So having attended Wilson's wedding at Tawau, we then stated our second leg of the holiday, being our holiday at Sipadan. We would be staying at the Sipadan Water Village located on Mabul Island. Sipadan Island itself, which is a tiny island, no longer has any resorts and the resorts tend to be located on the nearby islands of Kapalai and Mabul.
The divers were going to be there from Sunday - Wednesday, squeezing in dives on Sunday afternoon itself, and then for the full days of Monday and Tuesdays. All the pictures here are courtesy of Yue, who lugged along his digital SLR camera as well as another camera with an underwater casing.
We were first of all blown away by how nice the Sipadan Water Village was. It was water chalets, perched on top of clear blue waters. No air conditioning in the rooms, but who wants to turn on the air-con when you have all that sea breeze.
The entire place runs like clockwork. Upon arrival, you get a briefing on the meal times, and snorkelling times for the non-divers and for the divers, the diving arrangements. They then plan your itinerary depending on how many dive days you are doing, as well as when you are flying. No diving 24 hours before flying.
We quickly meet at the dive centre, which is going to be our often-frequented place for the next few days. The organisation there is also top-notch and you get really spoilt. You get all your gear, and they prepare lockers for you to store your gear at the end of the day. The staff will locate your gear for you and set everything up on the boat and you just need to jump into the boat for your boat dives.
We also get a lengthy briefing on the safety requirements for that dive centre and an instructor takes us for a check-out dive first just for him to assess our skills. They don't take it for granted, which is a good thing. Based on that assessment, the dive masters will know whether they need to look out for you more or not for the dives ahead.
So over the next few days, we clock in a total of 9 dives, 6 of which are on Sipadan island. There is no guarantee that you can dive at Sipadan as the Sabah government limits the number of entries to 120 per day only. So it's almost like a lottery whether you get to dive there, but the surrounding islands of Mabul and Kapalai have great dive sites as well. We were lucky to get 2 full dive days on Monday and Tuesday over at Sipadan.
All of us got used to diving again real quick, and the incredible thing about diving at Sipadan is the seabed. You can never see one. A lot of the dive sites there has a shallow bottom nearer to the island, and then it suddenly plunges downwards like a cliff underwater. It's just a wall dive and you have to be comfortable maintaining your buoyancy and not drop too deep.
Some of the sights we saw included the following:
Ugly frog fish. This was quite a special sight and the divemaster pointed it out to us excitedly. It just remained solid as a rock in the water, ignoring our presence as we swam by.
Giant cuttlefish. Quite a stony like exterior so not easy to spot on the sea bed. All these sights were seen at Mabul where we did our first Sunday afternoon dive.
We of course saw lots of sharks and turtles. The sharks were of the reef shark variety, so they weren't very big and they aren't aggressive. They tend to swim away whenever we approach. My dive instructor from my Open Water at Tioman had told me that sharks get scared away by the bubbles of our regulator.
Camera shy turtle, and me not so camera shy
One of the more breath-taking experiences was at Barrucuda Point at Sipadan. We were swimming and then I noticed a dark mass ahead of us, it looked almost like a wall, due to its big opaque size. As we swam closer, I then realised it was a huge school of barrucudas! There were hundreds of them!
Barracudas are predatory fish, but we swam real close to them and my jaw was just left hanging at the sight of them. At that dive at Barracuda Point, we saw three different shoals of barracudas. They swim and swirl together as one in the water, circling and shifting, hundreds of fish moving in one stream. Amazing.
The next day at Sipadan, our divemaster spotted a school of bump head parrot fish. We excitedly dive into the water, where we hope the currents will bring the school towards us. We slowly spot the slow-moving school of bump heads. While the barracudas had darted and sliced through the water, the bump heads moved leisurely through the water. The school spotted us and then they slowly came to a halt and gathered closer together, but they didn't seem spooked by us.
As the school just hovered there in the water, it provided another good picture opportunity. This is May at the back of the school, posing with the bump heads.
Whne diving at Sipadan, we would clock in 3 dives a day, two in the morning, and one in the afternoon. The boat would take us out in the morning, and in between each dive, we would have to head to the beach on Sipadan island to clock in enough surface interval to clear the nitrogen from our blood. We would spend around an hour on the beach, eating snacks, drinking water and catching some sun before we head back for our next dive.
The divers and the snorkellers on Sipadan island
One afternoon where a storm was brewing
The small Sipadan island. What treasures it holds in its hidden waters
More pictures of us underwater:
Oh you meant scuba diving, not sky diving
What an experience over at Sipadan. And on Wednesday, we had to bid goodbye to Sipadan Water Village and head back to Tawau. We definitely want to come back to dive at Sipadan again, and Sipadan Water Village is such a great place to stay at.
The divers were going to be there from Sunday - Wednesday, squeezing in dives on Sunday afternoon itself, and then for the full days of Monday and Tuesdays. All the pictures here are courtesy of Yue, who lugged along his digital SLR camera as well as another camera with an underwater casing.
We were first of all blown away by how nice the Sipadan Water Village was. It was water chalets, perched on top of clear blue waters. No air conditioning in the rooms, but who wants to turn on the air-con when you have all that sea breeze.
The entire place runs like clockwork. Upon arrival, you get a briefing on the meal times, and snorkelling times for the non-divers and for the divers, the diving arrangements. They then plan your itinerary depending on how many dive days you are doing, as well as when you are flying. No diving 24 hours before flying.
We quickly meet at the dive centre, which is going to be our often-frequented place for the next few days. The organisation there is also top-notch and you get really spoilt. You get all your gear, and they prepare lockers for you to store your gear at the end of the day. The staff will locate your gear for you and set everything up on the boat and you just need to jump into the boat for your boat dives.
We also get a lengthy briefing on the safety requirements for that dive centre and an instructor takes us for a check-out dive first just for him to assess our skills. They don't take it for granted, which is a good thing. Based on that assessment, the dive masters will know whether they need to look out for you more or not for the dives ahead.
So over the next few days, we clock in a total of 9 dives, 6 of which are on Sipadan island. There is no guarantee that you can dive at Sipadan as the Sabah government limits the number of entries to 120 per day only. So it's almost like a lottery whether you get to dive there, but the surrounding islands of Mabul and Kapalai have great dive sites as well. We were lucky to get 2 full dive days on Monday and Tuesday over at Sipadan.
All of us got used to diving again real quick, and the incredible thing about diving at Sipadan is the seabed. You can never see one. A lot of the dive sites there has a shallow bottom nearer to the island, and then it suddenly plunges downwards like a cliff underwater. It's just a wall dive and you have to be comfortable maintaining your buoyancy and not drop too deep.
Some of the sights we saw included the following:
Ugly frog fish. This was quite a special sight and the divemaster pointed it out to us excitedly. It just remained solid as a rock in the water, ignoring our presence as we swam by.
Giant cuttlefish. Quite a stony like exterior so not easy to spot on the sea bed. All these sights were seen at Mabul where we did our first Sunday afternoon dive.
We of course saw lots of sharks and turtles. The sharks were of the reef shark variety, so they weren't very big and they aren't aggressive. They tend to swim away whenever we approach. My dive instructor from my Open Water at Tioman had told me that sharks get scared away by the bubbles of our regulator.
Camera shy turtle, and me not so camera shy
One of the more breath-taking experiences was at Barrucuda Point at Sipadan. We were swimming and then I noticed a dark mass ahead of us, it looked almost like a wall, due to its big opaque size. As we swam closer, I then realised it was a huge school of barrucudas! There were hundreds of them!
Barracudas are predatory fish, but we swam real close to them and my jaw was just left hanging at the sight of them. At that dive at Barracuda Point, we saw three different shoals of barracudas. They swim and swirl together as one in the water, circling and shifting, hundreds of fish moving in one stream. Amazing.
The next day at Sipadan, our divemaster spotted a school of bump head parrot fish. We excitedly dive into the water, where we hope the currents will bring the school towards us. We slowly spot the slow-moving school of bump heads. While the barracudas had darted and sliced through the water, the bump heads moved leisurely through the water. The school spotted us and then they slowly came to a halt and gathered closer together, but they didn't seem spooked by us.
As the school just hovered there in the water, it provided another good picture opportunity. This is May at the back of the school, posing with the bump heads.
Whne diving at Sipadan, we would clock in 3 dives a day, two in the morning, and one in the afternoon. The boat would take us out in the morning, and in between each dive, we would have to head to the beach on Sipadan island to clock in enough surface interval to clear the nitrogen from our blood. We would spend around an hour on the beach, eating snacks, drinking water and catching some sun before we head back for our next dive.
The divers and the snorkellers on Sipadan island
One afternoon where a storm was brewing
The small Sipadan island. What treasures it holds in its hidden waters
More pictures of us underwater:
Oh you meant scuba diving, not sky diving
What an experience over at Sipadan. And on Wednesday, we had to bid goodbye to Sipadan Water Village and head back to Tawau. We definitely want to come back to dive at Sipadan again, and Sipadan Water Village is such a great place to stay at.
2 comments:
lee shih! pics are gorgeous! im doing tioman in May, but i think i pales in comparison with Sipadan :(
Tioman is fun, lots of things to see as well. Just hope that visibility is good!
Sipadan is amazing lah, you really have to dive there. Now worried that anywhere else I dive, will just never be able to compare with Sipadan. And I wanna do cavern diving and wreck diving. But will have to do it after my Advanced.
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