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We found a cheap flight from Bangkok to Kota Kinabalu with Air Asia. This was great as it brought us directly to Borneo so we could avoid traveling via Kuala Lumpur, saving us some time and money.

The Unique Wildlife of Borneo

Odv
2006-04-15 18:37:04

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We found a cheap flight from Bangkok to Kota Kinabalu with Air Asia. This was great as it brought us directly to Borneo so we could avoid traveling via Kuala Lumpur, saving us some time and money.

The first thing that I wanted to do, was learn to dive, several places in South East Asia had passed my review, but I had finally settled on Semporna and Sipadan. This was one of the main reasons to come to Borneo

In Semporna, I followed a 3 day diving course, at the end of which I received my PADI open water diver certification. It was a fast course and the closed water training dives, which are supposed to be held in a swimming pool, were in the open sea, in a shallow area off an island. After the first basic dive in shallow water, I did another 5 dives as part of the course at Sibuan island, Sabangkat island (twice), Bohedulang and Church reef. I was learning while watching beautiful coral, lionfish, nudibranchs, frogfish, crocodilefish, hawksbill and green turtles pass below me! This was definitively a great place to learn diving.

After passing the exam with perfect marks, we went to dive off Sipadan itself, which deservedly ranks as one of the top diving spots in the world. We saw an uncountable number of hawksbill turtles, green turtles and sharks. In particular we encountered a group of about 10 reef sharks resting on the ocean floor.

Still being a beginner at diving, my air usage was (and still is) very high. During our second dive at Sipadan, my instructor, Graham, exchanged his BCD (air tank and everything) with me while we were at a depth of 24m. As he had used up much less air, I could stay underwater for longer. It was a very nice thing of him to do.

While I was diving Maris was snorkeling, when I surfaced after the first dive, the boat came to collect me and Maris was left alone in the water. This was already not a smart thing to do on the part of the boat crew, but while she was alone, a triggerfish tried ...