Days 11-13 Mabul - A Piscine adventure

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Today I was headed for Semporna – gateway to Mabul and the Islands in the Celebes sea, this meant I had to be up early to catch the 07:00 Dyana bus from Sandakan to Semporna (this passes the turn off to Gomantong caves). The journey took 6½ hours and I finished up the day at scuba junkies dive resort (in the loosest sense of the term) in Semporna ready for my snorkelling trip to Mabul the next day. There is nothing to see in Semporna but you need to stay there is you want to dive the northern Islands in the Celebes Sea, a couple of them are fantastic to visit and have crystal clear water such as Mataking and Sibuan. ScubaJunkies advised me that Sibuan was a great place for snorkelling, however, nobody else wanted to go there so I ended going to Mabul a day early and snorkelling there instead.I wasn’t too unhappy about this as the resort on Mabul was fab.

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We were ready for 08:00 for the boat journey to Mabul to dump our gear and set off on the snorkelling trip, our first port of call was Kapalai which was pretty rubbish if I have to say. It is a tiny Island and it now boasts a luxury resort which has been built on top of the reef – nice! There wasn’t much coral, yet it had an abundance of fish. In the group we had a Chinese couple, who couldn’t swim so they had to be given a life preserver to float in!! After Kapalai we had a break for an hour and then set off for one of the reefs off Mabul which was much better that Kapalai, there was a few examples of healthy coral in the shallow waters but then there was a sheer drop off into the deep water ad this is where the best coral and aquatic life could be found, this was quite deep though and so I regularly had to dive 3-4 metres to get the good pictures on my new underwater camera. After lunch which was fab as I had my very own veggie dish which looked better than the meat option we headed back out to another reef around Mabul. I had 3 dives during the day and really enjoyed it, some of the highlights were a clown fish swimming amongst an anemone, a bicolour parrotfish, a metre-long grouper, a cowfish (with horns), a blue spotted ribbontail ray and a white-spotted pufferfish. I always seem to end up being the amateur guide on trips like this and after the first dive the dive master stayed on the boat so I was pointing out these fish to the other members of the group. My best find came about as an accident I dived down to around 4 metres to look at something that caught my eye and just to the left of it was a little cave in which was the biggest turtle I have ever seen. It was difficult to see from the surface as the visibility wasn’t that great. I took a few pics but then had to surface pretty quickly!! Then a couple of mins later I was at the surface and looked down and the turtle was swimming up towards me, so I got off a few pics and then swam along with it as it came to the surface for air and then plunged down to the depths again. Its shell must have been a metre long at least so it was a very old specimen.

After the evening meal which was tofu, aubergine and courgette skewers – yum yum I went to the bar as there was a band on and found some chums that I had original spoken to briefly in Semporna, as the night progressed we all got to know each other and became Facebook friends and had a great time. There was 2 guys and a girl from Denmark and a girl from Sweden and we spent most of the time taking the p*** out of each other – I now have an invite to stay with a young blonde nurse in Stockholm:-)

Boring bits

Scuba Junkie Mabul resort – 125Rm per day – accommodation and meals – you could stay at one of the long houses provided by the locals in the town for 60RM, but this won’t be as good and you will end up at scubajunkies at night as its one of the best places in town.

Day snorkelling 110RM double for diving but you got a discount on the accommodation.

If you are diving with Scuba Junkies on the day of the boat trip to Mabul you don’t have to pay for it otherwise it is 50RM – takes 50 mins

Sipadan – it costs around 600Rm to dive Sipadan and most of that if the 400RM license fee. It is one of the best dive-sites in the world though so worth every penny. As a snorkeller though I didn’t think that I would get the most out of the trip as most of the wonders would be found at a depth too far for me to see. There are numerous sharks to be found there and it would have been good to see them.

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