After 2 hellish days traveling and spending far too much time in airports (We don't recommend a night at Chateau Changi Airport Budget Terminal), we arrived here in Semporna excited to dive again. Semporna is the base for dives to Sipadan, supposedly one of the best dive sites in the world. What we didn't know is that only 120 permits a day are given out. Needless to say, our spur of the moment trip here did not qualify for 2 of the sought after permits! Fortunately the diving on the other islands is also very good.
We signed up with Dive Junkie and yesterday (Thursday) we were on a boat at 8:15am headed to the island of Mabul. Our 1st dive was not great, it was an artificial reef, cool to see but just not the same. (Jen's note- out of sight, out of mind. that dive was just terrible. Oli is being optomistic) Fortunately our 2nd and 3rd dives were very good (aka- ok. we have been spoiled in the past and we are just realizing it now) and we saw a wide variety of fantastic marine life. We were shattered by the end of the day and barely made it out for dinner before we retired to bed.
Today we boarded the boat again for more fun, this time to Sibuan. We arrived to a picture perfect, tiny little island in the middle of the ocean and descended into the depths. (This is where many gypsies live, of all origins, hiding from the law and civilization.) More good diving but I was wrought with problems - both my primary and alternate regulators were leaking, every breath was accompanied by a mouthful of salt water & my mask was both fogging and leaking! What can you do?! To top it all off, about halfway through the dive there was a thunderous bang, we could feel it in our ribs..... looking around showed that we were all OK and nobody's tank had exploded but we were a little perplexed. Turns out that there were some sea-gypsies close by who were dynamite fishing!!!
With a new reg. and a quick look around for fishermen we went on our 2nd dive we saw more great stuff, or not, as my mask was still playing up. What I did see was great! Our 3rd dive, all problems fixed, was wonderful, a great way to finish off our diving before Thailand after we are in California.
We leave tomorrow at 7:30am on a bus for Sepilok and our jungle excursion, we can't wait, it will really feel like Borneo then.
We will upload pix after that, hopefully when we are in Kota Kinabalu.
Cali in 2 weeks!!!!
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2 comments:
I know it's ridiculous to say I'm jealous of your journeys while sitting on a beach from the French riviera, but I am. Have fun and have a Double Double for me when you get back to Cali!
Oh my god you enarly got blown up, so scary! x
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