Diving Sipidan to Brunei

From Kuala Lumpur I took a flight to Sabah, Malaysia where I met my friend Presila at the airport we both were arriving at. Apparently the trip Presila had organized was a package that was all inclusive of diving, transportation, and lodging to one of the best dive sites in the world, Sipidan. After staying one night in Kota Kinabulu we were picked up in the morning and taken back to the airport where we met the resort manager, Eddy. Taking a short flight to the most eastern part of Malaysia, we were picked up from the airport the the resort van and whisked away on a drive through palm tree fields to the town of Tawau where we took a speed boat about an hour off the coast to an oil rig turned dive resort just off the tiny island of Mabul, about 20 km from Sipidan island. Upon arrival we were greeted with refreshments, cool wet towels, and lunch. Oh, and let me not forget a check out dive as well directly beneath the oil rig where I was immediately amazed at all the new sea creatures I was introduced to. Lion fish, alligator scorpion fish, giant frog fish, etc etc etc. Over the course of 3 days I did ten dives, and on nearly every dive I saw at least one thing that made that dive spectacular. One of the most amazing animals I saw was a gigantic manta ray with a wing span of about 4 meters! And not to mention the turtles. There were so many of them that the glamour of seeing them seemed to disappear. What else? Octopus', cuttle fish, lobsters, napolean wrasses, ghost piper fish, and so on. All names probably mean nothing to you so I will make it a point to post the pictures we took. Being the only two guests there I felt super pampered being able to take the speed boat out when ever we wanted to go diving, and every dive was a drift dive because the boat would pick you up where ever you surfaced, so no surface swimming. On the oil rig we got first class dinners, mostly chinese food. I must say the cook was really good. We routinely had our meals with the staff, and afterwords I humored them and took part in some karoke. Not much to do on an oil rig though. The simple fact was that it was an amazing place to dive where you just had to roll out of bed and onto the platform where an elevator took you to a waiting speed boat to see fantastic sights.

After our time on the oil rig, we set off to Brunei, a tiny Sultanate, surrounded by Borneo Malaysia. This ridiculously rich country, income solely from oil, is quite interesting. Land is free, home loans carry no interest from the Sultan, but being a muslim country no alcohol or night life exists. I was told the Sultan once went to Disney Land, and had to wait in line, and upset that he had to do so, he built his own amusement park which is essentially free, and is rarely busy. We went there last night and it was quite empty, but it's nothing compared to western amusement parks. It's also quite expensive here and not much to do, but it was another stamp on the passport, so here we are. Next, maybe the Philippines... We will see.