We had to kill some time in Labuan before grabbing a ferry to Metambok. It works out slightly cheaper to do that and then tale a bus to Kota Kinabalu than it does to take a direct boat to KK. Borneo is so expensive that every little bit we save helps out. We arrived in town, grabbed a McDonalds and checked into our hostel. Its way out in the middle of nowhere, but if you want to stay long term they will give you a dorm bed for 12 ringgit, which is ridiculously cheap in Borneo. Borneo Global Backpackers is the name. Its nothing special, but 12 ringgits with free internet and breakfast is not to be passed up.
In the morning we went to check for the rafflesia flower. There was just one on its sixth day so we ndecided to skip it as we would hopefully get a better opportunity. That was a bit of a mistake as we never did. We then went to book the climb up Kinabalu. We had been leaning towards not climbing it for a while due to the exorbitant cost, but I'd seen a website that listed the highest accommodation as cheaper. So we went to check. They insisted that the package would be 735 ringgit or 470 ringgit for just the accommodation. We had seen it for 310 somewhere, but I couldn't find the website. Shit. They were rationing water at the top now as well and conveniently there was to be no water at any time you would need it to climb. Fuckers. They should not be allowed to turn over the running of a national park to a private firm. This firm is just looking to squeeze whatever they can out of tourists. We got a bad feeling and decided not to climb it. How can it be worth it? The Australians we had met said it was a challenge. A challenge? Its 4000m. I have climbed nearly 6000m which needed ice axes and crampons etc. 90% of people climb it (from the unfit bunch of tourists and locals who try). Where is the challenge in something 90% of people succeed in. For Cotopaxi (my keyboard switched to Polish there) only 2 out of 9 groups made the summit. We were all fit and the two of us that made it almost had to give up. That's a challenge. Toughest thing I ever did. I paid $130. So was I going to pay 200 euros to climb Kinabalu. They have steps and ropes for fuck sake. Fansipan is ranked harder and that was $97 and we summited in one day. Fuck the people in charge of Kinabalu. They will kill the goose that lays their golden egg. We met so many people who would have climbed it, but decided not to because its too expensive. No one who climbs mountains is going to pay for Kinabalu. I am not sure if they are still filling up the numbers. If they are, then clearly they don't give a fuck about us backpackers and fair play, but if they are not then they are shooting themselves in the foot. Again we don't regret it and that's usually a good gut check as to whether you were right or not. We went to watch Lincoln, which was really good and then booked Sipadan with our Advanced Open Water. It was even more expensive than Kinabalu but at least its world class and we got a qualification. There were a lot of people who dived Sipadan while saying Kinabalu was too expensive. Know your product and how to price it. Afterwards we watched Cloud Atlas, which was much better than I was expecting, apart from some weird prosthetic work. Not sure why they used a sci-fi poster. May explain why it bombed as what it suggested was not what it was, so the people who went expecting sci-fi would be pissed off and the people who would have enjoyed it would be put off by the poster.
I got up late and saw that Spurs had got a last minute equaliser to beat Lyon. Roll on Inter Milan. Should be a classic. We went to see Flight in the afternoon and its also a good film, though probably not the best for people afraid of flying, who would have to fly to the Philippines 2 weeks later. We had left our phone in the cinema the night before and luckily we got it back. We really are lucky at losing things and getting them back. 3 for 3, with the camera in Laos and Slovenia. We had to deal with retards at the cinema and internet place, who were determined to make our life a pain in the arse. I don't like Malaysians that much. They don't lie as much as Laotians, but they are my second least favourites as they are a bit aggressive and treat you like shit. The Cameron Highlands is the exception to that.
This keyboard keeps changing to Polish. Its evil. We figured that we would have 21 weeks left for the Philippines and Indonesia. With a 7:14 week split, we would leave Papua and the East for the next trip with Papua New Guinea so we would not have to double back on ourselves. We grabbed a bus to the bus station and were confronted with the standard aggressive Malaysian cartel of bus people hounding you to their window. We ignored them like normal and eventually got a bus to Semporna for 60 ringgits. Can't remember the company, but it seemed a better deal. Its a really long bus journey. Around 12 hours, but luckily we arrived right past our hotel (Marina Inn which is nice, but doesn't really have cable. Just one channel). We ate, as we did every night, at the set menu place with the internet cafe. They do venison. Semporna seemed like a bit of a shithole on first impression and it never changed our minds. Cannelle thinks it is the shittest place we have stayed in for 6 months of travelling. Probably. Though it has a few nice places to eat and if you are diving you won't see it in the daylight anyway.
We went to Sipadan Scuba and got all of our equipment ready for the course the next day. There was nothing to see in the town so I caught up with my writing and we watched the Artist again on tv. Both of us were nervous for the diving the next day.
We grabbed breakfast, as we did every day, at the Bismillah Indian place. Nice horlicks and cheese roti. We got suited up and set off for Sibuan on their little 10m speedboat. Our instructor was Polish and really nice. We opened with the Navigation dive, which is probably not the best when you haven't dived for 5 months. We were pretty shit, but we completed the tasks, even having time to see a sea snake. The islands here are beautiful. There were some Greek daytrippers with us and they must have been bored but seemed to enjoy it. I wouldn't trip there if I wasn't diving, but then I don't like beaches. It was a paradise. The second dive was the one Cannelle had been dreading. The deep dive. We went down and didn't even realise we had hit 29m until our instructor showed me. You really can't tell. We could see some colours weren't visible and we didn't seem to suffer from nitrogen narcosis. We saw our first turtle, a beautiful cuttlefish, a pufferfish, a ray and a shark sucker barrel rolling through the water. It was a nice drift dive. For the third dive we did the drift dive and there was less current than with our deep dive lol. Still we saw a crocodile fish, a few types of frogfish, a lionfish and a spadefish. You see a lot here and the aquatic life is impressive. Much better than Ko Tao. We had successfully done day one and all the homework. We weren't going to be able to do a wreck dive so we cheated and took boat dive and underwater naturalist to make it just about three fun dives. The hard work was over. We watched the shitty oscar ceremonies but had to give up before the end, only to find out Argo won best film. How the fuck did that happen. Should have been Zero, Dark Thirty, but any of Lincoln, Life of Pi and Django Unchained would have been fine with me.
The weather was super shitty and rainy in the morning. Great. We were heading to Boheydulang, which was disappointing as it wasn't a highlight island. When we got there it was only sunny on our island and the place was beautiful. Cannelle thought it was the most beautiful of our dive sites. Its a very nice place. We did the Boat dive and I had to abort after 5 seconds with a problem on my respirator, but afterwards it was ok and we did the dive. The second dive was underwater naturalist and that was easy enough. We had our PADI advanced open water certificate. Cool. They even gave us a free fun dive for the day so we could relax for the first time with our first fun dive. We had seen a turtle, a cuttlefish and a huge giant moray eel. Enormous. Cannelle loved the second dive. We saw some bumphead parrotfish, which is a rare spot, a semi circular angel fish, a huge sea snake and a devil scorpionfish. Pressure was really off on the last dive and its so much more fun. We even nailed the neutral buoyancy after pussying out of taking the peak performance buoyancy course. That's not our main problem. Conserving oxygen is as we would find out at Sipadan. I had banged my leg on the side of the boat on entry again, but not as bad as Ko Tao. Spurs won 3-2 against West Ham with another last minute winner. Keeps us up there.
SIPADAN DAY. We were excited for this, though Cannelle was worried for the sharks. We were diving with an English guy, a French couple and a Russian. All of them have well over 100 dives. We had 11. Bit of an experience gap. Oh well. It was choppy out on the sea. The island is very pretty and so small. Its a tiny spike in the sea, which is why you get such good marine life there. We started off at South Point and the currents were way stronger than we were used to. So many fish. Too many fish. We saw loads of turtles, sharks and bumphead parrotfish. No hammerheads, which we had gone deep for. We ended up surfacing around 15 minutes early as we could not conserve our oxygen anything like the others. Will come with time maybe, but then I am just a big guy. We did coral garden next and it was a bit shit by Sipadan standards. We almost made it to the end on that dive lol. The English guy must have got sick of me asking what we missed in the last 10 minutes of every dive. Cannelle had run away from a shark on that dive as it went towards her, I drifted over 3 which was surreal and when I came close to another one, it opened its eye and ran away. Pussy. Its not that intimidating diving with white tips, but lets see how I handle the big ones. At one point a giant Green Turtle cruised down between us and dovetailed the French woman for a while. Really beautiful. In the middle we got stuck in a washing machine of current. That cost us air as Cannelle was having problems staying down with her buoyancy. On the final dive we would head to the legendary Barracuda Point. We descended into a huge school of Jacks. Amazing. I had never seen so many fish. We went right through them. The current is mental here. We saw sharks and turtles with shark suckers hitching a ride, I saw a moray eel swimming. We had to get down and cling onto rocks to watch the barracudas. So many of them. I went 'gracefully' right through them before getting down last of the group. Almost got blown away. Really surreal. While hanging on the rocks to watch the Sea Eels later on a huge turtle cruised in and sad down next to me. Cannelle was lying 3m from a shark watching the barracuda. This is an amazing dive site. Its leagues ahead of anything else we have ever dived and so worth it. We came up 10 minutes early as always and snorkelled above the group. These are real advanced dive sites, but you can have a great experience here as an open water. You will just have an even more amazing experience with your advanced. We kicked back in the city and then decided to see if we could get to Kinabatangan and Sukau in one day. We did and it was so easy. We got there in just over 4 hours. Will let you know how in the next part. Sipadan is worth the hype and the money :-)
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