Our Big Scuba Weekend in Borneo

After getting signed off as Open Water Divers by Planet Scuba last weekend, we decided to do a real dive trip. Some friends of ours were planning a dive trip to Borneo. We made arrangements to join them, but they had a family emergency and had to cancel and fly back to the States.

We had already booked our flights so we decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.

They had booked accommodations on Mabul Island through Borneo Divers Mabul Resort. Our friend, Sporty Sharon, recommend Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort. I sent emails to both resorts and the Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort wrote back first, so I booked with them.

I screwed up our flight to Borneo and ended up wasting a day traveling. First we drove from Singapore to the Johor Bahru airport in Malaysia. From there we flew to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo. Then another flight to Tawau where we spent the night. The next morning we drove overland through palm plantations to the boat jetty where we finally caught a speedboat to the resort.

The resort was fantastic. It made the long trip well worthwhile. Last week we were complaining about the spartan accommodations in Mersing and Palau Aur. You'll hear no complaints this week. In fact the resort was so nice we nearly forgot last week's shortcomings.

We stayed in one of the chalets on stilts over the water. We had perfect views of the morning sunrise over the open ocean.

The resort provided 3 boat dives every day, with unlimited dives from their jetty. They also took care of all the heavy lifting and setting up and breaking down the equipment for each dive.

We ended up diving at three sites, Mandarin Valley, which is the site just off the resort's jetty, and Barracuda Point and South Point which are both off Sipadan Island.

The dives at Mandarin Valley were OK, but the dives off Sipadan were incredible. The sea life was unreal. For our first real dive, it couldn’t get any better. We saw turtles, sharks, barracuda, clownfish, so many things I can barely begin to describe. But you can see for yourself, we have two videos from our dive posted below.

The resort sent an underwater videographer to record our dives. Of course we bought the video--it was our first dive. But we hope to avoid the geeky side of diving, which apparently involves coercing all your buddies to watch your dive videos, in particular the video of the dive that they all just did. Our friend Sporty Sharon wonders, "Why would I want to see a video of the dive I just did?" Yea thats a fish, I just saw it in real life.

We have lots of pictures and videos from the trip. More than half the pictures are mine. But since my camera is only waterproof to 3 meters, most of the underwater pictures are from our videographer.

There are two videos. The first video is from our South Point dive. The second video is from our Barracuda Point dive. As you watch the videos you'll find its hard to recognize faces under water. The best way to find me in the water is from my red swim fins and that damn bald patch on the top of my head. That, and I'm frequently waiving at the camera. Deanna is wearing orange fins and a black swimcap on her head.

Location: Palau Sipadan
Dive Site: South Point
Max Depth: 25.6 meters
Bottom Time: 42 minutes


Location: Palau Sipadan
Dive Site: Barracuda Point
Max Depth: 24.1 meters
Bottom Time: 45 minutes


We can't wait to go diving again.

I Always Wanted To Go Scuba Diving

Ever since I was a kid, watching Jacques Cousteau on PBS channel 9, I wanted to go scuba diving. Last week, I finally gave it a try.

Some friends in Singapore said they were going scuba diving in Borneo; they showed us pictures of their last trip and invited us to join them. It was all very last-minute, but we called Planet Scuba who helped set up their trip and asked how quickly we could get certified.

We hired a scuba instructor for one-on-one training and started the pool training the next day. That was Wednesday, and on the following Friday, we took off to the island of Pulau Aur on the coast of Malaysia for our four open-water certification dives.

The pool training was deceptively easy. I had little fear of going under water and playing around with the scuba gear, knowing that if I got in trouble, I could just stand up in the pool and breathe normal air.

It was troubling, however, to be unanticipatedly blind in my dive mask without my glasses. You can’t talk or hear underwater, and I could barely see the instructor’s hand signals only a few feet from my face. So Friday before we left for Palau Aur, I bought us both custom dive masks with prescription lenses. (For those of you that care, that was -4.50 in both eyes for me, and -1.50 for Deanna). At this point, we’re committed.

Our bus picked us up later that same Friday at 7:00pm from Singapore. The bus was purported to take 3 hours to get to Mersing on the mainland of Malaysia, where we would spend the night before catching a speedboat to the island in the morning. But the border crossing from Singapore to Malaysia is quite congested now days, because Singapore accidentally let their number-one most-wanted terrorist escape through an open window after he asked to go to the toilet. (Yea, really.) So the bus trip took an extra two or so hours.

The hotel in Mersing was nothing to talk about, but at least it wasn’t as bad as when we stayed at the Cheapest Hotel In Manhattan. (“I found it on the internet, honey.”)

In the morning we missed the tide getting out of Mersing. The instructor said he’s never missed the tide before, but our boat couldn’t get out the river mouth. We had to turn back and wait for the tide to come in.

Planet Scuba helped out by buying us breakfast in Mersing and negotiating with the hotel to allow us to check back in for a few more hours of sleep whie we waited for the moon to line up properly to lift the ocean back into the river mouth.

Of course the tide did come back, and we made it to Pulau Aur in time for two dives that Saturday.

I didn’t want to bring my camera on the dive boat. The camera is water proof, but its only water proof down to 3 meters (about 10 feet for friends back home). We planned to go much deeper. So unfortunately I only have pictures from the beach where we stayed. Maybe next time we’ll get a real underwater camera.

The actual scuba diving was fantastic and frightening. There were 3 other beginner divers doing their certification dives with us. And there was a literal boatload of experienced divers clamoring around doing their own things. In the chaos of all this, our instructor, Stella, and her assistant, Eric, did a great job of keeping us alive.

Yet, I still managed to screw things up. I dropped my prescription dive mask overboard after our second dive. Fortunately experienced divers find it a fun challenge locating things on the bottom of the ocean. Fifteen minutes later I was seeing again.

We stayed at the Atlantis Bay Resort, which was more Spartan than would normally justify the label “resort.”

We had a single cabin with a steel framed bed. Most of the other rooms were more like dorms with four people sharing two bunk-beds. The dive shop owner said the accommodations were “simple but clean,” -- mostly true. The room included group meals at the small canteen. Beers were 8 Malaysia Ringgits a can (about US$2.50). The food was no worse than the canteen at my office.

Two more dives on Sunday and we were signed off as open water divers. We’re already planning our next dive trip to Borneo.

And maybe next time I’ll get some underwater pictures to share.


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