Access to Sipadan from Kota Kinabalu

[dm_junkie]

Hi,

I would highly recommend you do your diving in the Miri or western part of KK where it is much closer and you would also have the chance to travel w/o flying and join your wife.

Cannot recall which are the operators but definitely, the type of dives may or may not be comparable to Sipadan but it sure is a different kind of diving. You can consider some nice wrecks coral gardens..etc.

Check with your KK hotel/motel; think they should have a clear picture of what you can do over there.

Cheerios!

 

[JonnieB]

i just dived kk a couple weeks ago (haven't finished trip report yet). the marine park offshore is nothing compared to sipadan (but what is). it is definitely worth diving however (i went specifically to dive there). vis is anywhere from nil-10/15 meters depending on the site but if you like macro/unusual critters it's great. not much big stuff however. lots of nuddies, some eels, and stonefish and devilfish (yikes). Lots of hard corals and some soft at certain sites.

whale sharks are there now and a group saw 5-6 the week i was there. they come in around feb/mar/april with the plankton bloom. that's why the vis is also low now. water temps are also cold at 25-26c so 5 mm, boots and gloves help.

spending surface breaks on sapi island is great...good food and nice beach to relax on (wife should love it...beats most hotel pools.

i dived with sabah divers (wisma sabah building) and recommend them. dive leaders are good at spotting stuff (ask for nevile or the spanish guy (sorry forgot your name dude). at sabah divers, ask for peggy in the office...she can arrange discount dive safaris to Sipadan for you.

 

[tzeyap]

You have another option to fly to Labuan and dive the wrecks there. This will mean you do not have to fly to Tawau and go thru the land trip to Semporna before boarding the boat to dive Sipadan. A 2 night trip will allow a full day's diving and possibly time for some duty free shopping. Borneo divers in KK should be able to help you explore that option.

 

[mister_potato_head]

We fly into KK this Thursday, my wife is a non diver, we've looked at various options so far and plan is to catch up with a dive operator locally with a view to doing a couple of boat based days diving. There appears to be a fair variety of sites around Kota Kinabalu, i found this link which may be of interest. (http://www.ne.jp/asahi/masashi/watanabe/kk/kkel.htm)

There is another possibility which we are looking at, we're considering flying to Sandakan for a few days, there appear various things to do over there, visit Seplilok Orang Utan sanctuary then boat out to Libaran / Sellingan "Turtle Island". The snorkelling is well reported as being great, so I'm hopeful there will be an operator doing Scuba on the islands too. Malaysian airlines flights timetable seems well suited to a 2/3 day trip. I hear Lankayan reef is not too far away and a location which atracts the whale sharks. The pain is trying to get enough info to arrange independantly, Borneo seems to only function via set tour operators, still we are hopeful a local mobile phone will help. Still various companies cover the common elements, just miss any diving out :-(

Looking at JonnieB's post Sabah Divers sounds like a decent enough outfit, and the possibility of whale sharks sounds great, we expected them to have passed on by already so this is a real bonus.