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Published: August 9th 2007
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Sipadan Island
I'll never be able to snorkel anywhere else ......Day two we awoke and trudged our sunburned snorkeler's backs down the street to Scuba Junkie headquarters. Things were looking up as we had much fewer "strokes", two really professional divemasters (one even spoke in scuba "sign language" as she addressed the boat), and we were headed to Sabah's crown-jewel for marine life. It was a good hour out to Sipidan, as it was the last island in the group, and it certainly stood out as we approached. Sipadan used to have resorts on the island, but after the hostage crisis and the discovery that the resort's sewage was being pumped directly into the reefs, everybody got kicked out. Sipadan is now a fully protected marine park: only 100 visitors per day, no overnight stays, and except for a small strip, beaches were off-limits to protect turtle eggs. The old resort structures were taken over by the government to be used as miltary barracks and turtle hatcheries. All the efforts have certainly paid off. The little island of green and it's ring of perfect white sand is surrounded by a vast, egg-shaped field of coral with water so clear you can see the vibrant colors and activity of the marine city
Pesky Monitor Lizard
wouldn't leave us alone until someone gave him some noodles below you. We dropped Mark and his crew off at the edge off the reef, then cruised around at the whim of our Malay driver, who suddenly threw on a mask and told us to jump in after him. Sensing his urgency, we followed immediately.
We were in very shallow water, and there wasn't a lot of coral life here. What was this? I had seen way better stuff where we were at on the edge of the reef! Was was so special about....
A large group of black shadows were approaching directly on my left. They were massive, 3-4 feet in length with bulbous foreheads and large beaky mouths. The moved like a herd of cattle, grazing at the bits of coral to create a loud and continuous crunching sound like something out of a zombie flick. Jenny, one of our divemasters, had told us to keep an eye out for these guys. They were Bumphead Parrotfish, cobalt bule in color, and I almost swallowed half the ocean at the sight of the school swimming past me.
Mark, being the Scuba stud that he is, had gotten his own private dive with one of the divemasters.
View from the beach on Mabul
An old oil platform that is now a guesthouse Down pass 100 feet, he was swimming with a school of 50 reef sharks. On the way up, he hit a school of a dozen or so barracuda, 5 times larger than those in the Caribbean. He emerged from his first dive with a childlike look of excitement in his eye. Mark has done over 350 dives to his recollection. "Man, I have never seen anything like that before", he exclaimed.
"Yeah," said the divemaster. "That was a really great dive."
Sipadan was incredible. One could just tuck themselves into a ball on the edge of the reef and drift along with the current, watching the island slowly drift by like it was on a conveyor belt. The mind-blowing reef would be alive in front of you, and huge fish swimming in the depts of the open-water behind. Everything looked like they were on steroids. At least 5 to 10 times as big as anything in Hawaii or the Caribbean. And the turtles. They were everywhere!!! I don't know if there was ever a time when I wasn't surrounded by at least 6 of them: spotted and striped in green and brown; asleep in twos and threes on
Village Kite
Boy amuses himself with a plastic bag the ocean floor; taking in huge gulps of air on the surface. They were all as long as Suzanne, and as curious about us as we were about them. Everywhere you looked there were more, and even by the fourth trip around the island, you never got tired of them.
To try and describe all the fish and coral would take volumes of paper. There wasn't a square inch around the reef that didn't have something going on. I would swim through schools of enormous jackfish, stalk sharks on their way down the reef wall, or hang out at a "cleaning station" where big fish would pull up to a certain rock and open their mouths for tiny wrasses to pick out their teeth and gills. It was unbelievably beautiful. Nothing has ever come close to the experience, and I doubt anything ever will. We chatted back and forth to each other like a knitting group on the way home, each of us gossiping with each other about what we had seen in the water. Mark was already planning his next visit.
Instead of going back to the Dragon Inn, we were dropped off at nearby Mabul Island.
Village Pier
Typical house on Mabul After seeing aerial pictures, Suz had fallen in love with it's bright blue water and insisted we stay there. There were many resorts, but we had instead hooked up with the Scuba Junkie recommendation to stay at their longhouse to save some dough. We ended up being dropped off in the local fishing village and getting some thin-walled rooms in a shack on stilts. We had been charged WAY too much money to poop in a hole over the water. Still, we had descent food during the communal mealtimes and got a very close look at village life once we walked down the longhouse pier. All the kids said hello as we walked past their wooden and straw houses, some flying kites make from discared plastic bags. After buying some fried bananas from a kind old man, we watched the excitement of a lottery being conducted by someone spinning a colored wheel. The people seemed very happy and friendly, but as we continued to walk it became very apparent that the natives of the island had been pushed into seclusion by the big money of the resorts. Fences with barbed wire surrounded their houses and kept them from wandering the grounds of perfectly manicured lawns and swimming pools, and guards stood at the ends of beaches to make sure that only their guests could enjoy the sand. Despite trying to be a sly as possible, we found this applied to us as well. The closest we could get to a sunset on the beach was to buy expensive beers at their bar.
It was here that we met Khadafi. He was one of the few locals lucky enough to get a job cleaning the pool at the resort, mainly because of his descent English skills. We talked for a while about the usual stuff: where we were from; where he was from; why George Bush was always trying to "make war". It is always comforting to know that most natives put the blame on the politicians instead of the American people, something that must ring true for them as well. Khadafi translated some simple questions from the bartender as well (we assured him that Bush had only 1 year left in office), and before we knew it we had missed our communal meal back at the longhouse. There was nothing to eat at the bar, only a few snacks in the village, and the resorts would probably need 3 forms of identification and a deposit to allow us to eat their overpriced western food. Our new found friend came to the rescue.
Khadafi led us down a path back to the village where, jammed in between the stilt houses, there was a small plastic tabled restaurant. He pointed us to a table, let the owner know we were hungry, and ordered some food for himself and the bartender (I guess the resorts don't feed their employees). It was a basic meal of fried rice, but delicious, and we thanked Khadafi as he left. Someone from the restaurant had just brought down a bunch of fresh coconuts and hauled them over, and it wasn't long before everyone had ordered one, so we followed suit. The water inside was a grest refresher against the heat. On cue from the locals, we sent the shell back to be cracked open and served with a spoon for our dessert. We paid the ridiculously cheap bill and waved goodbye, once again trailed by the village kids in their endless pursuits for high-fives.
Back in Semporna, we reflected on our 3 day tour of the Celebes Sea. Mark was looking for a fish identification book. I commented how I may never be able to snorkel again after setting the bar so high. Suz was still pissed about the longhouse price. What hung in the backs of our minds the most was our view into the islander's lives. To be so friendly and happy and to have so little. They didn't seem bitter at all, and it wasn't out of ignorance. We had talked politics and seen kids drawing pictures of cities with trucks and cars. Maybe they were just happy to have their families with them, surrounded by bright blue water and an endless supply of sunshine.
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mompat
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Wow x 3!
Wow, Wow, and Wow!