Braving Borneo

Today was my allotted day to dive Sipadan.  It’s a big deal.  Only 120 people per day are allowed to dive the island, and you have to get permits early.  So most of the backpackers I’ve met who just kind of turn up have virtually no chance of going to Sipadan, unless someone cancels and a space frees up.   What makes Sipadan so special?  A lot of it has to do with topography.  Most of the islands around here sit on the continental plate, so that the maximum depth is only about 70m.  Then shortly beyond Mabul, the plate drops off into about 600m depth.  And out beyond that is Sipadan, standing alone and surrounded by these deeps waters.  So there are lots of interesting currents, bringing lots of interesting marine life, and (for me most importantly) also bringing lots of big fish.  In addition, it is a beautiful island – a small piece of paradise out in the Celebes sea.

The history of Sipadan is not all pretty.  Ownership of the island has been fought over between Indonesia and Malaysia for a long time, with finally the International Court of Justice awarding it conclusively to Malaysia.  There used to be resorts on the island, until a number of years ago, when a group of tourists and staff (21 people in total) was kidnapped by a Filipino Islamic terror group and held captive for a few months.  After that incident, Malaysia decided it is too difficult to guarantee safety and that it is more appropriate to preserver the natural state of Sipadan, thereby instructing the dismantling of all resorts, and turning it into a protected wildlife sanctuary.

And today was my day to go visit and more importantly, to dive the mysterious Sipadan.  First the good news: we were not abducted by pirates.  The bad news, I woke up this morning congested and generally not feeling very well – repercussions of my very cold day yesterday.  For those of you who are not divers: this is a serious dilemma. The standard rule is: congestion = no diving.  If your nose and/or sinuses are stuffy, you can’t equalize the pressure in your ears and you risk serious damage.  But on my Sipadan day?  Like I’m going to cancel that?

In comes loads of Sudafed, nose spray, ear drops and wearing a hat whenever I’m not in the water.  Luckily I was in a group with a divemaster who already knows me, so I had his trust and could start descending before the group, giving me enough time for a really slow descent, with frequent stops to deal with ear problems before getting to depth.  By dive #4 today, it was painful, but just manageable – so I got my complete day although with potentially a bit less enjoyment that otherwise (especially on the last dive).

But what dives they were!  We saw two different kinds of sharks – and lots of them.  Turtles on every dive.  Twice we went into huge schools of jacks that were so big and with so many fish, we all lost each other for awhile.  This was fun – remember Finding Nemo and the jacks all swimming together and making arrows and such to show the way?  In the middle of this group, I would swim along with them as they all got aligned on the direction of travel, then I’d turn and go in the opposite direction.  The poor confused fish would be coming right at me, almost straight into my mask and you could almost see their surprise and a “whoa – where’d you come from?” look on their face and they veered around me, got confused and swam around in all directions until they could get aligned again on which way to go.

And Barracudas.  A huge school of Chevron barracuda, swirling around us like a tornado.  Later on, we also saw great barracuda hovering around by themselves around a cave entry – and they were HUGE.  I have never before seen such enormous barracuda.  The walls we dove were fascinating, dropping off into just black sea, with growth patterns from the currents and every imaginable sort of fish in all colors and patterns, not to mention to corals and other animals.  We also did a blue dive, heading straight out into the ocean and into nothingness, in the hopes of running into a hammerhead or manta.  Didn’t happen, but it was a cool feeling to be in zero gravity with just nothingness all around.

So, it was a great day.  I can’t hear anything now, but have repeated by Sudafed, nose spray, ear drops regimen and hope it will be better tomorrow.  Thankfully no diving tomorrow, but I do have a flight in the evening and really hope that doesn’t become a painful endeavor.   In any case – this is one happy diver, sick or not.

It’s been a tough couple of days.  Well, tough is relative –it’s not like I have stressful tele-conferences all day or million dollar decisions to make.  Maybe it’s more appropriate to say it’s been an exhausting couple of days.  But I am SOOO HAPPY!!!!  Last year, I decided I was born to heli-ski.  But maybe I was born to live at a dive resort.

Yesterday the boat left Semporna at 8:00.

By 9:00 I was at Mabul island, had all my kit put together and was already boarding the next boat to start the dive day.

First dive, I was a bit disappointed with visibility.  I was expecting more like

Malta, Belize, or Cozumel visibility.  But it’s not that kind of diving here.  Referred to as “muck diving” (named because you’re basically diving over a bunch of muck – sand, disposed tires, dirt, etc), it is not world class visibility but it is most definitely world class in terms of variety of marine life.  And to a certain extent, the more challenging conditions force you to get up close and pay attention – meaning you start to see teeny tiny nudibranchs, juvenile fish, sea slugs, pipe fish, seahorses, and the like.  Plus we’ve seen a multitude of more “traditional” sea life including various eels, green turtles, lots of fish, and so on.

Yesterday culminated in my first dive during a monsoon storm. We watched the wind and rain for a good 20 minutes before deciding to just go for it.  So we back-rolled off the boat, right at the jetty, with the plan to dive out towards sea and get picked up there.  Apparently the different dive masters were not all aligned with the plan, because after 2 of us were in, divemaster #2 told the boat captain to drive out.  Which he proceeded to try, getting washed back towards the jetty, blown around and basically almost running over us 3 times.  We kept swimming back and forth to get out of the way, almost washing into the jetty in the process.  I wanted to just descend, but one of our divers was still on the boat so we couldn’t do that either.  Chaos.  Finally sorted out, we had a good dive, making it three for the day.

For those of you also seeing my FB posts, the night was not extremely restful.  My room reservation got screwed up, and I ended up in a 10 bed dorm last night.  Which was good to meet people – and there are some really nice and interesting fellow travelers here – but not so good for sleeping.  One person came inside at about 3:00am, after apparently finishing a bottle of gin on the porch (at least there was an empty one there this morning).  Someone was snoring a bit.  My pillow was lumpy and the air a bit stale.  And then there was the mentally unstable rooster, who started crowing at 3:45am instead of waiting until sunrise.  Either mentally unstable or confused – did someone not accurately explain his role and responsibilities?!  He was of course joined 2 hours later by all his buddies, so by 5:45 the single crowing turned into a cacophony of sound.  And as you can see, I was awake for all of it.

No matter: breakfast at 7:30 as there’s diving to be done!  We boarded the boat, all geared up, at 9:00 and headed out to MantaPoint.  Which we were pretty excited about, until we learned 20 minutes later during the dive briefing that the dive site has a serious misnomer: no one has seen Mantas there for years.  Already cold, we rolled into the water and…got colder.  Really – I can’t remember much of anything about that dive besides how miserable I was.  Shivering and getting stomach cramps (not only altitude makes me have to pee, so does extreme cold), I kept checking my dive computer to see when would be an acceptable time for me to bail out.  And then it was a long cold 20 minute drive (umm,  it is a drive with a  boat?) back to Mabul island.  Ran for hot tea and dry clothes, tried to warm up, then back out to the jetty for dive #2.  Do I really want to do this?  I ventured into the dive shop and my favorite dive shop guy was there (what luck!).  I asked if he might have an extra shirt floating around for me.  He found an XL and I agreed better than nothing.  Then he cocked his head, thought, and said “wait a minute.”  He wandered into the back and returned with a wonderful, thick, cozy feeling long sleeve, hooded dive shirt. Size XS.  Eureka!  It apparently is someone’s private gear (luck y for me Malaysian guys are small), and the dive shop guy said it was his good friends’ and I could use it.  He saved me!!!  I was able to enjoy myself again and had a great second dive, out at Seaventures (an oil rig turned dive resort of sorts, with lots of scrap gear underneath attracting loads of sea life).  Giant grouper, crocodile fish, frogfish, mantis shrimp, sweetlips, puffer fish, scorpion fish, the list goes on and on.

Only to be topped by dive #3 after lunch – we dropped in at stingray city and caught an amazing current.  So we did a fast-moving drift dive, floating for miles past a wall that dropped into nothingness.  And on the way, saw over 20 green turtles (the biggest one almost the size of a smart car!), the biggest great moray I’ve ever seen, ribbon tail ray, blue spotted ray, pipefish, … again, an endless list of exciting marine life.  The drift we caught was so good, we actually did 3 dive sites in our 58 minutes – what fun!!

Of course by the end I was again freezing cold despite my extra shirt, and was absolutely beat. But good news: I got to move into the my new (private) room today!  Hot shower, hot tea, and dove into bed for a power nap before dinner.  I love my room!  It is a cute little beach hut, with bedroom, bathroom, porch out front and finally space to myself.  At dinner I drank hot water instead of cold and between the 29 degree air temp outside and hot food and drinks inside, I’m finally warm again.  Heading to bed early as tomorrow is my Sipadan day.  Sipadan is one of the worlds’ premier dive sites, and we are heading out at 6:15 for a 4-dive day.  I sure hope we get some sun tomorrow so I can make it through without hypothermia!  I know, seems strange to have 21-22 degree water and 29-30 degree air, and still freeze.  But such is the sport of diving.

Downside to the wet season (besides being so cold) is that everything is soggy and turning moldy.  You can hang things up to dry, but they don’t.  Days later they are still damp – not so great for someone allergic to mildew. But one of those things that is, quite simply, out of my control.  And one thing that makes going home start to sound good even though I’m loving my time here.  Seeing my loved ones again, and clean, fresh clothes.  Ahhhh.  Sweet dreams of home tonight!

And here, some images of the neighborhood…

My transfer was supposed to pick me up in front of the S.O.R.C between 12:30 and 12:40.  After watching a few minivans come and go (without me), I started to get nervous.  At 12:45 I tried to call the contact ... [Continue reading this entry]

after 2 days in the jungle, I am now back on line in the seaside town of semporna.  I'll catch up with my back-blogging in a bit (jungle was beautiful!), but for now let me share some first impressions of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Today started early, up at 4:30 so I could get to the airport in time to catch the first flight to Sandakan.  By the way, inter-Malaysian flights are incredibly inexpensive, usually costing between 20-30€ to get from one city to ... [Continue reading this entry]

Last night was not what I would call restful. I was staying at Pendant Hut, which sits at about 3250m on Mt. Kinabalu, in a dormitory room which luckily was not full.  So the problem was less the other people ... [Continue reading this entry]

On my way up the mountain today, I saw a body going down the other way.  Wrapped in plastic bags, on a makeshift stretcher and carried by four porters.  How is that for a wake up call? Especially when you consider ... [Continue reading this entry]

The flight from Brunei to Kota Kinabalu, in the north-east Malaysian part of Borneo, was relatively uneventful (okay, there was some heavy turbulence that had me  wondering exactly how reliable Royal Brunei Airlines is – I mean, an airline company ... [Continue reading this entry]

Brunei Darussalam, the complete name of the country I'm currently visiting, translates to the title of this post.  And in many ways, lives up to it.  Whether walking along the waterfront, watching and waving to the water taxis zipping past, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Finally I arrived, a mere 3 ½ hours later than planned (thanks a lot, mister VIP).  Only 1 day in Brunei so this robbed me of 15% of my time!  Part of travel though: take it as it comes and ... [Continue reading this entry]