Hi Folks,
My wife and I stayed at Kapalai Dive resort (also known as Sipadan-Kapalai-Dive-Resort SKDR) a few weeks back. (About Kapalai)
I thought i'd post some feedback with our diving experience during our stay.
Let me start by saying the resort is great, food is very good, staff are friendly, rooms are very clean and private. I plan to post more detail on the resort on tripadvisor
For this post ill focus on the diving - the good, bad and ugly.
The good - The dive operation is well run - caters for a full capacity of about 120 divers. This is a Recreational diving operation only. no deco/tech/nitrox available. George is the main guy in charge of operations has been with the resort for 14 years. He also manages the diving schedule.
The resort itself has a very nice house reef, they have gone to quite a lot of effort to build out the reef by sculling several vessels and houses at about 25M
In amongst the resort there is a lot of marine life - you dont need to go far to find stuff or big fish like giant cods (amongst the sunken houses) and puffer fish around 50cm. There's also a BIG turtle which camps about 10m down 20Min of finning south of the dive jetty. We found him on two night dives. We didnt find any of the legendary mandarin fish but lots of other stuff.
If you dont get to do a trip to Sipadan they usually take one/two boats out to Simali island in the morning - about 30 min boat trip north. It's nice coral gardens but they only really dive north of Simali island which is pretty small area. Other destinations they often take you to is Mabul - stingray city, more turtles there than sting ray. also dive at seaadventures or the 'oil rig', there is a lot of trash down there with crocodile fish and pygmy seahorses, a word of warning, its murky there usually with a current. There is some diving around kapalai - the southern end of the house reef and also kapalai rock. Also some diving between Kapalai and Mabul.
The DM's were OK but you really had to speak to them - they didn't make much of an effort to speak to you.
The bad - Everyone goes here to dive Sipadan. Our experience after staying for 9 diving days was 2.5 trips to Sipadan. When we arrived there were only 40 guests on the resort, folks were diving Sipadan at least every 2nd day. When we left an average of one trip every 4 days was the norm. They have about 16 licenses per day and they need to share that amongst up to 120+ divers. You can imagine the difficulties in doing this. They do purchase additional licenses from other operations like North Borneo and "AB" which is the registered name for SWV (i think). Typically they have 16 pple plus another 15-20 folks go every day. Depending on your assignment you could be waking up at 4:30am for 4 dives before lunch with Kapalai/AB. or 3 dives through lunch with NB. Sipadan is 20 min boat trip away, everyone who dives there must register on the island, the parks guy checks your name and nationality with the list of approved folks, if all is well your DM signs and the boat gets a dive flag which they display for your dives.
The ugly - My mask was stolen on the second day of diving - The dive team scoured every corner for my mask, to no avail. All divers get a basket to put your dive gear in at the end of the day - i'm pretty sure my mask was in there after my last dive. Most of the workers suggested that snorkelers from other resorts that visit the house reef and the resort during the day were probably the culprits. I'm not convinced because my last dive for the day ended at around 6:30pm. It's dark by then and most snorkelers have left. Having said that the day we left they had to chase down a boat of snorkelers because they forgot to return some masks and snorkels. The dive store did lend me a mask FOC - which didnt fit, so my DM lent me his mask for the following 7 days. the front office also lent me a mask.
We were off loaded from a boat destined for Sipadan due to poor paperwork/administration. On the second day of our trip they had purchased additional licenses for 3 dives at Sipadan from North Borneo divers.The night before we filled our our NB liability forms, gave them copies of our passport etc. Excited the following day we boarded the boat but was held up for a good 30 mins... We ended up being asked to get off the boat because our forms were not filled in completely. Not just ours, everyone from Kapalai - something we were not aware of - neither the office folks at Kapalai or NB picked it up until it was too late. the issues were little things like passport numbers not filled in (even though they had a copy of our passport). A tip for folks going. fill in EVERYTHING dont skip a thing.
We could hear and feel fish bombing when diving in the area. More in Kapalai / Simali than Sipadan but the sound and shock it sends through your body is something you dont want to feel when diving.
The great - we saw a juvenile whale shark at south point on our 3rd dive. That was something special.
If anyone would like any other details feel free to PM me!
Would I go back again? yes but in low season.
My wife and I stayed at Kapalai Dive resort (also known as Sipadan-Kapalai-Dive-Resort SKDR) a few weeks back. (About Kapalai)
I thought i'd post some feedback with our diving experience during our stay.
Let me start by saying the resort is great, food is very good, staff are friendly, rooms are very clean and private. I plan to post more detail on the resort on tripadvisor
For this post ill focus on the diving - the good, bad and ugly.
The good - The dive operation is well run - caters for a full capacity of about 120 divers. This is a Recreational diving operation only. no deco/tech/nitrox available. George is the main guy in charge of operations has been with the resort for 14 years. He also manages the diving schedule.
The resort itself has a very nice house reef, they have gone to quite a lot of effort to build out the reef by sculling several vessels and houses at about 25M
In amongst the resort there is a lot of marine life - you dont need to go far to find stuff or big fish like giant cods (amongst the sunken houses) and puffer fish around 50cm. There's also a BIG turtle which camps about 10m down 20Min of finning south of the dive jetty. We found him on two night dives. We didnt find any of the legendary mandarin fish but lots of other stuff.
If you dont get to do a trip to Sipadan they usually take one/two boats out to Simali island in the morning - about 30 min boat trip north. It's nice coral gardens but they only really dive north of Simali island which is pretty small area. Other destinations they often take you to is Mabul - stingray city, more turtles there than sting ray. also dive at seaadventures or the 'oil rig', there is a lot of trash down there with crocodile fish and pygmy seahorses, a word of warning, its murky there usually with a current. There is some diving around kapalai - the southern end of the house reef and also kapalai rock. Also some diving between Kapalai and Mabul.
The DM's were OK but you really had to speak to them - they didn't make much of an effort to speak to you.
The bad - Everyone goes here to dive Sipadan. Our experience after staying for 9 diving days was 2.5 trips to Sipadan. When we arrived there were only 40 guests on the resort, folks were diving Sipadan at least every 2nd day. When we left an average of one trip every 4 days was the norm. They have about 16 licenses per day and they need to share that amongst up to 120+ divers. You can imagine the difficulties in doing this. They do purchase additional licenses from other operations like North Borneo and "AB" which is the registered name for SWV (i think). Typically they have 16 pple plus another 15-20 folks go every day. Depending on your assignment you could be waking up at 4:30am for 4 dives before lunch with Kapalai/AB. or 3 dives through lunch with NB. Sipadan is 20 min boat trip away, everyone who dives there must register on the island, the parks guy checks your name and nationality with the list of approved folks, if all is well your DM signs and the boat gets a dive flag which they display for your dives.
The ugly - My mask was stolen on the second day of diving - The dive team scoured every corner for my mask, to no avail. All divers get a basket to put your dive gear in at the end of the day - i'm pretty sure my mask was in there after my last dive. Most of the workers suggested that snorkelers from other resorts that visit the house reef and the resort during the day were probably the culprits. I'm not convinced because my last dive for the day ended at around 6:30pm. It's dark by then and most snorkelers have left. Having said that the day we left they had to chase down a boat of snorkelers because they forgot to return some masks and snorkels. The dive store did lend me a mask FOC - which didnt fit, so my DM lent me his mask for the following 7 days. the front office also lent me a mask.
We were off loaded from a boat destined for Sipadan due to poor paperwork/administration. On the second day of our trip they had purchased additional licenses for 3 dives at Sipadan from North Borneo divers.The night before we filled our our NB liability forms, gave them copies of our passport etc. Excited the following day we boarded the boat but was held up for a good 30 mins... We ended up being asked to get off the boat because our forms were not filled in completely. Not just ours, everyone from Kapalai - something we were not aware of - neither the office folks at Kapalai or NB picked it up until it was too late. the issues were little things like passport numbers not filled in (even though they had a copy of our passport). A tip for folks going. fill in EVERYTHING dont skip a thing.
We could hear and feel fish bombing when diving in the area. More in Kapalai / Simali than Sipadan but the sound and shock it sends through your body is something you dont want to feel when diving.
The great - we saw a juvenile whale shark at south point on our 3rd dive. That was something special.
If anyone would like any other details feel free to PM me!
Would I go back again? yes but in low season.
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