SABAH, KAPALAI AND SIPADAN

By Dave Martin

This trip was taken by myself and my wife in early September 2006 and was split into 3 parts - a 7 day eco safari around Sabah, 3 nights at Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary and then 8 days diving from Kapalai. First the safari. Despite some lamentable organisational cock ups by the local company, the guides and trips were great.



Kota Kinabalu.

We started on the first day with trips to Gaya and Munaken Islands for a mixture of jungle trekking and just lying on the beach getting over the jet lag. Nothing extra special but a good way of warming up for what was to come. The next day we went to Kinabalu State Park in the foothills of Mount Kinabalu with a nice orchid garden and some brilliant scenery and then on to Poring for the canopy walk. 40m up and several hundred metres long, it was a worthwhile part of the trip. On the way we stopped off for an encounter with a dorian fruit and also had the good fortune of seeing a rare Rafflesia flower in bloom.





After each day we returned to our hotel in KK and dined out like lords in the local seafood restaurants. We went to the Port View a couple of times and would highly recommend it...especially the lobster in spring onion and ginger and the butter tiger prawns. Not the most 'eco' part of the trip, and apologies for any offence caused, but by God was it good (inexpensive too at £35 for 2 with beer etc). As for a hotel go for the Tanjung Aru which is reputedly the best on the island. It does the most amazing massages and has the most varied breakfast buffet I've ever seen.

All in all this part of the trip was the most relaxed and very much better for being at the start. I think it would have been an anti climax to have it at the end.

Selingan Island

A change of gear as we got up early, flew from KK to Sandakan and took the hour+ boat trip to Selingan Island turtle sanctuary. We arrived mid morning and settled into our chalets which though a little basic were comfortable, clean and cool. The island was truly beautiful and unspoilt. We spent the rest of the day on the beach, swimming and snorkelling. The food was great and there was plenty of random wildlife and flora on the island ...fruit bats, monitors, sea snakes.

The main event was after dinner when everyone gathered to await the call that a nesting turtle has come in. This can be any time up till 5.OOam but we were lucky and the first one, a large green turtle, came up at about 10.OOpm. The whole viewing process was exceptionally well organised and unobtrusive with a flow of the group from watching the turtle laying, transferring the eggs to the hatchery, and then the release into the sea of some of that day's hatchlinqs. The whole group visits the one turtle nesting in order to leave all the others undisturbed. That night there were at least 20 new nests and 3 turtles were still on land when we all got up for breakfast. Either late arrivals or exhausted and in need of helping back to the sea. Something that the wardens did with our assistance.

Sukau

Back to Sandakan and a 3 hour boat trip along the coast and up the Kinabatangan River to Sukau. To the Rainforest Lodge which was right in the heart of the rainforest. We stayed there for a couple of days, doing jungle walks and river trips at all hours of the day and night. It was like an episode of an Attenborough series..3 sightings of wild orang utans, Iong tailed and pigtailed macaques, silver langurs and proboscis monkeys by the dozen, crocodiles, eagles, kingfishers, hornbills, butterflies, lizards ....oh, sorry, and leaches, scorpions, spiders snakes and fire ants. Not everyone's cup of tea but for me, a wonderland.





Sandakan

Back to Sandakan again and a quick trip round the town. Don't miss the memorial to the Sandakan Death March, the Aqnes Keith House and the English Tea House. The latter was a real flashback to the colonial days.

Sepilok

On to Sepilok and the Sepilok Nature Resort. This was a awseome setting with bungalows spread around a huge and beautiful lake and many backing into the orang utan rainforest reserve. We were lucky to have one of the latter and it had a porch from which we could look out into the jungle.














On our first morning we were visited by a large troop of macaques which was hugely impressive, albeit on occasions somewhat disconcerting.

The alpha male could clearly look after himself and was keen to make us aware of that fact!


The orang utan sanctuary was brilliant with 8-12 on the platform at each of the 4 feeding times we visited.





We blended these with jungle walks, both day and night (a tip would be that these are serious walks for a couple of kilometers into the forest, with lots of stingy, bitey and sucky things to add spice. I would thoroughly recommend long sleeves, lightweight long pants and leach socks. Despite having all these I still became an involuntary blood donor on many occasions).







Kapalai

Back to Sandakan and a flight to Tawau via KK again (check out whether the direct flight has been reinstated or maybe the overland trip) a long bus trip to Semporna and finally an hour on a boat to get to Kapalai. A long slog but boy was it worth it! Kapalai is stunning, sitting on top of a reef/sandbar with beautiful stilted bungalows, and looking down from any walkway you could see all variety of reef life-clown fish, morays, barracuda, turtles. The bungalows were palatial and with views to die for. Waking up in the morning looking through the open side of the bungalow to the sunrise over Sipadan is about as good as it gets!






With regard to the diving the place pretty much runs like a liveaboard...the dive groups are meticulously scheduled with 4-5 boats leaving for different sites at the key points of the day.

The basic pattern is either a dawn dive at Sipadan (5.30), return for breakfast, followed by a second Sipadan dive and a late morning dive on either Mabul or Kapalai. Alternatively have breakfast followed by 2 dives on Sipadan (with a landing on Sipadan for coffee and biscuits between), back for lunch and a 3.30pm dive on M or K.

You can dive off the jetty at the dive centre at any time you like (best at dusk or after dark) and there was plenty to see.... sweetlips, morays, octopi, mandarin fish, nudis, crocodile fish, lion fish, ghost pipefish, grouper, turtles, stone fish etc etc.









Sipadan

No surprise that this is rated as one of the world's top dive sites. The most notable feature for me was that everywhere you looked there were turtles, all of which seemed totally unphased by divers. The most I counted in my field of vision at one time was 6 and there were regularly 20+ on a single dive. Greens and hawsbills.

The best sites (and most visited) seem to be Baracuda Point and South Point. The former usually involved a wall dive leading to the plateau at the point. On the wall there were large groups of humphead parrot fish, turtles and more turtles, white tips, black tips, greys and leopard sharks, hawkfish on the coral, and every other form of reef fish imaginable. The point itself was where you saw the chevron barracuda.... initially scattered but then, if you were lucky (and we were lucky on 3 occasions) thousands, moving as one huge wall. And if you were really lucky (and again, we were twice) they would vortex into a huge vertical tube that you could swim into for what must be one of the most memorable diving experiences you are ever likely to encounter. Dodging the very aggressive trigger fish there was plenty else to see as a backcloth, with loads of white tips, and the ever present turtles. South Point was pretty similar in many respects, with a wall leading to a plateau but substitute for the baracuda massive schools of big eyed jacks ...oh and turtles.

Mabul and Kapalai

This was more for the macro fans. Ribbon eels, orang utan, porcelaine and a whole load of other crabs, shrimps of all shapes and sizes, leaf fish, crab eyed gobies, frog fish, a massive range of nudis, flying gurnards, 3 foot long cuttle fish, razor fish, pipe fish...the list goes on. A great contrast to the Sipadan sites.

Epilogue

So to summarise, this was 3 weeks of mind blowing variety and richness of experience. Pretty hectic with quite a lot of travel, including a 30 hour door to door return trip. The flights were with Malaysia Airlines who were fine. The accommodation ranged from the very basic at the Rainforest Lodge to the luxury of the Tanjung Aru, and food from the lobster at the Port View to the squid curry on the flight from KK to KL (think brown rubber bands in a chilli sauce).

We met some amazing people and the Malays in Sabah were warm and welcoming. Not, I am led to believe, what you will experience on peninsular Malaysia. (We decided against a stop over at KL, having heard that it's pretty much a standard oriental capital ,a matter of personal taste I'm sure).

As for cost, the whole trip for myself and my wife was a tad over £2000 each and that included all transport and accommodation, guides, most meals, entry fees, diving etc. In fact all we spent on top was for alcoholic drinks, Sipadan marine park fees, duty free and souvenirs ...indeed we brought back most of the spending money we took. Or we would have done had I not seen a particularly splendid diving watch in KL airport that it would have been a crime not to have given a home.


A great, great holiday and one that sits right there at the top of our top ten. Only nudged into second place by a 2 week trip on the Sea Spirit in the Maldives. Many thanks to Graham at Maldives Scuba Tours for painstakingly putting it together for us.

As you can probably deduce from the above the whole holiday comes with a pretty high recommendation from both of us!