Trip Report: Sipadan (Dec 17-21)
We went to sipadan this december, and stayed at the mabul water bungalow. This is our first trip diving overseas since we recevived our open water license a month ago. So are quite excited not knowing what exactly to expect. But the reports in the forum are extremely helpful. We know the monsoon season was starting in december and were hoping the weather would be nice, which actually turned out to be sunny most of the time except a couple days when the raining started early monring into the mid-afternoon. We live in HK, so it's been a easy flight from Hong Kong to Kota Kinabula, followed by a short flight to Tawau and an hour car ride to the port. The port was somewhat dirty and disorganized, but it's a necessary evil to stay for a night before heading out to Mabul in the morning. For those who haven't been to Sipadan, it's a protected island without any hotels. You basically take a boat out to dive at Sipadan and in between dives, you will spend your time on a small patch of the beach resting, with the rest of the island off limits, enforced by the military stationed there. You have the option to stay at Kapalai or Mabul, which are both islands/reefs about 15-20 minutes boat ride away from Sipadan. Additionally, we have met many divers who used the port as a base and take the 45 minute boat ride from land to the sipadan-mabul-kapalai area to dive, which is probably a lot more economical for budget travelers.
Mabul Water Bungalow is a recent addition to the Mabul SMART resort on Mabul. It is built entirely over water, and the hotel has all the nice amneities, like hot water, comfortable bed, tv, dvd player, and a spacious balcony facing the ocean. It has an open-air dining room where you will have your breakfast, lunch and dinner. The best part of the water bungalows is that it is somewhat isolated from the mabul island (they provide a bike for you to ride to the island), and there aren't that many bungalows so it is always pretty serene and quiet. But if for those who are more inclined to meet people, the DMs told us Kapalai and the SMART resort have atmosphere that are more condusive to socializing. The food at the resort was really good, we always have serveral options in terms of main courses for lunch and dinner, beef, fish, shrimps, chicken, soup for dinner, and dessert and fruit. Breakfast, the usual eggs, sausage, fried noodles, fruit and toast. And the service is awesome, the staff are friendly and helpful, and the captain and boatman set up all your gears and carry all the tanks. All you have to do is literally suit up, and bring your camera and wait at the jetty. The jetty, dining hall, bungalows and gear rooms are relatively close to each other, so you won't feel like you are running all over the place. All in all, I think the resort is well-run, organized and very comfortable. There is some minor construction going on as the resort continues to expand but the noise is minimal and they won't have started when you begin your first dive and will have stopped by the time you are done with your last dive.
In terms of diving, we have done mostly 3-4 dives per day. Our package includes 3 dives per day, 2 at sipadan and 1 at either kapalai or back in mabul. Sipadan is wall diving and kapalai and mabul are muck diving. So we pretty much get to see a lot of the small as well as big sea creatures. Water visibility is generally decent (about 10-15m) at sipadan, could have been better I guess from many of the pictures posted here, with a bit less at kapalai and mabul. We can happily report that we saw most of what Sipadan is famous for: turtles (every dive), white tips sharks, grey reefs sharks, many different kinds of fish (trigger fish, napolean wrasse, bannerfish, etc), moral eel, really beautiful stretches of corals, schools of jacks, schools of barracudas (strangely we didn't get to see any at barracuda point, but when we did a dive at whitetip avenue, the second we went into the water when I looked back to check on my buddy at 20m, we saw a huge group of chevron barracuda circuling and moving as a group away from us and there must have been hundreds as they were so dense you can't even see through the fish), bumphead parrot fish (which we saw when we did a dive at 5:30am when they were going in a group of 60 or so, flipping their fins, moving along, getting cleaned by fish), pygmy seahorse (had to look real hard at the seafan to see it...). We also went down to the entrance of the turtle cave, although didn't go inside. As novice diver, we were initially a little worried if there will be any strong current, and I can say the most you will feel is a tiny drift that allows you to move forward slowly without needing to use your fins. The current is a bit stronger at barracuda point as there is a channel where the current goes through. Dive master will warn you if you tell them beforehand you are a novice diver and make sure you don't get caught with the flow.
Back in mabul and kapalai, we saw crocodile fish, lots of anemone's, cuttlefish, blue spotted ray, octopus, numerous nudibranch (we saw one that is dark with red spots, really beautiful), mandarin fish (I saw a glimpse of it as it was hiding among the corals), more turtles (you see multiple turtles on any given dive, which is quite amazing still every time you see them, you watch their behavior - be it sleeping, resting, swimming, breathing...), hermit crabs (we did a night dive at mabul, which was the first time for us). Like I said, you can really expect to see many small things, as well as big ones. The DM will usually alert you when they find something interesting, and we mostly concerned ourselves with taking pictures and controlling our buoyancy so we don't damage any corals.
I think the amazing thing at sipadan is that you look down the wall / drop-offs and you see a bottomless abyss and along the wall, there are so many fish, turtles resting on corals, little creatures here and there that you are completely mesmesrized in the world. This is further complemented by friendly staff, effortless set-up, spacious rooms, somewhat beautiful weather, make this a great diving spot. Regrettably, you can see signs of what I suspect and read as dynamite fishing, which resulted in patches of white sand and rocks where corals are completely dead. And from stories from the dive masters there, the Drop-Off used to be full of corals, now it's just a patch of bare rocks, gently reminding those who care to look of what was once there. We also haven't seen congregations of turtles as DM told us was once common. We only saw many isolated turtles swimming around past divers, resting on small coral plateau. Still a beautiful spot nevertheless.
Now onward to our next destination, any suggestions? I heard Maldives, Palau and Sulawesi are quite good. Any recommendations?
We went to sipadan this december, and stayed at the mabul water bungalow. This is our first trip diving overseas since we recevived our open water license a month ago. So are quite excited not knowing what exactly to expect. But the reports in the forum are extremely helpful. We know the monsoon season was starting in december and were hoping the weather would be nice, which actually turned out to be sunny most of the time except a couple days when the raining started early monring into the mid-afternoon. We live in HK, so it's been a easy flight from Hong Kong to Kota Kinabula, followed by a short flight to Tawau and an hour car ride to the port. The port was somewhat dirty and disorganized, but it's a necessary evil to stay for a night before heading out to Mabul in the morning. For those who haven't been to Sipadan, it's a protected island without any hotels. You basically take a boat out to dive at Sipadan and in between dives, you will spend your time on a small patch of the beach resting, with the rest of the island off limits, enforced by the military stationed there. You have the option to stay at Kapalai or Mabul, which are both islands/reefs about 15-20 minutes boat ride away from Sipadan. Additionally, we have met many divers who used the port as a base and take the 45 minute boat ride from land to the sipadan-mabul-kapalai area to dive, which is probably a lot more economical for budget travelers.
Mabul Water Bungalow is a recent addition to the Mabul SMART resort on Mabul. It is built entirely over water, and the hotel has all the nice amneities, like hot water, comfortable bed, tv, dvd player, and a spacious balcony facing the ocean. It has an open-air dining room where you will have your breakfast, lunch and dinner. The best part of the water bungalows is that it is somewhat isolated from the mabul island (they provide a bike for you to ride to the island), and there aren't that many bungalows so it is always pretty serene and quiet. But if for those who are more inclined to meet people, the DMs told us Kapalai and the SMART resort have atmosphere that are more condusive to socializing. The food at the resort was really good, we always have serveral options in terms of main courses for lunch and dinner, beef, fish, shrimps, chicken, soup for dinner, and dessert and fruit. Breakfast, the usual eggs, sausage, fried noodles, fruit and toast. And the service is awesome, the staff are friendly and helpful, and the captain and boatman set up all your gears and carry all the tanks. All you have to do is literally suit up, and bring your camera and wait at the jetty. The jetty, dining hall, bungalows and gear rooms are relatively close to each other, so you won't feel like you are running all over the place. All in all, I think the resort is well-run, organized and very comfortable. There is some minor construction going on as the resort continues to expand but the noise is minimal and they won't have started when you begin your first dive and will have stopped by the time you are done with your last dive.
In terms of diving, we have done mostly 3-4 dives per day. Our package includes 3 dives per day, 2 at sipadan and 1 at either kapalai or back in mabul. Sipadan is wall diving and kapalai and mabul are muck diving. So we pretty much get to see a lot of the small as well as big sea creatures. Water visibility is generally decent (about 10-15m) at sipadan, could have been better I guess from many of the pictures posted here, with a bit less at kapalai and mabul. We can happily report that we saw most of what Sipadan is famous for: turtles (every dive), white tips sharks, grey reefs sharks, many different kinds of fish (trigger fish, napolean wrasse, bannerfish, etc), moral eel, really beautiful stretches of corals, schools of jacks, schools of barracudas (strangely we didn't get to see any at barracuda point, but when we did a dive at whitetip avenue, the second we went into the water when I looked back to check on my buddy at 20m, we saw a huge group of chevron barracuda circuling and moving as a group away from us and there must have been hundreds as they were so dense you can't even see through the fish), bumphead parrot fish (which we saw when we did a dive at 5:30am when they were going in a group of 60 or so, flipping their fins, moving along, getting cleaned by fish), pygmy seahorse (had to look real hard at the seafan to see it...). We also went down to the entrance of the turtle cave, although didn't go inside. As novice diver, we were initially a little worried if there will be any strong current, and I can say the most you will feel is a tiny drift that allows you to move forward slowly without needing to use your fins. The current is a bit stronger at barracuda point as there is a channel where the current goes through. Dive master will warn you if you tell them beforehand you are a novice diver and make sure you don't get caught with the flow.
Back in mabul and kapalai, we saw crocodile fish, lots of anemone's, cuttlefish, blue spotted ray, octopus, numerous nudibranch (we saw one that is dark with red spots, really beautiful), mandarin fish (I saw a glimpse of it as it was hiding among the corals), more turtles (you see multiple turtles on any given dive, which is quite amazing still every time you see them, you watch their behavior - be it sleeping, resting, swimming, breathing...), hermit crabs (we did a night dive at mabul, which was the first time for us). Like I said, you can really expect to see many small things, as well as big ones. The DM will usually alert you when they find something interesting, and we mostly concerned ourselves with taking pictures and controlling our buoyancy so we don't damage any corals.
I think the amazing thing at sipadan is that you look down the wall / drop-offs and you see a bottomless abyss and along the wall, there are so many fish, turtles resting on corals, little creatures here and there that you are completely mesmesrized in the world. This is further complemented by friendly staff, effortless set-up, spacious rooms, somewhat beautiful weather, make this a great diving spot. Regrettably, you can see signs of what I suspect and read as dynamite fishing, which resulted in patches of white sand and rocks where corals are completely dead. And from stories from the dive masters there, the Drop-Off used to be full of corals, now it's just a patch of bare rocks, gently reminding those who care to look of what was once there. We also haven't seen congregations of turtles as DM told us was once common. We only saw many isolated turtles swimming around past divers, resting on small coral plateau. Still a beautiful spot nevertheless.
Now onward to our next destination, any suggestions? I heard Maldives, Palau and Sulawesi are quite good. Any recommendations?
