Swim with the fishes
After the disappointing trip to Mount Kinabalu we headed to Semporna to learn how to dive. This was the cheapest place in Asia we had found to get our PADI open water certifications, which may make it the cheapest place in the world. It was about $230 a person….certainly well over our budget, but hey, it was Christmas. The town itself is nothing to rave about. Previous visitors have described it as an eye sore and a dump. Yeah, it sort of is. It has it’s own charm I am sure, but none that I wanted to take the time to discover. The course, however, went well. Most courses do your first day of the course in a pool and on the second day they take you out into the blue sea. Well, there was no pool in Semporna so we headed for the beautiful island of Sibuan for our training. Wow. We saw sea turtles, snakes, parrot fish and all sorts of other sea life while learning the basics of diving. We were looking forward to doing a couple more dives off of the world famous Sipadan island. Unfortunately, it was not to be. First I got sick. Then all the dive shops booked up for several days in advance. Already sick of Semporna and not wanting to wait we said good bye to Borneo and Malaysia. We had to fly all the way back to Kuala Lampur, spend the night in the airport, and from there fly into Denpasar, Bali.
Tags: Travel
