Need recommendation for Sipadan trip

[ssra30]

A friend and I are planning a trip to Sipadan probably sometimes in July. Neither of us have been there before. So far, I only have some information from Sipadan Water Village. Beside Water Village, are there other places that we should look into, as far as accomodation and dive operators etc are concerned or would the Water Village be an ideal place.

Also any recommendation on how to get there? I live in Bangkok and my understanding is that I would have to fly to KL and stay overnight there and fly to Borneo the morning after. Is there any other way? I would rather spend more time diving rather than traveling if possible.

Thanks for any info.

 

[Gno]

Some helpful infor:-

A) Unless you can get a flight in to Kota Kinabalu/Tawau from Bangkok, looks like you would have to fly into Kuala lumpur and take the connecting flights to either Kota Kinabalu or Tawau.

B) From Tawau, it is another 3-4 hour ride to Sempoerna which is where you take the ferry to Sipadan Water Village (SWV) or the resorts in Sipadan Island itself or Kapalai Island Resort (About 30 minutes trip)

C) SWV (where I have been before) is basically a 4 star ++ facility which has excellent service and food though the rooms are not air-conditioned and is situated in Mabul Island. there is also a house reef where you can find amongst other things Mandarin Fish, seahorses etc etc. You get 3 boat dives a day with unlimited housereef dives. The boat dives includes 1 trip to Sipadan island and Kapalai Island (where you get to see blue frogfish and harlequin ghostpipefish etc etc) per day. BTW, Sipadan Island is about 20 minutes speedboat ride from SWV in calm weather

D) Sipadan Island itself has 3-4 resorts i think. You could check out Borneo divers who operate there. The resorts on Sipadan Island itself are more basic and not as good as the one in SWV

E) I don't know much about the resort in Kapalai, perhaps you could try looking up the net.

BTW, are you going in conjunction with the coral planting festival which is in July?

Hope the aforesaid is useful!!!!

Happy Diving!!!!

 

[Peter Lim]

ssra30,

If my memory serves me well, there are 4 flights per day from KK to Tawau. 1 at 6plus am, 1 noon, 1 6plus pm and 1 9plus pm; but subject to cancellation, so give yourselves some allowance. I will stay at Sempoerna for a night.

You could fly from KL or Senai Airport with MAS; or Royal Burnei Airlines from Singapore but limited schedule and longer flying time.
MAS is having a promotion know as 3 to fly, the price is good. I got a ticket for S$380 to fly from Senai to KK to Tawau (Return).

As Gno had mentioned; from Tawau, you will need to take the land transport to Sempoerna and the boat ride to Sipadan/Mabul/Kapalai.

Sipadan Island; you could check out Borneo Divers and Paradise Resort. Rate almost the same but Paradise's staffs are friendlier.

Mabul Island, Sipadan Water Village Resort and Smart Divers Resort, SWV is more expensive but the nicest.

You could also stay at the oil rid, Seaventures Dive Resort; I am staying there end of June. Understand that the site under the oil rid is very nice but the accommodation isn’t that good. Hope to have the best of both world, Dive in Sipadan and Mubal/Kapalai.

I am not too sure about staying at Kapalai Island as the comments was not that good.

Happy hunting and diving.

 

[ssra30]

Thanks for all the information.
So far, I did figure out a travel plan from BKK via Brunei to KK/Tawau. It guess it is going to be one of those 3 flights, one bus ride and one boat ride to get there :-(
Royal Brunei Air/MAS seems to the cheapest right now rather than MAS via KL.
I got a decent qoute from Sipadan Dive Lodge (Borneo diver) and an agent in Thailand got a pretty good price on SWV. Now my friend just told me about a good deal through Smart. So far, my friends who have been there seemed to prefer Smart over SWV.
Anyhow, we should be there the first week of July (somewhere).
I don't know anything about the coral planting festival. Do you have any link to the info?
Initially there are just going to be 2 of us but now it seems like we will have 7!

 

[Albion]

i went to sipadan in february and stayed 3 nights there and 4 nights on Kapalai through Pulau sipadan Resort.

http://sipadan-kapalai.com/

It was maybe a little out of season as the vis at sipadan wasn't too good, and three dives at baracuda point revelaed a total of two baracuda!!!!!!

However Kapalai, which is 20mins away, made up for it with some excellent macro. For every dive we would ask our guide for some fish that we hadn't seen before, and was listed as being in the area, every dive he found it and more.
Think we saw 3 different species of Frogfish on the first day alone.
The house reef is teeming with life - Mandarin fish, harlequin Ghost pipefish, flambouyant cutlefish can all be found regularly within metres of the dive shop. At the same site we found mating octopus, zebra morays and hear that blue ringed octopus have been seen there as well.

would definitley recomend the same schedule to others visitng the area, make sure you go to Kapalai after Sipadan so you can enjoy the accomodation more as well.

 

[ssra30]

Thanks Albion for the rec.
We are pretty much settled for Smart Dive Resort on this trip but hopefully I will get back to Sipadan again later. It looks like Kapalai will be a nice alternative to Mabul/Sipadan as well.