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Sub : Southern Island fishing trip?

Gab : Halo, how abt a fishing trip to the southen Island? any one interested pls let us know. 31/3/06 12:02
Gabriel : ok, count me in. 31/3/06 12:18
Dory : June is reserve for Pulau Ubin durian makaning.....Jacky and Yook Sau....31/3/06 12:25
Gab : We can hire Ah Chua's boat and every body jt share the boat fee. but you hv to prepare ur own fishing eqmt. 31/3/06 12:27
Dory : It would be good to organize at least 1 event per month. Keeps the club activity going and we all can have time to catch up. Be it scuba diving, mountain climbing, fishing, makaning, nature walk, project aware clean up, photography, etc. etc. Lets all put our effort into this. Does not have to be one specific person organising. Good to have at least every member has a chance to organise the event. 31/3/06 12:28
Michelle : Fishing trip is day time only or what? 31/3/06 13:15
Gab : yes, its day trip. same timing as we went divg. 31/3/06 13:40
Dory : on ah......for fishing. wah, long time did not go fishing... 31/3/06 15:53
Dory : aha...after a while...I wonder what our fun kakis are up to nowadays???? the busy ones get busier each day....sigh! anyway, Jacky thanks for organising the Bukit Timah walk and sad to say even I cannot make it last minute. Perhaps another time. 10/5/06 16:21
Dory : hello fun kakis! still remember our fishing trip???? how about Sunday 28 May? Any one of you interested leh? 10/5/06 16:26
Dory : aha......guess none is interested or never visit our blog. hiza...so very sad. 16/5/06 11:48
Lilo : yeah.. hehe.. the truth is... hardly anybody visits this blog as i can track how many visitors... sad indeed...16/5/06 11:58

More of Sipadan trip

SS took some photos of SWV's room and dive center.

This is the bathroom. They put orchids in our room including bathroom on ehm, don't know the 3rd day or 4th. This is the best bathroom I've had during a dive trip~ It's got everything we need. I don't know if Manado's resort is better as I haven't been there.

The best sundeck~! We can sleep with the wooden doors open like this. Which is really really enjoyable.
Hazel carried us all one by one~!!

Sweet~~girls~~! SS and ST. I think they look alike.

Dive center. Full tanks and empty tanks were put separately but without other indication that whether this is a full or empty tank. I personally prefer the practise of which full tanks' o-ring are covered by a sticker. This will avoid confusion AND accident.

One more thing should mention about the dive operator's practise... The inexperience divemaster always ask the boatman to follow the other boat. When two boats were close to each other, the divemasters on each boat jump into the sea to "check current".. And when both of them came up, each of them was pointing at 2 opposite direction of current..................... Then the 2 divemasters communicate with each other by hand signals. In the end, I still had no idea where the current was heading. I don't think the divemaster was clear either.hehe... So, we're on our own......
Alex... where is your photos.. Alex~~~

Gabriel assisting Doreen for her sunset dive.

And Philip.

Sipadan Mar '06 (Summary)

Sipadan Water Village's staffs were superb, very friendly and good service. From the moment we reach its jetty till they sent us off at the airport.

The room was huge... very clean and comfy. Why didn't we take some photos of the room???

Anyway, the resort itself was superb. But the dive centre... hmm... lousy. The dive sites were lousy, that's out of dive centre's control of course, but the dive guides were lousy as well. Caused us to fin for long distances unneccessarily due to their lack of experience and knowledge. Boatman and divemasters weren't helpful. Very very lousy service. We are not those pampered divers who need to be treated like princess but their service, basic attention to customers were really really bad.

Most divemasters were fairly new, very very inexperience. They requested us to follow their many ridiculous rules but they themselves did not seem to stick to basic dive procedures. If we were all new open water divers, it could be very dangerous to follow these young inexperience divemasters. For eg, they did head-counts, when the number didn't match, they just abandon the head-count instead of looking or waiting for the rest of the divers who were not in sight. So what's the point of head-counts?

But then, can't really blame them... Some of those divemasters are university students. Went there to look for a temporary job. That's why they are very inexperience. They weren't even divers when they came for a job. Unlike Tioman or Manado dive centres there are permanent divemasters or those who have worked there for many years. But what I don't understand is why aren't there experienced divemasters around?

All in all, it's a disappointing trip. Not only the dive centre didn't provide acceptable-level service, the dive sites were disappointing. Sipadan is so famous. So called world class diving. But the amount of corals... were devastating to look at. What on earth happened to the corals?? Sipadan has been famous for so many years, never would we had imagine seeing such a devastating state of coral life... But there are many people out there think Sipadan is worth to go still. I don't understand...

Many dives I was so bored that I played around by swimming in different styles... If not for the pelagics (sharks, turtles, dolphins, whale shark, etc..) that visit Sipadan, it would be... ... ... I don't even want to think about it...

This is a post from my own point of view. Guys, please leave some comments to add your thoughts or if you disagree with anything above, anything at all, just leave some comments ne~
Michelle

Sipadan Mar '06 (1)

Our trip summary to Sipadan (1 day Kuching) from 28/2 - 7/3/06. Please feel free to leave comments~

Photos here are marked with the photographer's name and camera used in the corner of the photos. These are only selected photos, please go to the links below to view all (and bigger) photos.
Andy's photos
Gabriel's photos
Winnie's photos
Michelle's photos
and er... I am still waiting for Alex's photos....
(28th Mar update : SS's photos)
Shirley S's photos
(4th Apr update : Jacky's photos)
Jacky's photos

Here we were waiting for the time to pass........ took 3 flights in a day, what we've done that whole day was wait..wait...and wait....


This is Kota Kinabalu Airport, an airport by the sea.



We arrived at Semporna, Sipadan Water Village's office, waiting for them to load up our gears and luggage to the speedboat. Gabriel dozing off.

I forgot to use force flash... SWV speedboat's driver was very courteous, kept turning back and gesture the ok sign to us, asking us if everything is ok. He saw me struggling to keep my balance to take a photo, he actually slowed down and let me take the photo. Then I realised I haven't turn on the flash.. but "paiseh" to ask him to slow the speedboat again. So, this'll do. haha..

Here's Sipadan Water Village~! Each of these is a room. Too bad I didn't the photos of the super big and cozy room.. What a pity......... I miss the resort, and room, resort's service. I think we all agree the resort's service was very good, but not the dive shop. And the staffs lined up to welcome us.. I felt like the scene in "The Fifth Element" where Lilu (Mira Jovovich) and Coben (Bruce Willis) arrived at Flostent(don't know how the heck to spell it) Paradise and were welcomed by garlands of flowers. Even though they didn't actually welcome us by flowers but everyone of them was saying "Welcome~ Welcome~".

Oh by the way, Gabriel and then Winnie as well, called me Lilo because of this. Lilo and Lilu.. about the same ya? hahaha...quite appropriate feeling then. hehe...

We were led to the lobby and was given cold face towel. COOL~! Really "cool". And also a very nice honeydew juice as welcome drinks. After the very lengthy orientation about the resort and its service, we hurriedly went to our rooms and got our gears out and ready for our first dive~!

But we did our check out dive ONLY after another VERY LENGTHY "orientation" about the dive shop and RULES AND REGULATIONS... blahblahblah blahblahblahblah...... Maybe not all of us feel the same but I personally felt that I had arrived at a diving boarding school... So many things to remember..

Anyway, Sipadan/Kapalai/Mabul were full of friendly turtles~ They weren't bothered by divers AT ALL. Perfect models for our cameras.

How can there not be nudibranches?


The ever lovely frogfish. We went so close to it and it still remained there. I wondered whether it was thinking that we can't see him, or her. LOL...

An underwater Colgate commercial by Hazel~ She almost ran out of breath for I couldn't press the shutter through my glove thus I took a looongg time before finally took the shot ... hahaha...

Sharks. Quite a few of them. Some had a glimpse of hammerhead sharks.


Dolphins~~!! Hundreds of them~!! but it was very difficult to take photos through underwater housing. Can't see the LCD screen at all so they just anyhow snapping the camera. This is one lucky shot. Alex took nice photos of a mother and calf but he hasn't give me the photos~ There were many pairs of mother and calves. It was a fantastic encounter~

Pickachu nudibranch~

SWV divemasters diving into the sea with some German women who, one of them was sun burnt like a roasted pig... We couldn't help "marvelling" on her "roasted" back...

And our very own Hazel.
Another roasted... nolah, not roasted yet... hahaha... Shirley T's burnt hands... very funny...

Sipadan Mar '06 (2)

Shirley S with, er.. are those sea grass or coral? (28th Mar update : Gabriel said these were hydroid~! SS, were you aware of it that you're so close to these stinging fellow? I didn't know at all... lucky didn't touch them...)

Hazel, Winnie(if not mistaken) and Shirley T with friendly turles.


Octopus.. cute~

Philip (if not mistaken) with the octopus. Can you see the octopus?

Let's play... "Locate the animals":


Cute little shrimp. (29th Mar update: This is anemone shrimp)
Eagle ray. (28th Mar update: Andy said this is not eagle ray, anybody which species is this?)

Ever so colourful ribbon eel.

These looked like stalactite, very beautiful.

Sun rise. Another day of diving began~


Played with tiny hermit crabs during surface interval. These hermit crabs, small as they were, they have strong grabs... One of it(not the biggest in this photo) "took" a tiny tiny piece of Andy's skin...


"海带海带海带..."

Clockwise from top left Philip, Yok Sau, Brenda, Jacky, Andy, Hazel, ST, Winnie, SS, Me, Gabriel and Alex.

Sharks. Look at the background... devastating.. all dead corals.



Crocodile fish'es eye. At one point I was very close to it. I wondered did it ever bite anyone...

Evening came. Night dives at SWV only cost RM35. We were ecstatic that it cost that little but after our check out dive at the house reef... we understand why it cost so little...
This juvenile was very camera shy... kept turning away from me when my camera is focus...

What shrimp is this? (28th Mar update : This is cleaner shrimp. Ohhh.. this is the one that one female diver in a documentary opened her mouth and let this type of shrimp clean her mouth.. hehe...)

I've never seen sea hare till this trip. They are very big~!

I forgot is this called dragon seahorse? (28th Mar Update : This is harlequin ghost pipefish, not seahorse. hehe...) (29th Mar Update : ghost pipefish is also under seahorse family)

Hermit crab's close up model shot.

Is this a squid?? So cute~~~~

The mandarin fish which fell in love with human (Andy) instead of the male of its own species. So Andy and Alex didn't manage to see them mate. (28th Mar Update : The mandarin fish who was lying on Andy's arm was a male, not female... it was a "gay night"...)