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Published: March 24th 2009
19th March 2009 Singamata
6:00am start again and the last trip up the misty Sungai Kinabatangan River, we’re all a little sad to go but on the other hand Pili, Zbynek, Renata & I are looking forward to some beach time, clean showers and fresh clothes.
We hastily pack our bags and I remember to clean my boots from yesterday’s mud, I’d completely forgotten all about it yesterday. Scrubbing the boots like a crazy man, washing away the thick jungle mud I finally put them by the dorm door for a little drying before packing them away. Ryan is also packing his rucksack and comes outside looking for his boots. He looks at me with a big grin and thanks me for washing his boots!! I felt like a real idiot, they did look same under all that mud. Anyway I quickly go to work on my boots; thankfully they were not as bad as Ryan’s so it takes half the time.
We take a five minute trip down river where we are collected and taken to the coach pick up point half an hour away. Thankfully everything goes smoothly and we don’t have too much waiting around
in the blistering sun.
Zbynek, Renata, Pili & I say a final farewell to our new jungle friends and board our air-conditioned coach and set off on a four hour journey to Semporna. We make a brief stop for toilets but sleep most of the rest of the way.
Upon arrival in Semporna we are jumped on by eager taxi drivers. We tell them we have a car arranged to pick us up at 2:00pm, we’d arrived at 1:45pm. They all smile seemingly knowing something we don’t. By 2:30pm no pick up! I walk around the town square looking for Singamata Adventures who have booked with, nothing. I then suggest we walk with our bags to the market place just down the road and see if we can find a phone. Again at the market place I leave the guys with the bags and eventually find a phone and get through to the office. I tell them to send a car and that we’d be waiting with a cold beer at Mabul Bar, which is in the Lonely Planet guide book.
Within 15 minutes we’re aboard the water taxi and heading out to the Singamata Complex which
consists off a bunch of chalets on stilts in the shallow waters of The Celebes Sea.
When we arrive we are greeted warmly and meet the manager Vicky. I ask her when are we heading to Mabul Island, she looks at me confused! We are told that our accommodation is here and not the island and that instead of seven scuba dives per person we would having one instructional dive and if the dive master was happy with us we’d have a proper 12 metre dive tomorrow. We’d also be visiting a couple of local islands and do lots of quality snorkelling. Mmmmmn, we protest that this is not what we had paid for a demanded some kind of compensation which we do finally agree on. It seems Polly the woman who ran the hostal in Sandaka was a little imaginative with her sales pitch. We decide the place looks fine and the girls are happy to be away from the filth and bugs of the jungle. We unpack, jump for the first time in the warm shallow waters of the Celebes sea, shower, hang out some freshly washed clothes and have our first meal which is excellent. After
eating we meet our dive master and he give us a brief talk and goes through our equipment that we will be using tomorrow morning, all goes well. After we have a couple of beers and sleep like dead dogs.
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