Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Sipadan, Mabul, Tawau
Indonesia: Manado, Bunaken, Lembeh Straits
We made our way back to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where we stayed for a couple of nights before flying to the city of Tawau on the island of Borneo. We travelled by van to Semporna, then by speed boat to Seaventures which lay just off the island of Mabul. Seaventures is a oil platform converted into a dive resort, when we arrived we were brought up to the platform by a elevator that went down into the sea, and it was also used to transport divers for housereef diving and to the boats.
Seaventures is no luxury place, it was an old oil rig and the rooms were small and fairly comfortable, but with the sound of a generator in the background at all times. Otherwise there was Internet, a videographer, good food, a sun deck and a well equipped dive shop. It was very social here as we all had lunch and dinner together, and we met some interesting people so we had a lot of fun sharing travel and dive stories. Before I get into the details of the diving I will have to boast a bit, on the fourth day I was diving West Ridge on Sipadan and I was trailing along in the back as always, I looked back, and couldn't believe what I was seeing, a WHALE SHARK cruising along right towards me, it took a little bit, but the other divers finally noticed my discovery. What a surprise, we were ecstatic with joy and could not wait to get back to Seaventures and tell the others, only to be met by scepticism until I showed them the video and they believed it.
Jorunn was less lucky with her snorkelling on the same trip, being attacked by a triggerfish. No harm done, she managed to use her fins for protection, but still not too fun. Snorkelling on Sipadan is actually really, really good, most of the time you get to see the same sharks, turtles and big schools of fish as you do diving. But you miss out on the small stuff, though.
I dived several places like Malbul, Sipadan and Kapalai and found the diving fantastic and could not believe how many things there were to see, big things, small things and strange things so here is a small taste of what we saw: whale shark, 10+ turtles on most dives at Sipadan, 10+sharks on most dives at Sipadan, crocodilefish, pygmy seahorse, 30+ humphead parrot fish, giant barracuda, cockatoo leaffish, napoleon wrasse, garden eels, hairy squat lobster, ghostpipefish, octopus, frogfish (many types), ribbon eel, devil scorpionfish, robust ghostpipefish, school of 100+ Chevron barracuda, school of 300+ trevally, loads of flatworms and nudibranch and lot's more. Dive sites at Sipadan: South point, barracuda point, staghorn crest, west ridge, midreef. Mabul: Old house reef, paradise 2, seaventures, no lobster wall. Kapalai: gurnard point and mandarin valley.
Seaventures is a bit of a special place, noisy, but beautifully situated raised above the sea with a good view of the surroundings, a fresh breeze so it does not get hot, fantastic sunsets and so peaceful when you sit on the back deck and watch million of stars above you and the beauty of the sea moving below you. Sad to say it was time to move on, we once again flew to KL where we rested and enjoyed the pulse of city life after being so isolated.
We are off to Manado, then on to Bunaken where we had been a couple of times before but always enjoyed the diving and the people there. First we had to overnight on Bali, due to the late fight and also we were coming back to dive, so we took a early flight in the morning and arrived on Bunaken in the afternoon. I will not write about our stay at Froggies as we have been here before and we enjoyed our visit immensely, however I will write down the dive site we dived but not the fish we saw, for more information just check on the older trips on this web site.
The dive sites were: Mike's point, Muka Kampung, Sachiko's point, Raymond's point, Panalingan, Fukui, Likuan 1 and 2, Mandolin, Tanjung Pisok and Tengah. As always Froggies was very social, with the staff and other guests.
Our next destination was across the upper part of Sulawesi, the Lembeh straits. We were picked up at the dock at Manado by the owner of Divers Lodge Lembeh, it was raining heavily most of the trip but it had stopped by the time we reached the other side of the island so we had a dry trip to the island of Lembeh. The dive lodge was on a hill, there were quite a few steps to get the restaurant where we received a cool drink, soon we found out that bungalow was at the very top of the hill, another 100+ steps, oh well, when we finally got to the top it was worth it as the view was great and the room also had the same great view. Also Jorunn was lucky enough to spot a civet (a small mammal that looks like a big cat) at one occasion. We also saw tarsiers in their favorite tree by the beach.
Video of a wonderpus:
Sadly we would have to walk these steps a lot in the week we spent here, otherwise the food was good, there were plenty of DVDs and books, and we met some nice people to talk to. The ones we got along with the best with were some girls. The others were in their own little world and would ignore us for the most part (not very friendly at all). We had a very fun momemt watching some underwater video that looked quite kinky, and the person who had filmed it didn't seem to realize what her film reminded of. Even with all all the diving we did take time out and take a canoe out for a spin, no swimming due to dangerous jellyfish, and got see to see a little of the southern part of the island. I almost forgot, we also took a long walk in the area around the lodge which was very hot, with lot's of big spiders and great lookout points that looks out over the clear blue water and coral reefs to the south of us.
Now for the diving, Lembeh is one of the stranger dive areas as there is black sand everywhere, a fair bit of pollution from the local ship building industry, and the locals dumping garbage, even with all this the amount, variety and strangeness of the creatures that live there make the diving here amazing. Here's the list of the dive sites: 2x Police pier, Teluk kembahu 3, Nudi retreat, Hairball 1, 2x Tanduk rusa, Air prang and Nudi falls. I will only mention some of the thing we saw as there were all to many to name, here are some of the special things: 2x mimic octopus (see video), wonderpus, decorater crab, black hairy frogfish, gold hairy frogfish, stonefish, lot's of different types of frogfish (big and small), harlequin ghostpipefish, mantis shrimp, seahorses, 5x Pegaus sea moth, octopus in a coconut, blueringed octopus, flamboyant cuttlefish, crabs, shrimps, and over 100 nudibranch.
All I can say is that this is a fantastic place to dive and the varity of underwater life is amazing and well worth the trip and we would recommend it for those divers with good buoyancy (this is very important as the sand is very fine and most divers will kick up sand and there goes the visibility). It also helps to have a love of strange creatures!!!
Here is a story that I think you might find interesting: before we arrived in Manado there had been some bombing of other religions in the area and they found out that it was Muslims from another island that were there to make trouble, in the north they found the solution: Muslims had to protect the churces and the Christians had to protect the mosques. Now this worked out very well as both sides wanted peace and no one wanted the police and military on there necks, at the same time people were to watch out for strangers in town and as it happen they did find a couple of strangers with no reason to be there and they were put on the next plane south and there was no trouble. This is very typical of northern Sulawesi, the tribes banded together in troubled times as in the old days and were never conquered by the south.
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