After some much needed R&R at the Mayfair Hotel in Sandakan, it was time to head off for our next adventure in Semporna. Semporna isn't much of a city, but what's special about it is that off it's shoreline, lies one of the most beautiful dive sites in the world called Sipadan. Sipadan is an island that is heavily protected and only 120 people are allowed to dive a day.
To warm up for our dive to Sipadan, we signed up for for diving on one of the other islands with a company called Scuba Junkie. Scuba Junkie was in our guidebooks and was one of the only dive shops that showed up on google for the area. They had reasonable prices and the dive site sounded pretty sweet too.
The next morning we woke up bright and early for our dive at Mataking Island which is about 1.5 hours away. Before we even got to dive we were having equipment difficulties. Joeys regulator (for those of you non divers: breathing apparatus) was not working very well because the air gauge needle kept on bobbing up and down everytime he took a breath, which means it's broken. Mine seemed fine on the boat but half way through our dive, mine started to do the exact same thing. Luckily it didn't cause any complications. A problem like this isn't necessarily catastrophic, but with diving it is always best to be on the side of caution.
Our first dive was pretty cool. More so of a drift dive. The cool thing about Mataking is that most of the things you are looking for are micro. So the entire time we looked for things like shrimp, frog fish, and nudi branches. Joey and I are all about finding big stuff. The little things could interest us less, but it was still diving and we had a great time. Our guide was very knowledgeable and passionate about the little things.
That night we rested up for our big day at Sipadan. We had to move hotels because Scuba Junkie had no more room. We moved to Borneo Global Backpackers, which was the company we were gonna be diving with for Sipadan. This whole trip Joey and I have been able to avoid dorms, unfortunately this time to save money (cuz Sipidan was prettttty expensive) we decided to stick it out in a dorm. LUCKILY there was only one other person in our 8 person dorm, it was a french girl who was very quiet! We were so happy.
The next morning we set out for Sipidan. We were sort of scared because the people diving with us looked like pros. It was a couple, and the guy actually turned out to be an instructor in Australia. Joey and I both had a sigh of relief when we found out his girlfriend only had a few more dives than us. We are still really bad on sucking up our air quickly, and there was no way that we wanted to ruin another person's Sipidan experience by having to come up early.
Our guide that morning said he had saw a group of hammerhead sharks about 100 metres away from the reef, so that is where we set off. In Sipidan the aim of the game is to look for more macro animals such as sharks, but the reef itself is amazing in itself. Unfortunately we did not run into any hammerheads, but we did see lots of white tip reef sharks. Whoop de doo... We've already seen lots of them. The cool thing about Sipidan was that they were EVERYWHERE. After our 3 dives, I bet we saw atleast 30 white tip reef sharks.
For our last dive we went to Turtle Tomb. The dive site is basically a huge reef drop off that goes down 600 metres. We only went to about 25 metres in total, but there was nothing beyond that anyways. The reef wall was absolutely beautiful covered in soft and hard corals of all different colours. There were all different types of tropical fish as well. One of the highlights of the dive was going into a cave they call Turtle Tomb. Sadly, turtles sometimes swim in there and can't find their way out and then they die :( I am glad we didn't see any turtle skeletons. It would have made me sad because I LOVE LOVE LOVE sea turtles.
The next day, Joey and I were exhausted after 2 full days of diving. There was a big festival going on in Semporna. It was a boat festival with lots of beautiful coloured boats in the harbour. We were both amazed at how many people were at the festival in the streets. You could barely get anywhere. What used to be a 2 minute walk turned into 20 minutes. What annoyed me most was the fact a lot of woman had umbrellas to cover themselves from the sun. Normally a woman walking down an uncrowded street with an umbrella is perfectly fine, but when the streets are packed with vendors and thousands of people, an umbrella is not a wise choice, especially when every woman does it. There were many times I feared for the safety of my eyes. There's this new invention called sunscreen, maybe you should try it sometime. Both Joey and I found the festival quite intense because of the sheer volume of people. Another thing we experienced in Borneo was that everyone just stares at you forever. Peninsular Malaysia was fine for this because I guess they are used to seeing white people, but in Borneo it edged on the side of ridiculousness.
Joey and I barricaded ourselves in the room for most of the days because it was too hot and crazy outside during the festival. We were glad to leave Semporna on a night bus. Malaysia is known for it's plush overnight buses. This bus was no exception except the windows were all smashed in and kept together with black saran wrap. Very safe... The driver blared Pitbull, Lady Gaga and Beyonce all night, until I got Joey to tell him to turn it down. When the driver did, the people around us didn't like this. They decided to torture us with their cellphones on speakerphone, and listening to their craptastic music full volume. Don't try to take music away from South East Asians, it won't end well.
Finally Joey and I got some shut eye... we were abruptly woken up by the guy behind Joey puking into a barf bag about half a foot away from Joey's face. I was glad to learn that we were very close to our destination of Kota Kinabalu.
When we arrived to KK, we headed to Borneo Global Backpackers to see if we could rent a room for 5 hours to get some much needed sleep. We were very thankful that they gave us a discounted rate so we could get some shut eye! Later that day we walked around KK, just waiting for our flight to Manila. On to our last country!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Beautiful Borneo! Part 1
We flew to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah on the Malaysian side of Borneo. Kota Kinabalu was a cute little city on the water. We were picked up by our hotel, which is so nice getting of a flight and seeing that someone is holding a sign with your name on it. It's not nearly as good as being greeted by friends and family, but it's still pretty sweet!
Our room was nothing special at Borneo Global Backpackers, but the staff were really awesome and helpful. Joey and I had tried to book a dive at Sipadan (For those of you who don't know it's one of the top dive sites in the WORLD) but were unable to with a couple of dive companies who were fully booked up. Sipadan was a victim of dynamite and cyanide fishing, so now it is heavily protect and is only allowed to have 120 divers a day. This books up pretty fast. We were so so so happy when we found out that the hostel who has a dive company at Sipadan had space available! Despite it being expensive, we were totally stoked.
A couple of other things we wanted to do while we were in Sabah was climb Mt. Kinabalu and see Probiscis monkeys. One thing that really sucked about Sabah was that EVERYTHING we wanted to do, had to be booked through some package tour. Every package tour Joey and I have ever booked on this trip has been not very good, and in general, are way way more expensive than doing it yourself. Climbing Mt. Kinabalu was out of the question when we learned it would cost us $300 CDN each. That's a lot of money for a 1.5 day climb up a stair case.
After a couple of days of enjoying the amazing seafood and friendly people of Kota Kinabalu we headed off to a city called Sandakan. Sandakan itself, has absolutely nothing to offer. It's the orangutan and probiscis monkey sanctuaries in the surrounding areas that are the prime sights. We were happy to stay in Sandakan because we found an amazing hotel for a reasonable price. The place was called Mayfair Hotel, and it wasn't spectacular looking but it was so clean. The highlight was the big screen plasma screen in our room, and the thousands of dvds in the lobby free for our viewing. All Joey and I wanted to do was veg out for a couple of days and do nothing! Which is exactly what we did.
The guy running the Mayfair was hilarious, in a non funny way. He was such a serious Chinese guy, but would say the funniest things with the straightest face. His gruff and rude demeanor made him likeable. Who would have thought? He also knew everything there was to know about Sandakan and the surrounding area. Great for asking questions.
One of the days in Sandakan we decided to go see the Probiscis monkey sanctuary. For those of you who don't know what it is, google it, and I'm sure you will be chuckling in no time. These monkeys are very very funny to look at. When we got to the sanctuary we were a bit disappointed to see that these monkeys were living in such a small area of jungle. A lot of Borneo is covered in Palm tree plantations for the making of palm oil. It's not what you would expect in a place with such a reputation for beautiful forests and unique animal species. It was actually quite depressing to have driven an hour and only seen plantations. Miles upon miles of palm trees.
The sanctuary was quite small, and there weren't trails to walk around, so we just waited until the monkeys came for their feeding at 11am. You could tell a lot of monkeys knew exactly what time it was because you could see them lingering in the trees nearby. When the food was down on the platform they came running. You could see that the monkeys had distinct families because different groups would wait their turn for different platforms. You could also tell who was boss. The bigger the nose, the more dominant the male. They also liked to announce they were coming with slamming of fists and big jumpy actions on to the platforms. The lower caste monkeys hid under the platforms hoping to get some scrapes! After the feeding we were transported to a resort for lunch, which was rather uneventful. The food was crap and overly priced. We had to wait around 2 hours for the next feeding.
The next feeding was similar to the first. Both of us were getting a bit bored, but were soon fascinated by these little fish who live in the puddles near the sanctuary, called Mudskippers. They can actually sort of walk around on the mud and can live through the dry season in holes they dig for themselves. They were actually quite cute! After the second feeding we headed home to watch some more dvds!
Our room was nothing special at Borneo Global Backpackers, but the staff were really awesome and helpful. Joey and I had tried to book a dive at Sipadan (For those of you who don't know it's one of the top dive sites in the WORLD) but were unable to with a couple of dive companies who were fully booked up. Sipadan was a victim of dynamite and cyanide fishing, so now it is heavily protect and is only allowed to have 120 divers a day. This books up pretty fast. We were so so so happy when we found out that the hostel who has a dive company at Sipadan had space available! Despite it being expensive, we were totally stoked.
A couple of other things we wanted to do while we were in Sabah was climb Mt. Kinabalu and see Probiscis monkeys. One thing that really sucked about Sabah was that EVERYTHING we wanted to do, had to be booked through some package tour. Every package tour Joey and I have ever booked on this trip has been not very good, and in general, are way way more expensive than doing it yourself. Climbing Mt. Kinabalu was out of the question when we learned it would cost us $300 CDN each. That's a lot of money for a 1.5 day climb up a stair case.
After a couple of days of enjoying the amazing seafood and friendly people of Kota Kinabalu we headed off to a city called Sandakan. Sandakan itself, has absolutely nothing to offer. It's the orangutan and probiscis monkey sanctuaries in the surrounding areas that are the prime sights. We were happy to stay in Sandakan because we found an amazing hotel for a reasonable price. The place was called Mayfair Hotel, and it wasn't spectacular looking but it was so clean. The highlight was the big screen plasma screen in our room, and the thousands of dvds in the lobby free for our viewing. All Joey and I wanted to do was veg out for a couple of days and do nothing! Which is exactly what we did.
The guy running the Mayfair was hilarious, in a non funny way. He was such a serious Chinese guy, but would say the funniest things with the straightest face. His gruff and rude demeanor made him likeable. Who would have thought? He also knew everything there was to know about Sandakan and the surrounding area. Great for asking questions.
One of the days in Sandakan we decided to go see the Probiscis monkey sanctuary. For those of you who don't know what it is, google it, and I'm sure you will be chuckling in no time. These monkeys are very very funny to look at. When we got to the sanctuary we were a bit disappointed to see that these monkeys were living in such a small area of jungle. A lot of Borneo is covered in Palm tree plantations for the making of palm oil. It's not what you would expect in a place with such a reputation for beautiful forests and unique animal species. It was actually quite depressing to have driven an hour and only seen plantations. Miles upon miles of palm trees.
The sanctuary was quite small, and there weren't trails to walk around, so we just waited until the monkeys came for their feeding at 11am. You could tell a lot of monkeys knew exactly what time it was because you could see them lingering in the trees nearby. When the food was down on the platform they came running. You could see that the monkeys had distinct families because different groups would wait their turn for different platforms. You could also tell who was boss. The bigger the nose, the more dominant the male. They also liked to announce they were coming with slamming of fists and big jumpy actions on to the platforms. The lower caste monkeys hid under the platforms hoping to get some scrapes! After the feeding we were transported to a resort for lunch, which was rather uneventful. The food was crap and overly priced. We had to wait around 2 hours for the next feeding.
The next feeding was similar to the first. Both of us were getting a bit bored, but were soon fascinated by these little fish who live in the puddles near the sanctuary, called Mudskippers. They can actually sort of walk around on the mud and can live through the dry season in holes they dig for themselves. They were actually quite cute! After the second feeding we headed home to watch some more dvds!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)