.Mabul Island - Sipadan Water Village.
Finally, the day is here. I'll be off to KK tonight. And tomorrow i'll be soaking in the crystal clear waters of Mabul Island. Angel found out that we're staying at the cottage right next to the Dive Centre where you go off to do free shore dives, and she said "seems like we can just jump of our room and into the sea!" Muhuuhuu. I can just imagine falling asleep to the sound of the lapping waves and waking up to a panorama of water.We've planned to do a minimum of 5 dives a day for 4 days and simply relax on our 5th and last day. I've yet to set foot there and i already feel a tinge of sadness thinking about leaving the island. Besides all the amazing underwater creatures we're going to see, we're hoping to bump into marine biologist, Alexander Mustard, who is now a full-time professional underwater photographer... who happened to be in Sipadan on a Marine Wildlife Group Trip during our period of stay but is based at Sipadan-Kapalai resort! Sigh..
Some of the creatures i want/have to see during this trip:
- Turtles, not just one but 20-30 of them at one single dive site
- Thousands of barracudas and jacks swirling, so i can get a tornado shot
- Fish porn at sunset, the beautiful mandarinfish mating.. the male is said to change partner every few seconds
- Blue-ringed octopus
- Pygmy seahorse!
- Crocodilefish
- All sorts of nudibranchs
- Napolean wrasse
- Bumphead Parrotfish at sunrise
- Hammerhead shark, if we really get lucky
- Whaleshark, that the DM saw while he was snorkelling :/
- Seamoths
- Flambouyant cuttlefish
- Ghost pipefish
I'll definitely post some pictures up when i'm there! Toodles...
Btw, Caryn just saw 30 devil rays during her 1st dive at Layang-Layang, the home of hammerhead sharks, yesterday!
3 comments:
Hi there, I want to know how many day you stay at sipadan. and how much overall the cost for this trip..I found it so interesting. I'm really interested to go there, hopefully by this end Dec 2008.
Hi, I was in Sipadan for 6 days, the cost for diving, transport and accomodation (exluding airfare) adds up to 1.5K BND. Airfare from Brunei-KK varies around 150-200BND. You will probably do one or two night stay in KK and cost varies depending where you stay.
So the whole trip costs me about 2k.
I stayed at Sipadan Water Village, which is a pretty good choice because right off the jetty, you get to do unlimited shore dives at Mabul's house reefs. There are other cheaper alternatives such as Borneo Divers resort and Uncle Chang's Resort which is situated in Mabul island itself. Try inquire different operators to gauge what is the current market price. If you read this in time, you should check out the Mall this weekend. There's a Kota Kinababalu tour fair going on, where will be offering competitive dive packages to Sipadan.
You will enjoy Sipadan =) However, do make sure the weather is good when you go in December. You need good visibility to truly admire Sipadan.
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