Mabul Island, Borneo

Beautiful Mabul Island
From Brunei, we decided to take the overland (read: hitchhikers) route to Kota Kinabalu, or KK as everyone calls it, in Malaysia’s eastern Sabah province. This turned out to be a little more complicated than anticipated and involved a total of seven different cars (and more than six hours on the road), all taking us a little further towards our destination. Still, as always in Malaysia, hitching was easy enough and we never had to wait longer than a few minutes for a car to stop. Plus we were riding with a few real characters again, amongst them an ex Brunei-Army helicopter pilot and a friendly Chinese family with three kids on vacation.

Kota Kinabalu (KK) however was nothing more than a stop-over point for us on our way to the world famous diving spot of Sipadan, down on the south-east coast of Sabah. We spent a day and a half getting organised (some essential shopping, posting some stuff home, spending time on the Internet), before hitching a ride to the airport to catch our next flight.

Huge turtle swimminmg next to our boat

luggage through, nobody was actually checking the monitors that showed the contents of our bags – they were way too busy doing something else. The first check was particularly good as it was very Asian in a way – follow the rules, but do it your own way – making the whole process a joke in effect: 

The woman that was supposed to monitor the contents of the luggage was busy peeling off the security stickers that went on the luggage indicating that the bag had been screened by her machine. What a joke.

Considering all the hassle for the passengers of these air travel security checks, the supposed benefit of all these measures (not just here in KK but in Malaysia in general) is close to zero. In fact, on a flight we took two weeks ago we had no problem taking Karen’s big pocket knife onto the plane in our hand-luggage – again, the luggage was screened but they didn’t check the screens of the scanning machine.

Just half an hour from the coast of Malaysian Borneo, Mabul is a small, oval shaped island covered in tall palm trees, fringed with soft white sand and surrounded by the turquoise water of the Celebes Sea. You can easily walk around it in half an hour. The pathway around the island cuts through a local Bajau village and gives one an intimate glimpse into a traditional lifestyle that is entirely dependent on the sea.

Most people that set foot here, however, have only one thing in mind and that is scuba diving. Mabul has not only become famous for its proximity to Sipadan, but also has a reputation as one of the best “muck” diving sites there is.

The abundance of large underwater animals and the unique topography in Sipadan offers an adrenalin-filled diving experience, and as there are no accommodation facilities on Sipadan, many divers choose Mabul as their base to explore it. Mabul, however, offers something entirely different, yet equally fascinating. The fairly shallow waters and low visibility, has earned it the muck diving label, but it is the abundance of tiny, exotic creatures that brings divers, armed with macro lens cameras, down here time and time again.