only small bubbles and you're with me." Hmm, what could possibly go wrong? A few minutes after the descent to Wooden House Reef, as the name suggests a reef made from a submerged wooden house, I'd almost forgotten about the air bubbles as I found myself in the middle of a jack fish vortex. It made me dizzy watching the glistening creatures swim round me. I also saw a large cuttlefish that changed colour as it hovered above the sea bed near some large groupers and an evil-looking moray eel. Fantastic!

Even more ropey rental equipment, not so big fish

Koichi and I went back to the equipment store, me to change my regulator and Koichi to change his wetsuit as the zip wouldn't stay up leaving him a bit chilly under the ocean. There were no more wetsuits left, so the bloke behind the counter gave him a thin environment suit. Koichi put it on over the top of his wetsuit and we couldn't stop laughing. It looked as though the previous owner of the suit had not only been attacked by a shark, but had also fallen into a shredding machine.

Anyway, it was time to board the boat for our second dive. At Eel Garden a short boat ride from Mabul Island, I descended to the bottom and soon realised that my new regulator was making a terrible noise every time I breathed in. And out. It sounded as though I'd borrowed Darth Vadar's asthmatic lungs. I found it very difficult to relax as my brain was no longer buying the "just like snorkling" argument and instead was telling me that each breath would be my last. Despite the visibility being fantastic, I didn't see much aquatic life, but I was looking for the wrong things and worrying about death. I was expecting to see a lot of Moray Eels, but it was explained to me afterwards on the boat that the eels at Eel Garden are actually very small. Apparently there were hundreds of them, but I didn't see any. However, I did see my first nudibranch: a small but very brightly coloured sea slug. I mentioned the dodgy regulator to the dive master back on the boat and he asked me why I didn't just use the alternative air source. Good point.

Sunset Dive

Back on Mabul Island I changed the regulator again and signed up for a sunset dive. Although the dive site, Paradise 2, is just off the beach, you still get there by boat, but on this dive there's no dive-master leading the way. This was my most relaxing and enjoyable dive so far: the regulator worked perfectly and there was no group to keep up with, just my buddy Koichi to keep an eye on. The highlight of the dive, in fact of the entire day, was getting close to an enormous turtle. After a few minutes it swam off into the blue through a beam of sunlight filtered through the waves; a wonderful sight. It was back again a few minutes later, watching us from a rock as we surfaced and climbed back into the boat.

Sipadan

The dives off Sipadan Island were simply great. The visibility was about 15 or 20 metres and there was something interesting to see on every dive. The highlights for me were the dives at the West Ridge and South Point sites . There were turtles everywhere, an octopus, schools of squid, lots of large bump-head parrot fish and even an enormous and vicious-looking baracuda having his teeth cleaned by a much smaller fish. At South Point, I had a face-to-face encounter with a white-tip shark. I thought I'd be scared to see a shark close up, but instead I was left in awe of these beautiful, hypnotic creatures. Admittedly, at two metres in length, the white-tip was only a tiddler and were I to see a great white or a bull shark I imagine I'd be filling my wetsuit with brown trout.

Goodbye fishes, hello orangutans.

After a few days on Mabul Island it was time to leave and so early on the last morning I boarded a boat and headed towards Sepilok, home of the Orangutan Sanctuary. Two coach journeys later, the second one of which involved enduring the driver's rock band's latest demo at full blast (my guess is there was some kind of karma at work there), and I was at the Sepilok Jungle Resort.

The next morning I went to see the orangutans being fed. It was a bit disappointing as only two of the little monkey fellas turned up. The afternoon session was much more fun with several cheeky chaps swinging in to scoff down some breakfast. The following day I spent the morning at the nearby proboscis monkey sanctuary and then took the bus back to Kota Kinabalu.

I didn't have time to climb Mount Kinabalu during my stay and initially I wasn't too bothered after having spent a good deal of time in the Himalaya of India and Nepal. However, as the bus to KK passed the mountain at sunset, I realised I'd missed out. The view even from the side of the road was magical; how must it be at sunrise from the top of the mountain? I felt as if I was in a Terry Gilliam animation with cartoon clouds scudding across the sky as the rich, marmalade tones of the sun dipped below the horizon.

Return to KK

I was back in KK in time for some more diving off Mamutik Island. Not as amazing as Sipadan, the area still has a lot to offer and as my eye became more trained at spotting the smaller inhabitants of the submarine world I started to enjoy the dives that required a bit more work to find the interesting stuff. You can't beat diving in crystal clear seas, but it was almost as exciting to find camouflaged nudibranches, frog fish, crabs and stone fish in 3 metre visibility round Mamutik Island as it was watching sharks and turtles.

Independance Day

The day before I left for Cambodia, the Malaysians were celebrating 50 years of independance from Britain, with fireworks, lots of marching and some very long speeches. I couldn't understand their banners, but it seemed that each trade association, sports club and knitting circle of KK was represented in the brightly coloured parade. The marching was military in its precision putting to shame the lackadaisical meanderings of my old Sea Scout troup.

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Photos

Amateur Fatalist Centre
There were a couple of these places in Borneo. I never found out what they were about. This one´s in Kota Kinabalu.

Snookered
Billiards and snooker are very popular in Kota Kinabalu.

Downtown
Kota Kinabalu

Choose your dinner.
Seafood restaurant in KK.

Sunset
Kota Kinabalu

Delicious
Barbecued chicken, KK Night Market

Fish
KK Night Market

Crabs
KK Night Market

More fish
KK Night Market

Rambutans
KK Night Market