Sipadan

Remember how it was like, when you were a kid and your mother took you into a toyshop?

Imagine a white sand beach. Imagine an underwater cliff that drops down to 600 meters just tens of meters out from the beach. Imagine swimming with huge sea turtles and reef sharks. Imagine being surrounded by a school of two meter long barracudas. Imagine all the colours. Imagine seeing more different kinds of fish in one dive than you have seen in your whole life. Imagine much more.

That's Sipadan. Advertised as one of the top dive sites on the planet. Haven't tried the other top spots, but the dives here were definitely the best ones in my life. I was like a kid in the toyshop. It's just not possible to describe. You must see it. That's why, I'll add some photos (sorry, the scenery and the colours are not correctly presented). Photographer: Marius Bratrein.

Surrounded by barracudas (sp.?)

Crocodile flathead fish.
Making friendship with the barracudas (sp.)
Malabar (??) grouper.
Our dive master quite experienced (10000+ dives) was blowing the most perfect air rings I have ever seen. Trying to pick up some skills from the champion.
A green turtle.
Giant (??) moray eel.
Turtle tomb is a more than 100 meters long cave in about 12-18 meters depth, where one can find turtle remains, because they got lost and couldn't make it to the surface to breathe. We just scratched the opening. Divers without proper equipment could face the same fate than the turtles...
A hawksbill turtle.
Turtle madness at Sipadan.

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Scuba Sipadan

Because everybody hates the tourist (Pulp, Common People)

I was sitting on a porch in the front of Scuba Sipadan dive shop and following the action. People were running around, browsing papers and test shouting names. No-one replied. Most of the people demonstrated various degree of confusion. One voluble English girl was complaining about unprofessionalism and the worst dive shop in the world. One of the instructors was sighing loudly. An other one was very concentrated on smoking. It was not the easiest morning for Scuba Sipadan.

One of the reasons why I chose Scuba Sipadan from many dive operators was that it was the only IDC (Instuctor Developement Centre) in Borneo. I wanted to check it out. Maybe I would have liked to come back and possibly learn more about teaching diving. After hearing all the stories, I don't want to do it here. The staff is complaining. Some of them are not getting paid anymore. The customers are complaining. They are feeling being ripped off and forced to dive at worse dive sites. In the diving business world a shop like that cannot exist very long. Not even, if it would have the desired PADI 5-star IDC rating. Customers are escaping. It seems that Scuba Sipadan has turned from one of the most respected dive shops in Borneo to the most unwanted one. Every other shop has booked Sipadan for months ahead. At Scuba Sipadan one can get a spot after diving two days in the other places. Booking less than a week ahead. Althought the staff are professional and very, very experienced, it's not easy to work in a dive shop, where the management does not care about anything else than money. The problem seems to be the managers wife, who actually owns the whole place. She just can't run the business. The shop is diving into deep waters.

However, back to the story. Finally after an hour of fixing, customers complaining, changing boats and the managers wife looking stupid and angry at the same time we managed to depart for my first dive drip to Semporna Marine National Park. We would not to Sipadan this time (since I had to have those two days elsewhere), but to Sibuan, an island nearby. After twenty minutes of driving (and listening the voluble English girl complaining) we arrived to the most lovable island in the world. It was just like those paradise islands in the TV.
Yellow sand, coconut trees, small huts and turquoise lagoon. There was a Bajau sea gibsy community living on the island. Their kids were running naked on the beaches. Small hand-made boats were resting on the shore. The sea was as calm as in a small lake on a windless summer day. Sun was shining and the sky was blue. The diving was something different.

It was like hiking in a graveyard. A bomb field. Sand everywhere. Once living coral reef was turned into small gray pieces of stone. The pieces were covering the slopes as far as one could see. There was lots of confused looking small fish trying to hide between the dead coral fragments. Some living soft corals, occasional chunks of living reef, few turtles, a lion fish, sea urchins, mandarin fish hiding under the urchins, one sea snake, quite lot of plastic wrappings, glass bottles and cigarette buds. That's about it.

I was especting quite a bit more. Of course it was beautiful in a sad way, but it was supposed to be something over the scale. I had seen enough dead reef on Koh Tao.

However, there was a reason for the destruction. As in so many other reef places, also here the locals had found an effective way to fish. Dynamite.

Dynamite fishing was banned already years ago, but still some small scale bombardment was going on. No matter how hard the army and police was trying to guard the area. People needs to eat. Sea gibsies were apparently doing whatever to ensure their food supply. Can't blame them. It's their home. They don't have the education to understand the impact of their acts. That coral need hundreds of years to form a new reef even without any human impact at all.

Borneo is apparently a land of destroyed nature.

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Borneo - the land of palm oil

Taxi drivers in tropical countries are probably the worst cheaters in the world. They need money for living and are trying to make it by all means usually by utilizing unaware tourists. Most of them are unreliable forcing tourists to pay outrageous prices (in local standards) for short transports. As everywhere, of course there are good guys among taxi drivers. The problem is that you never know. One has to be suspicious towards everyone of them. That's the reason, why I try to avoid taxis.

The flight from KL to Tawau in Sabah state of Malaysian Borneo was smooth, although I went to the airport with "the same eyes" meaning that I did not sleep during the whole night. A bright side: it was easy to sleep in the plane...In Tawau the airport bus did not show up. It just wasn't there and it wasn't about to come, said the tout. The only option to get anywhere: a taxi. When I went to the taxi counter, I already knew it. They were going to rip me off. There was no doubt of that.

I was right. The price to Semporna, the town where I was supposed to dive, was 20 euros. My whole day budget. Doesn't sound so expensive in European standards, I know. Just to give a scale: a good meal here costs around 5 ringgits, a night in a guest house normally around 20. An hour taxi drive to Semporna was priced to 95 ringgits. And, of course, there was no choice.

Somehow I managed to unfix the fixed price to half. It was actually quite clever. I took a taxi a kilometer out from the airport and an other one to Semporna. A kilometer out from airport cost as much as the hour ride to my diving town. Damn taxi drivers...

I had thought that Borneo would be a wild rain forested country. During the taxi ride I realized that I was tuned up to the 70's. The rain forest was gone. In stead there were immerse palm-oil plantations and deforested plains. Due to relative stability of the island the forest that had been standing there for 120 million years. The forest that had been older than the mountains. It was all destroyed. Gone. Swiped out of the away in order to produce palm-oil for frying food and "renewable biodiesel" to fuel cars.

A sad, sad sight.

However, I arrived to Semporna alive, although very tired due to unsleepy night. Diving starts tomorrow.

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Out from the City

Have you ever had that a countryman in a too big city feeling?

I am having that all the time in KL. An example: Times Square. A 12 floor two-market-hall shopping mall with twin tower skyscrapers. Both skyscrapers are hotels. Only an Asian mind can be that ambitious?

It would be possible to spend weeks in KL doing and seeing new things every day, but it's time to move on. Departure at 4 am tonight. Borneo, diving, birds, orang-utans, jungles and Mount Kinabalu, here we come!

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Birds

Although forcing free-living jungle birds into a confined space is a dubious concept, it gives a change for taking good photos of otherwise shy animals. KL's Bird Park is said to be "World's largest free-flight walk-in aviary". In practice it's a 21 acre netted and fenced park, where some of the birds are flying free. After all that sweating when carrying my heavy and fancy camera everywhere, I had to put it into action. It made a good escape from the hectic city traffic, but cost more than half of my daily budget. However, it was worth it.

Some samples from 5 hours of work. I am not even trying to do species determination right now. It would go wrong anyway:

Nicobar pigeon

An eagle (or kite or hawk)

Asian fairy bluebird, female

Scarlet Ibis
A heronA pigeon

Some mammals to the end:

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Kuala Lumpur

I arrived to Kuala Lumpur (or just KL), the capital of Malaysia, just before midnight. Since I had heard that most of the cheap accommodation would be found from the China Town, I took the last sky train to the district. A train trip across the city was something different than the jungle train. Silhouettes of skyscrapers were sticking out everywhere. I tried to count them, but lost the count after half a minute. At least more than a hundred. The most notable were the shiny Petronas Twin Towers, which were reaching to the clouds like a double bladed dagger.

A light rain made streets slippery. Although it was midnight, China Town did not sleep. KL never does, they say. Cockroaches, rats, cats and homeless drug addicts on the street. Cleaning patrols brushing dirty and littered streets. People sitting in restaurants, eating, laughing and drinking beer. Mostly Chinese, but also Westerns, Indians, Malays and Africans. The district was perplexedly different compared to the ultra-modern districts I passed by the sky train.

KL is a fascinating city. Although only two million people is living here, it has got probably more skyscrapers than the whole Europe in together. It's an ultra-modern metropol. Something more fancy and tech-freaky than London, Paris or Berlin in Europe. On the other hand it has got the Asian twist. The buzz of traffic. The easy-going slightly chaotic atmosphere. This is especially true in the immigrant districts such as China Town and Little India. Business districts such as KL City Centre and Golden Triangle are more controlled, clean, full of skyscrapers and huge shopping malls.

KL is the first metropol, I have liked since the visit to Rome. It never sleeps. Maybe that's why it looks so beautiful at night. Some photos with legends:
Petronas Twin Towers at day.
A visit to the sky bridge in Petronas Twin Towers.

A shopping mall selling only electronics.

KL City Centre park.
River side close to Little India.

Report from the jungle trek is following later.

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Taman Negara Jungle Trek

Back from the jungle. I'll add photos now and the text later, when I have got more time.

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