If you ask how diving was on the islands of Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai, which hosts not only the most beautiful diving spots in The World, but also in Malaysia, the answer would be absolutely fantastic. The only difficult part is that we’ve been able to get to The Island of Mabul after about two days of journey. On 28.08, our journey from Ankara to Istanbul at 03:00 lasted about 11-12 hours with flights from Istanbul to Dubai-Singapore respectively. When we arrived in Singapore, it was very early in the morning and we were going to spend the night there, so we immediately started to open the streets of Singapore with that fatigue. My impressions and what I’ve learned are that although it used to have plenty of rainforest, it’s quite developed with the growing population, sacrificing some rainforest, but still its streets are immaculate, lush, havas? Singapore is a small country that is abundantly humid, hot and still rainy like the rainforest climate, so a small country that can be easily travelled and seen for 1-2 days. Although it lost some of the rainforest, Singaporeans have built tourist rainforests to trade it a bit. At night, within a three-hour tour program called ‘night safari’, they show you around in the rainforest on open buses. Indeed, many rainforest creatures (a thousand and one different kinds of deer, lions, tigers, hyenas, coyotes, bear, rhinoceros, anteater, elephant, giraffe, buffalo.. etc. ) you have the opportunity to see and experience that environment. Although the fact that all the animals remain quite calm, we had a very pleasant time hoping that it wasn’t, even though it woke up to a thought of these poor people who were drugged or drugged.
The next morning, the rest of our way was waiting for us. We had to take two flights and one bus ride, shorter than the comparison. (Singapore-Kota Kinabalu-Tawau, Tawau-Semporna) We settled in Semporna to spend the night again and started to visit the town before dark. Semporna, a small fishing town, is not very developed, and the streets are pretty nasty. It’s been a different experience for us to coincide with the town’s fruit and vegetable market. A thousand kinds of tropical fruits (especially thanks to the countertara that makes us taste the rambutan and let us meet this beautiful fruit), we have the opportunity to take and spend plenty of pictures and spend plenty of photos with locals selling different spices and herbs, and friendly children. Was. We ate dinner right next to the hotel by trying very interesting seafood in a very simple fishing restaurant, away from all kinds of gaudy. It was worth trying to try the huge crab that came with its shells and the hazelnut skewer that would help him with it, jumbo shrimp skewers and, most recently, the coconut water that we tried as a drink.
Two days after we set off, at 01:09, we arrived in Mabul, the island where we would be based on a 45-minute speedboat ride from Semporna. Both the boat ride and the first moments when we approached the island from afar were amazing. Because we were greeted by an island surrounded by turquoise waters, like fairy tale island, with white sands, palm-covered and overwater bungalows stretching towards the sea. Our rooms are not very luxurious according to our criteria, but it is quite comfortable and charming, but it was quite luxurious after witnessing the poor lives and makeshift villages of the local semannos on the island. After settling in the rooms, we immediately opened by boat for dives. For the 6 days that went on, we did an average of 3 or 4 dives a day, depending on whether we did sunrise in the morning and sunset dives in the evening. We had the opportunity to dive at almost all dive points in Sipadan and Mabul.
For myself, I’d say I did the best dive of my life at Sipadan/South Point. We had the opportunity to see dozens of turtles and sharks (white-type, grey reef and leopard shark) as well as hundreds of colorful burly fish and huge flocks of moonfish and a lot of small species we’ve never seen before. Apart from diving, a day was usually like this; If we have sunrise diving, we wake up in the morning before sunrise, we can wear our diving clothes without breakfast, we go to the point where we will dive on our speedboat, and jump into the water with the first light of the sun and see if the sea creatures wake up and feed. We were doing the most enjoyable dive of the day during these times when he was walking over the reefs. We were then coming ashore, having breakfast and spending some time on the next dive. After the second dive, we returned to Mabul, enjoying rest, lunch or pool on the island, and energized for the third and fourth dives. And the most enjoyable moment after all the dives were completed, the moment we spent four hours a day in the water and started to get a little cold, we left our bodies in the hot pool and sipping our drinks. And dinner behind it. I’d like to talk about food. We all know far eastern food more or less, but for a week, we didn’t expect to see sea crops, boiled rice and noodles for almost every meal, including breakfast. Although we couldn’t find the turkish flavors we were looking for for for breakfast in the morning (cheese, olives, tomatoes..), I wasn’t too bored of eating far eastern food for a week. Their sweet culture isn’t as advanced as we have, but i think even tropical fruits we’ve never eaten before were enough (rambutan, duku, dargon fruit, leche are my favorites).
There is a very small island, 3 resorts, three local villages. Luxury resorts and poor local villages contrast greatly with each other. 80% of the population of the villages is from the children as far as we observe. The locals, whose only livelihood is fishing, poorness and poverty, without electricity or even thirsty, are just as friendly and happy. Children who see a stranger immediately come up to him saying ‘helo helo’, trying to communicate, they are quite happy to take pictures, they want to see the photo taken immediately, thanks to digital technology 🙂
As with the end of every beautiful thing, when the last day of our holiday came, even though we were tired of diving, the return was very difficult. The last night was a pleasant farewell to the dance shows, competitions and delicious barbecue prepared by the holiday village staff. We were ready for our long return trip the next day. This time we had a night in Tawau instead of Semporna. According to Semporna, we had the opportunity to spend a few hours during the day in Tawau, a big city, to see the surroundingarea and get a few things from the market. For dinner, we went to a place where a thousand kinds of seafood could be eaten. We ate quite different and delicious things at a very cheap price in this place, which is definitely not touristic, where it is completely local people. Although it is a bit contrasting to see all the prawns, crabs and lobsters we have been trying to see under the sea for a week in the aquarium, ready to eat in a moment…
All these beautiful moments, the taste of all these different new experiences, we came back to Turkey without any problems or disruptions. Thank you wholeheartedly to the moonlight diving that organised this beautiful trip. (http://www.ayisigidiving.com/)
Bay