Semporna

We arrived in Semporna mid afternoon, exhausted from Uncle Tan's, but with 4 days spare until we were due to be picked up for the "honeymoon" part of our trip - 5 days at Kapalai Resort.
The spare days had come as a result of not too many delays or flight cancellations, getting to climb Mt Kinabalu the first day we tried and having to rearrange plans in order to do Uncle Tan's on the days they had free.

Eager to test the warm tropical waters we had heard so much about, we decided that we could use the days to do our Advanced Open Water Course, which would then give us more choice with the types of dives we could do at Kapalai (for example going deeper and diving at night). We checked out all the local companies and booked in for the two day/ 7 dive course with North Borneo Divers (for just $260AUD!!!) and spent the rest of the day relaxing with some of the other ex-Uncle Tanners who were in town.

Over the next two days we did our course, with Tom our instructor leading us around the magnificent Sipadan dive sight on the first day and Sibuan the second. It was like swimming in an aquarium (our photos really don't do much justice to how amazing it is) and was very difficult to concentrate on the skills we were to learn and our gauges!! We learnt about navigation techniques, bouyancy control using just our breath, fish identification, photography and got qualified to 30m (without getting narc'd!) We also did a night dive on the last night, which was quite spooky!!

Here are some photos:

Testing the camera works!


Saw hundreds of butterfly fish - big and small.

Found lots of Nemos too!

A Spanish Dancer - so named for their frills that propel them along
and look like a big Spanish skirt and are often edged in bright colours.


The most awesome thing - turtles everywhere...


It's a hard life...


Not sure what this one's called, but he had big lips and purples spots!


A White Tipped Reef Shark - wasn't sure how I'd react when I saw
one of these guys, but they soon became like any other fish!


Pulau Sipadan (in bad weather!) a diving mecca and regarded by many as one of the world's top dive sights for diversity in marine life. In 2004 the Malaysian government ordered all resorts built on the island be closed and removed due to the destruction to the island and the environment and now visitors/divers are limited to a small 150m stretch of beach and the jetty (right above), with only 120 permits to visit being issued per day. About half a dozen army officers occupy the remaining resort and patrol the stretch of beach, checking the various dive operators' permits, as well as forming a 'presence', given in the past the island has been the subject of territorial debate with the nearby Philippines.