Semporna aka a divers' Nirvana

After another long bus ride past miles and miles of palm oil plantations led us to Semporna. I had heard a lot of tourist say it was a real dump and so was pleasantly surprised when I arrived. There isn't much to the little town, but it's filled with friendly people and tasty restaurants. I spent my first day doing Open Water theory, my second on Sibuan aka sunburn island (it lived up to its name and then some)doing confined water dives and then my third doing open water dives in Mabul. Kate and I are now set up at the Scuba-Junkie resot on Mabul island, which allows us to dive any of the islands south of Semporna, including world-renowned Sipadan. A stroke of luck had me at the top of the waiting list (you should book weeks if not months in advance to secure an actual spot as only 120 divers are allowed on Sipadan a day) and on the boat to Sipadan the day after I finished my open water course. Since I hadn't actually booked in time, I had to use the name of the person who dropped out at the last minute and so went by Cornelia Weinzierl from Austria for the day.

Now Sipadan: I can't even begin to explain how amazing the dive sites are there. They are just breath taking. It is essentially a huge wall of coral and then a 600 m drop. No real slop to speak of in some places so you swim along with a wall of amazing coral with tiny fish on one side and open ocean and sharks on the other. It was amazing. We saw tons of great stuff including reef sharks, white tip sharks, huge schools of barracuda, jackfish, bump head parrot fish and green sea turtles.