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Sabah Road Trip-Mabul island

MALAYSIA | Tuesday, 25 May 2010 | Views [1010]

Hi All


The Australian travel advisory gave us an  updated  for Sabah:

“There are indications that both criminal and terrorist groups are planning or intend acts of violence against foreigners in eastern Sabah, notwithstanding the Government of  Malaysia´s increased ability to detect, deter and prevent such attacks. The Abu Sayyaf Group, based in the southern Philippines has kidnapped foreigners in eastern Sabah in the past. Criminal elements are also responsible for kidnapping and piracy committed against foreigners. Of present concern are the resorts (and transportation to and from) located in isolated areas of eastern Sabah, including Semporna and the islands of Mabul and Sipadan. Please avoid or use extreme caution in connection with any travel in these areas or locations.”

We obviously thought about this for about a nanosecond and then threw caution to the wind after all there were so many attractive European´s to kidnap why target two seasoned and harden travellers who hadn´t washed their clothing for two months.We knew that would be be able to outrun any pirate boats with our super powered dive boat or so we hoped anyway.

Day 3. Early start and off to Mabul island which is a small oval shaped island fringed by sandy beaches and perched on the northwest corner of a larger 200-hectare reef. The reef is on the edge of the continental shelf and the seabed surrounding the reef slopes out to 25–30m deep. The island is a 45minute speedboat ride from Semporna.Immediately upon arrival everyone's bags are offload  and the divers and snorkellers are directed to their appropriate boats.We happened to be on the boat that we would be on all day so we didn´t need to move an inch.The first thing that you see when you arrive at the island is a oil rig (now non-operational) that sits  about 1km off shore that has been converted into a dive resort called Sea Venture.The second thing that you notice is the small and extremely primitive  fishing village that sits directly beside the resorts  and which houses a  small population of Malaysians  that work in the resorts, and migrants from nearby Philippines.The day trips all comprise 3 dives or snorkels and on this trip  we were to  snorkel around Eel Garden, the Oil Platform and  Lobster wall.We had been virtually guaranteed sighting of sea turtles so we hired an underwater camera off one of the dive master for the day for 100 ringgits.

The girls were so convincing at the dive office that I was convinced that we were guaranteed to see turtles at Mabul. This is unusual for me as I have a healthy scepticism to grand promises made by sales people. I think that as soon as we entered the water at Eel garden we knew that this area was special and it wasn't long before we saw our first turtle swimming past the edge of the reef. We spent time looking around the shallow section of the reef. 

The next dive was at an oil platform but we stayed on the island and snorkelled the reef drop off finding, along with the fish, sleeping and feeling turtles about 100m from the jetty. The coral was quite good and healthy with amazing variety of fish. We found a family of squid ,22 in total so a big family,who sped off when we gave them a little too much attention.

Next dive spot was Lobster walls. This is an outstanding site. We saw 5 turtles before the scuba divers even hit the water! It was and is pure magic to look out from the shallow coral with the colourful fish swimming around it into the deep blue water beyond the drop off. We found a couple of large napolean wrasse and trigger fish along the way and so many sleeping turtles. Some were almost sleeping on the vertical wall. The tide had turned by the time we headed toward the dive boat and the current was quite strong. A very, very nice spot.

Day 4.Mabul island. Snorkeling all day on reef out front of island. Local island boys lobster fishing at low tide. Two of them paddled along on an orange esky lid whilst another with a dive mask looked for lobsters. I think that they dropped plastic bottle traps with meat in them in the area and we saw them pull out a strange looking crayfish one day.

I woke up this morning with itchy dots on my body but only where my top sits. We have been getting stung in the water by something unseen and suspect sea lice. Not much fun at the moment and Vanessa keeps telling me not to scratch but I keep at it anyway when she isn't looking. The dots were itchy for about 4 days and are slowly going away now.

Day 5. Mabul island. Dive boat again. Eel garden again. We hoped for a different site but were happy to go snorkelling with turtles again knowing we could swim over the shallow reef later. We entered the water and found that the visibility was excellent and could clearly see the bottom more than 10m below. The divemaster had given us instructions to follow the reef along until we found rubble and this was a common location for eagle rays. It wasn't long before Vanessa spotted a group of eagle rays 'flying' along in the water deep below us then a bit further on spotted another. Then we started spotting lots of turtles. They appeared out of the blue water and disappeared just as quickly. There were three swimming around us at one point. We would have been 400m away from the dive boat by the time i came to get us. Our next location was an artificial reef near the island. I was quite disappointed when we first started looking around as all we could find were structures but not many fish. It didn't take long to get enthusiastic when a large grouper (1.3m) swam past a structure and then we found a large marbled grouper resting on the sand in the safety of a cage. A little further on we found a large school of big eye trevally and on another structure a couple of lion fish swimming with their fins fanned out. Very, very nice. I think that the variety of fish around Mabul is amazing. We even found a snowflake eel just off the boat jetty in the coral on an afternoon swim one day and a snake eel the next.  

We reluctantly leave Mabul this evening and return to Semporna.

Bye

David and Vanessa

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