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Being back in the office, leaves not much time to write more and dream about the amazing days in Malaysia. It was a great week even if I did not succeeded with my underwater photographs. I can 100% recommend to visit Mabul and dive in Sipadan. If you are interested here are the most important information:
How to reach there
All major Airlines have connections to Malaysia / Kuala Lumpur from there you can take a direct flight to Semporna. Alternative you can fly with Air Brunei via Brunei, then with Malaysian Airlines to Kota Kinabalu and Semporna. Borneo Divers will organize the bus and boat transfer to the island.
Where to stay
Borneo Dive Resort offers all you need for a great dive holiday. The rooms are in small villas with AC. The rooms are simple but clean.Price per night is about Dhs600. Incl. 4 boat dives, unlimited dives at jetty and full board. Full set of equipment can be rented in the resort for about Dhs120 per day/per person
www.borneodivers.info
You can find more photos of Mabul and Sipadan on Borneo Divers Facebook page
Special thanks to Tuan and Amir from Toursim Malaysia, Clement, Eljer, Omar and Madeel from Borneo Divers and the rest off the group who shared these days with me.
I say good bye with a photograph of the last sun set on the island.
Day 6
Last day (sad face). When I planned this trip and the style of my story (diary) I wanted to take it from a technical aspect of underwater photography. Usually for every trip or review I have my defined writing style planned before-hand and I try to stick to it like a script in order to cover all relevant aspects. But the approach of taking a beginner’s attempt at underwater photography to such beautiful sites can distract you from picking up the essential technical know-how of the trade. But I can appreciate what I have learned! Everybody who has ever been to Mabul and Sipadan will understand what I’m talking about. On one hand I’m very happy to be able to absorb all these events and experiences for my personal and eternal memories but on the other hand, I’m a bit sad, as to have failed to do my initial lead story and did not get as many good photos as I’de hoped to share with you. As promised, loads of pictures will be uploaded soon, with the support of the photographers in the group.
The last day was again a highlight – Sipadan again! We started with everybody’s favourite site of because of its depth, and with the flight tomorrow it was important not to dive too deep. This time we didn’t see as much as the first time but it was still amazing. Simone took an underwater group photo for EDA at the beginning which was my first underwater group picture. I think we will look a bit silly trying to hold up the EDA flag underwater with a current. (I will also share this one later).
The absolute greatest highlight was in a later dive with two turtles mating – an incredible experience! Our fellow divers of years of experience told us how lucky we were to have been to be able to share this event of nature. After only three dives, we had to leave to have 24hrs without a dive before our returning flights. While leaving Sipadan, I was not the only one who was sad that these days of diving in Malaysia were over. The days passed so incredibly fast. It will take at lease a couple of days to be able to really appreciate these dives. For me it was an absolute over kill of impressions. Even without using a camera while diving (I won’t count my failures with the Olympus and the EWA marine housing) I know that I’m infected. Speaking to Antonie and Simone – the two professional underwater photographers was also a great experience and a lesson for me which will help me toward getting my first batch of diving photography gear. Clement and Tuan also made amazingly good photographs with their much cheaper equipment, which might be a very good alternative. As a result of this I will prepare a small review of the systems they used. Like for common photography is for underwater photography, equipment and technique is one thing but definitely not the main thing. And I’m not sure how much I will invest in my equipment but I will invest! Underwater photography is definitely a bigger challenge then common photography but from what I have seen this week, especially the macro life and the completely different light set and colors is an attraction I can’t resist.
I had some more time today to explore the island but I had found out, that I could have rented an underwater camera at Borneo Divers… I was tempted to get angry but as mentioned before it was meant to be what impressions I could get without looking to a viewfinder. If you ever visit Mabul, Borneo Divers ask them for a rental camera if you don’t have your own one. I would ask them next time but by then I will have my own 😀
Tomorrow we will be traveling so the next update will be on Saturday. It will have the dive log of all the dives and some more info that I missed from the other days. I was so blown away and distracted with all the diving that I may need to re-edit what I had wrote over the last few days so it will make a bit more sense!
Day 5
A wonderful cloudy morning and again there were some tropical rain showers that only lasted for 15 minutes. Day 5 led us to Mataking Island, which is about an hour’s boat ride from Mabul. The sea conditions were good but it was still precipitating a bit, and it was also a bit cold. Mataking is another paradise island with palm trees, white beaches and crystal clear water.
The dives here were marco dives again… not many large things to see. Unfortunately the water didn’t warm us up and my body was freezing! It was so cold that we had to revert to shallower waters, where our dive only lasted 30 minutes.
A picnic at the beach as the sun was shining – loved it. The next dive was at Black Coral Garden where there were lots of marco subjects as well as a lot of slugs. The forth dive we made was at the House Reef, with only a small part of the group – my body had enough of freezing under water on this day so I went for a sun bath. The last dive was for the photographers only and everybody made this dive at least once so it was meant to take time to find some rare things, and Maadil the dive guide was supplying essential help for this action. I hope I recall it right – we saw a ‘ghost fish’ and a small ‘mandarine fish’… honestly though, Maadil had spotted these creatures, and the photographers understood the hint but I had to stare for minutes at the same spot to make out what it was everybody was taking pictures of.
It was a beautiful final dive for the day into the dark. I’m sorry that I can’t present many photos but as soon as I am back in Dubai I will put together a gallery with the best shots from the trip.
Tomorrow is the last day of diving and I’m already sad to leave the island… but we will dive one last time at Sipadan. Tomorrow is also my last chance for the camera review and to share some info on the island and the resort… as long as I’m not carried away with the diving here like I have been doing over the last few days…
Day 4
Finally! After all these days without proper rest I slept last night like a baby. It was a good sign for this day even if it had started with some rain. It was the big day – 4 dives at Sipadan Island, one of the most famous dive sites in the world. Explaining everything would take too long, but if you are interested just Google it.
Sipadan is like a small peak, poking out of the sea with drops of 600m, and that may be the reason for its incredible marine life. The island was also converted into a marine reserve and all resorts were moved off the island, to preserve this fragile environment.
Day 3
Here’s a little story that steers away from diving slightly: I planned to go to bed early but it didn’t work out, as the first dive was scheduled for 8am. The group went after dinner to the beach for a sundowner (even if the sun was long down). There was amazing weather and sitting outside at the beach after an unbelievable day, there can’t be anything better, especially knowing the weather at the moment in the UAE. So we all went to bed at around 12pm. I fell straight into a very deep sleep. I had set the alarm on my watch to 6:30am because our phones where locked in the safety deposit box of the small villa and I managed to block the electrical lock with my technical skills. But we knew we would not need the phone so it didn’t bother… until 4:30am when the first alarm which was set the day before went off – the darn blackberry switches on if an alarm is set even if they are off. There was no way to get to the phone and reception does not open before 7am. So I was screwed at 4:45am as the second phone went off with the alternative alarm so our safety deposit box in the room was now a symphony of annoying wakeup ring tones. I was hoping that at one point they would stop. After 30 minutes I gave up – no more sleep! Pissed and tired I decided to make the best out of the situation and catch the sunrise.
Mabul offers a wide variety of dive sites and you can spend weeks without visiting a dive site twice. The first dive was at a close by resort built on a reef off-shore from any island (20min boat drive from Mabul). On the bottom of the reef is an artificial reef with a lot off marine life, especially macro life and some big groupers. Unfortunately I can’t identify most of the things I see. It may not matter underwater, because it’s just down to pointing and looking at interesting things but when you surface, you feel kind of silly trying to describe what you saw to other people. I don’t want to be unethical but most of the species I know end up on my plate – NO! I don’t eat turtle! But I know after this trip I would have seen at least 90% of the marine life you would find in a book. It is simply massive and with every dive you see not only new sites, but new marine life. I had the Go Pro with me again and this time I used it freehand and not with the head straps which is much better especially for the macro life. After the dive I made the first test with the EWA marine casing and the SLR. The only positive result – the casing did not leak and the camera was still alive.
Unfortunately the casing is not made for depths of more than 5m which means I will not be able to take it for the regular dives. But I still want to try to get some shots of my own at the house-reef in shallow water.
The second dive was more or less a hundred metres off the beach where there is an old oil rig that is used as a dive resort. The Oil is ugly as most people would expect and in my opinion a shame to put in this beautiful environment.
The positive aspect although, is that the rig is a nice dive site as soon as you go underwater. Again, there was so much to see as well as on our last dive at Ray’s Point. After two days and five dives my eyes adapting and I can now spot more and more life. Apart from enjoying the dives and filming with the GoPro, I will spy on our underwater photographers and their gear. Four photographers with four different systems. More tomorrow and hopefully I will get some extra hours sleep tonight.
Day 2
After another an amazing dinner and a short night with only 4hrs sleep you couldn’t say that anybody was truly awake when we arrived back to the airport of Kota Kinabalu. We embarked on our 45 minute flight to Tawau from where we had to take a bus ride of about 1hr to reach the jetty in Semporna with our boat. At around 10am we reached the jetty and got the fist impression of the beauty of the ocean and the dark green contrast of the islands. During the whole journey of course, the main subject of discussion was diving and underwater photography. Antony, Simone and Tuan are the experienced underwater photographers, Ally was the videographer and Gina and Amir the dive newbies. Then there was me, who was somewhere in between. The boat trip to Mabul our final destination, took another hour.
The first hour on the journey, none of the group managed to get any sleep due to the magnificent scenery. Ronnie our captain entertained us with facts and tales about the region – my favorite being the abandoned island because of the ‘giant snakes’. That hour passed quickly and we set food on the peer of Mabul island. Without even being a second underwater everybody knew that these were going to be some great dives. In the shallow water of the island you could spot hundreds of fish, corals and other marine life. Since we left Dubai, we had been traveling for 34hrs and had almost no sleep in two days – everybody was very tired, but there was no doubt – all of us would dive as soon as possible. We had a quick introduction to the resort and met the instructors. After preparation and some lunch we had to be on the boat to get to our dive site at 1pm local time. Our instructor also showed us his artistic drawing skills in the dive meeting…
Antony, Simone, Tuan the underwater photographers and Ally took their cameras directly with them. Clement the owner of the resort joined us for the dive and he is also a passionate photographer and avid diver. Clement was lucky in that he had been diving with the famous Jack Cousteau to explore Sipadan island many years ago. For the first dive I took the GOPro video camera to see how well it would work underwater. We went down on a reef to a maximum depth of about 18m with a dive time of 45 minutes. The water temperature was warm (27 degrees Celcius) but for me it was not warm enough, so on the next dive I would wear a wet suit. The highlight of the dive was the 4 turtles resting in the corals, surrounded by fish. My only concern for the camera was if the head strap would be tight enough so I wouldn’t lose the GOPRO and how good the quality would be. When using the headstrap on land, the video is based on the movement of your body, which can be very shaky, so I was hoping that in the water it might be better. When checking the video in the evening, I got the proof – no shaking and the quality was good even if there was less light and color underwater. Only the angle had to be adjusted to get a better frame.
For the second dive directly from the pier, and after our surface interval, I decided to try the Olympus because the dive was only 12m max in depth and it was mainly for macro life. Unfortunately, after the second picture the camera’s display went dead, therefore there are no pictures to post from one of the dives, and the video is to large to upload from the island but here are some stills from the GOPRO video:
The dive was amazing. Especially when the dive guides pointed out so many small and for the unskilled eye, sometimes invisible marine life. After a first great day of diving I was looking forward to finally get a good night sleep. The impressions of the fist day where so amazing that this day felt so long I can’t wait to get into the water again. I hope tomorrow I find more time to write more about the resort and the island and hopefully get some underwater photographs.
Day 1
Finally, we were sat on a plane with all of our things packed within a day. At the airport we met the rest of the group: Ally and Simone from EDA, Emmanuelle from Gulf News, Antony from the National and Tuan and Amir from the Tourism Board of Malaysia who organized the trip who was so generous to invite us. The journey started in Dubai with an 8hrs flight to Brunei which is also on the island of Borneo. This is where our terminal destination of Mabul/Malaysia would be. Before the arrival, there was only one highlight, which was the entry visa stamp in my passport.
The small state with a population of only about 400,000 but most famous for its monarch, is the Sultan of Brunei. I was also sure that he would probably not invite us to his house even though it is the biggest private palace in the world with more than 1,700 rooms, in which he could have easily accommodated us. Knowing the enormous riches of the Sultan, it is easy to see the gap between the people on average income and where the country is ranked (4th) in an international comparison of the GDP per capita (gross domestic product at purchasing power parity of countries per capita, i.e, the value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given year divided by the average (or mid-year) population for the same year.) While visiting Brunei, it was obvious how wealth is divided. We had an eight hour stopover and visited the Brunei Museum and the biggest mosque in the country.
My highlight and in my opinion, an absolute “must see” are the floating houses in Brunei. Our city guide had said, “If you haven’t seen the floating houses, you haven’t been to Brunei.” Currently about 20,000 people live in spacious houses built on wooden piles in the salty water of the Brunei river. It is really impressive, that an entire city with schools and police stations is build above the water in this way. Certainly the country has more to offer especially if you have one more day to see the rain forest. For us it was only a stopover because of a flight connection. At 6pm local time we had our next connecting flight to our destination country Malaysia, and in particular Kota Kinabalu. It was a short but very bumpy 25 minute flight. After an hour’s delay, a night in the plane and a Brunei city tour, everybody was completely exhausted. After a short night and a long day, rest was still far away. We were then invited to go to a welcome dinner with representatives of the Malaysian tourism for the region of Sabah were we also met our host Clement, the owner of Mabul Resort where we had spent most of our time on the island. Of course it was relaxed and everybody was keen to welcome the Malaysian hospitality. It would have been a pity to miss out on meeting those nice and friendly people and the food. I take my job very seriously and would like to underline this with all efforts, so i tried the chilies (just a small piece) ignoring what Clement had previously exclaimed, which was, “They are explosive!” I did not explode but I had tears in my eyes but I hope still earned some respect. The food was simply amazing – lobster, ostrich, fried crabs, grouper, and other local specialties…what a warm and tasty welcome to Malaysia.
Where to start? I’ve just read two articles for the August issue about Tori running 100km in one
day and Wouter crossing the Gobi desert in a 250km race over seven days… so the little adventure I’m about to take on seems pale in comparison. Still, I intend to keep you up to date with my little dairy, blog or whatever you want to call it, and hope that my parents won’t be the only readers 😉
Don’t lose interest and stop reading! Here is the proof what a dare devil I am – here’s a little story about my first dive.
Germans are famous for being very economic and efficient – I feel I fit that stereotype quite well. I love the water and have always wanted to dive, even though in the south of Germany where I was born it was more than 800km from the sea (North Sea, not the Caribbean), so diving is not very popular. As a student back in the day, a dive license was a big investment. So I was checking for ‘cheap’ alternatives to get a good impression of scuba diving. I was browsing through eBay when I found a good offer: Only a few Euros for a complete dive set. The dive kit was akin to ‘007 style’ gear; something Sean Connery could have easily sported. I was the winning bidder, with a bid of about 400AED, and this meant I was the proud owner of a Czech Army Dive kit: 3 tanks connected with some metal pipes, a simple fist stage and only ‘one’ second stage. There was also some kind of meter that indicated remaining air, which was connected to the first stage. My plan was to use it in my first holiday in Dubai (not knowing that I would end up living and working here). There was only one little snag…I ended up stuck in both the German and Dubai security passages, as I was carrying what, to the untrained eye, looked like a bomb taken straight out of the Cold War.
It took me days to find someone to fill the tanks. The rubber mouth piece was so disgusting that I had to change it. After fixing all these issues I tried the dive kit successfully in the pool and at Snoopy Rock thereafter. Making sure I didn’t jump straight into the deep end of the ‘metaphorical dive pool’ before getting into the real one, I had to read a dive book so I was aware of the risks, and to avoid diving deeper than 3m I attached a rope with this length to a buoy. Everything worked well and even the buoyancy was OK. I survived! I’m happy to tell this stupid story! I will not do it again!
Almost all dive centres offer beginner course dives which is the smartest and safest way to get into diving. But doing it James Bond style was cool. Back in Germany, I sold that dive kit for 3 times more than what I bought it for… maybe it because of the new paint job, from army grey to fancy white.”
Now you can expect some more entertaining stories from me. The best part of doing a magazine is that you can meet amazing people and sometimes you can get some amazing invitations. One day I received one of these amazing invitations, from the Malaysian Tourism board. This was for a dive trip to one of the most famous dive sites in the world, Sipadan Island (click here for more info on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipadan ). I would be lying if I wasn’t a little bit tempted to take this on myself. After much (little) thought, I realized that I was the only certified Diver in the office. This was enough to spur me on. And after the early James Bond diving days, I was suitably convinced that diving is absolutely fantastic – and what an opportunity this was going to be.
OutdoorUAE will not be the only media on this trip as there are some other publications joining. Our friends from EDA and our regular contributor Gordon Smith, an avid diver and underwater photographer will be in this group. I saw Gordon’s and other divers’ underwater photographs in the Atlantis Underwater Photography Club and was impressed by the quality of the submissions for the EDA competition. I’m a professional photographer but I have never used my SLR underwater. So the aim of my adventure will be, to get great underwater photographs and to enter and try to win our own photo competition.
The challenge: I have absolutely no experience in underwater photography and I’m completely under-equipped. I will use an Olympus 1030w and an EWA marine underwater casing with my SLR. All that sounds better than it is, as the stupid underwater bag reduces the ability to use the camera and is not very handy. I will be brutally honest with you and I will show you my achievements (if there are any) and my failures (there will be many). I won’t be able to order any stupid stuff from the internet but I might try to build my own underwater casing out of coconuts and bamboo. The biggest advantage I have on my side is the dive area – as it is one of the hottest diving spots in the world, with clear waters and incredible marine life. There will be so many impressive motives, that it will be impossible to not get at least some good shots even if it is by lucky coincidence. So for all of you, who have ever considered starting underwater photography or need a little bit of entertainment, and would like to see how good life can be, follow me over the next few days.
PS – Don’t worry I’m not really entering our own photography competition!
Malaysian Tourism: http://www.tourism.gov.my/
EDA link: www.emiratesdiving.com
EWA Marine: http://www.ewa-marine.com/index.php?id=83&L=0
