I'm back from a marvellous holiday! Hubby and I went for a 6 days/5 nights holiday. The first and last days were spent travelling and the days in between were purely; eat, sleep and dive! Every single day was soaked in sunshine (only the last morning of diving was a little cloudy) and the beautiful, clear, turquoise sea and white sand beaches were cliched perfection!
Ahhhh... just remembering the tranquility of the seaside invokes an inner calm... (I'll need this memory to get me through the more stressful days to come!)
Oh well, anyway, we first took the plane to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Since we had some time to kill before the following flight to Tawau, we went to Central Point, the most common taxi stop downtown; it is a large shopping mall. There were a few things we needed to purchase, like rechargeable batteries for the camera strobe, and antibiotics for Hubby's sore throat (upper respiratory tract infections are a no-no for diving; nose blocked = ears blocked = no diving).
So, we got our stuff, had a yummy duck rice lunch and headed to the airport. When we reached Tawau, there was transportation ready for the almost 2hr drive to Semporna, the seaside town from which you need to take a boat to get to the much fabled Sipadan Island! (FYI: Barracuda Point, a dive site at Sipadan Island was voted the 3rd best dive site in the whole wide world!!) *beaming with pride*
Okay, so where were we... yes, we spent a night at Seafest Hotel, Semporna. In the evening, we explored the area and found a small fish market behind the hotel. The fishing boats unloaded directly there and the fish could not have been fresher! It was so fresh that there was no fishy smell at all! Every fish market I've been to in my life has a smell that makes kid no.3 gag!
Hubby was over the moon! (He's a seafood junkie!) He's the only person I know who can get hungry looking at live/dead fish!! Crazy... I like Kentucky Fried Chicken, but my stomach doesn't growl when I see live chickens running around!! He drools over fish at a fish market like I swoon at the sight of trays of beautiful hand crafted chocolates!!
So anyway, that night we had some seafood (of course) at the hotel balcony overlooking the sea. The food wasn't excellent, to say the least, but the glorious view and the wonderful beach bum, laid-back atmosphere was first class. Only the huge brown rat which ran across the floor was a little disconcerting...
There were three ladies, including one who looked pretty old, rowing up and down quite a few times while we were having our meal. I still wonder what they were doing... their equivalent of an evening walk perhaps? But it looked like quite a bit of an effort to me, not leisurely at all... Most probably rowing at that speed is as normal and easy for them as a stroll is for us? Hmm... I think the old lady is in better shape than me!
The Seafest Hotel is rated 3 stars and was quite comfortable. The rates are reasonable, starting from the standard room which we got, at RM95. Breakfast was another RM18 per person for a simple buffet spread. Initially, they assigned us a room at the smoking floor without asking us first! The room really stank and luckily there were other rooms available for us when we asked to change.
The next morning, we were taken by boat to Seaventures Dive Rig. It was around 45 minutes out from Semporna and is right in front of Mabul Island, another excellent diving spot. Seaventures would be our home for the next 4 days and 3 nights of 'eat, sleep, dive'!
The structure used to be an oil rig and I was wondering if there was any oil there, off Semporna! One of our fellow divers later pointed out that the rig was actually imported all the way from Singapore!
So, we were practically living on the sea! Marvellous eh? The water was so clear and you could see fishes frolicking about. The rig also overlooked Mabul Island with it's pristine beaches. All this and throw in the clear, blue sky... we were in paradise!
The only thing was, you have to remember that this place used to be an oil rig with oil rig quarters, and not a hotel. So, the rooms were a bit small and beat up, but we weren't too bothered, because we would not be spending much time in it, not with paradise just outside the door!
My 'favouritest' thing about that place was the platform lift. They have a platform which brings people and cargo up and down from the water to the rig floor. When we did house dives (diving under the rig), all we had to do was get suited up, get on the platform, and they would ease us down right into the sea! The platform would go a bit below the water level and we could just slide into the sea. No need to jump or back-roll off a boat! Getting back up onto the platform was just as easy! No need to haul yourself up a boat with heavy equipment after a tiring dive! What joy!
I chose Seaventures because after calling a few resorts, I found that they were the only ones who would guarantee me 2 days (6 dives) of diving at Sipadan Island. I had read a lot of complaints, on the internet, from divers who, after coming all the way from other countries, found that they could not dive at Sipadan at all because their dive operators failed to obtain permits for them!
Sipadan is a national park and visitors are limited to 120 people a day. You are required to apply for a permit if you want to go to the island. The whole point of the trip is to dive at Sipadan, so even though there were many other more luxurious resorts, I chose to stick with Seaventures, because of this permit issue. Most people would be happy to get just one day at Sipadan, but since Hubby and I did not go in a big group and the occupancy was low at the time of our stay, 2 days was not a problem. In fact, we could have gone for another day before we left, but we decided instead to visit Kapalai Island where we could take more underwater macro photographs. So, Seaventures it was.
Thus our diving spree of 13 dives over 4 days began. 'Eat, Sleep, Dive' will be detailed in the next post...
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