Trip to Paradise

Yes, this is paradise.. heaven..a place to relax..a place that breaks communication from all parts of the world..a place with no tv in the rooms and no significant handphone signal...a place where you would no longer remember where you come from... This is Sipadan.

I've been here a year ago and I told myself that I'd definitely make a comeback with a camera and a stay on one of these luxurious water village resorts. I was staying on what was used to be an oil-rig (left) because I was kinda on a tight budget then. The water village is considered a high-class kelong with a spacious rooms, a big balcony and excellent services. It's actually located somewhere opposite this oil-rig. When I was staying at the oil-rig, I kept eyeing on this resort almost everyday. But of course, the oil-rig itself is an excellent dive site. It harbours excellent marine life and it was included in the itinery even on this trip. But sad to say, the marine life has significantly depleted over this one year. And I could no longer find the giant moray, Elvis, that has been staying there for almost 7 years.

This picture on the right shows how a room looks like from atop. It's taken from a viewing tower at dawn while I was waiting for the sunrise. It was a cloudy day and therefore I did not manage to catch a glimpse on the sun rising from the horizon. The picture below it is taken from my room, showing the view from my balcony. It was a superb view and every room would have a similar view as the whole resort is built on stilts.


Sipadan is one of asia's best and renown dive paradise.
The island itself is closed to preserve the marine park and it's shores are only open as rest areas to divers. To enjoy diving there, you need to be experienced and it would be better to have an advance diving license as there are many wall dives and drop-off; from a 6 m coral bed which falls off to a drastic 600m bottomless site.

One would never miss turtles, white-tips and schools of jacks or barracudas in a trip there. However, the numbers have general declined and I regret not being able to spot a barracuda tornedo..( almost managed to wait for them to form..but some stupid diver broke the chain while he was taking picture so close to them....moron) Needless to say, I simply went crazy underwater with my new camera and snapped on any marine life spotted by my lens. A picture tells a thousand words.. I shall just let my photos show you how enjoyable one can be beneath the land...








Alrightly..enough feasting for your eyes...this photo on the left shows a pigmy seahorse that is only about 1 cm big, hooking itself onto a sea fan. This is the best shot I can get though it's really not really that spectacular. The thing about this camera is that it doesn't have very good macro function. I'd probably get a macro lens to compensate for this.

Frustrating events....The most ever frustrating event that can ever happen to a diver is to miss a whale shark...twice in 2 days!
It was so close yet so far.We went to South Point on our first and third day, yet it was spotted on the 2nd and 4th day! Do you have any idea.. how rare it is to sight a whale shark? It's the largest fish on Earth! To sight a whale shark is akin to striking first prize in lottery! Even some of the dive masters there has never spotted one before.. Benthony, in my group, who has logged 500 dives has never ever seen one either... When we broke the news to him about the 2nd sighting, he was really demoralised...he lost some appetite but eventually submitted himself to fate...
We took this chance to label him as a jinx...and claimed that we should never dive with him again... Ungrateful souls are we..... Ironically, he was the one who planned for the whole trip and brought us here...hehe..

Let me end here with some nice land shots....