Julia and Billy's SE Asia Travel Adventure: Sipadan: A Divers Paradise

We arrived in Semporna, the launching off point for dive trips to Sipadan and were pleasantly surprised to find that our accommodation, the Dragon Inn, was better than expected. We had air conditioning, clean sheets, much needed hot water, breakfast included, and we were a quick 5 minute walk from the dive shop (always a good thing if you are one who relishes every extra minute of sleep). This was a definite treat after roughing it in the jungle; it's amazing how you take such simple things for granted until you're in a situation where you don't have the basic comforts of home.

The town of Semporna itself turned out to be a dump, but the diving more than made up for it. We spent four days diving, three of those days at Sipadan Island and one at Mantabuan. The diving world class, especially at Sipadan. Sipadan, a pinnacle island, is located off the continental shelf and seemingly appears out of nowhere. The portion of the island that sits above water is actually very small, but once underwater, provides the stunning sheer cliffs that plunge to 600 meters on one side of the island and 1200 meters on the other.

We don't know exactly why this is the case, but we were told that the fact that the island is located off the continental shelf creates an ideal environment for sea life to flourish (that and it's part of a protected marine park so there isn't any dynamite fishing). We saw hundreds of turtles, a handful of reef sharks (white-tip and black-tip), one leopard shark, lion fish, scorpion fish, Anemone fish, lobsters, trigger fish, unicorn fish and much more. In addition to the sea life, the conditions were a diver's dream: the visibility was over 20 meters, the variety of coral was impressive, and the water was a comfortable 84 degrees (29 degrees Celsius, for Anna and all of you other crazy Celsius-using Europeans). Needless to say, we were thoroughly impressed and would recommend Sipadan to any diver.

We experienced only one minor hiccup while diving at Sipadan. During our first day of diving, Julia was provided with a malfunctioning BCD (the air valve o-ring was bad), but we didn't figure this out until we were about 20 meters deep. Julia went to adjust her buoyancy by slightly inflating her BCD, and all of a sudden air started to free flow into her BCD. Julia skyrocketed towards the surface like a balloon, and after failing to get Billy's attention by yelling (which is impossible underwater) she managed to grab him on her way up. Since her BCD was free flowing, purging the airbag did nothing, so Billy had to disconnect the BCD air hose, but not before we went up nearly 10 meters together. This scary incident put us both on edge for the remainder of a beautiful dive.

The nightlife in Semporna was non-existent after midnight, except for a little thing called a Chinese karaoke bar, which Billy got to enjoy during two evenings (Julia had food poisoning and missed out on all the fun).

-Julia and Billy