Underwater Eden and living it up on an oil rig

6/23 So Frida, Caroline and I took the taxi to the bus station to catch the overnight bus.

6/24 We got dropped off in semporna around 4am and just decided to sleep at the bus stop until our dive operator picked us up at 8:30. I was wary of rats though as we know what has happened sleeping at bus stops before. Except this place was much cleaner and less sketchy. After getting picked up we took the boat out towards Mabul island. It was a cool boat ride going by several islands and hundreds of houses and buildings just sitting on stilts in the middle of the ocean. Turns out it's pretty shallow there and lots and lots of the fishermen have houses just built out of the ocean. As we approached Pulau Mabul we could see this giant orange structure rising above the water, towering over it. That was where we would be spending the next 3 days. Run by seaventures (recommended by Chris back in the perhentians), it is an old converted oil rig. How unique is that? Sleeping and diving from a giant oil rig. The boat arrived at the bottom of the rig and we hopped on this external winch elevator and were pulled up and welcomed with drinks. We quickly realized that we were the only whiteys on the rig. There were about 20 total divers on the rig. Looking at the dive schedule was quite hilarious. It was full of Li Xi, Qin Ming, Xing Zao, Hong Me...etc...etc. until you got to boring Travis Guy, Frida Albertssons, and Caroline Burman. We all had a good laugh with that. The rig was all malaysian workers, chinese divers, and 1 coloradoan and 2 swedes. We checked into our rooms which were quite nice considering we were on a rig. The rig was actually quite cool. Had great views of the ocean and mabul island. Game rooms, a huge dining deck, and a really big sundeck. We did a checkout dive at the reef under the rig. It was cool. It's famous for "muck" diving where you see some unsual creatures. We saw crocodile fish, frogfish, lots of scorpion fish, lion fish, and tons of these long thing needle fish. After the checkout we had an amazingly tasty and amazingly huge buffet lunch. Our crazy indulging eating habits from the hike up kinabalu would continue here at sipadan where there was buffets, tea time snacks, and oreos to be had round the clock. After the check-out dive and lunch caroline and I went for another dive under the rig. One of the beauties of diving with this company is that you get your 3 dives at sipadan, 3 dives at mabul/kapalai and then unlimited diving in the house reef. I can thank my lucky stars that I met caroline and frida b/c not only did it give me a dive buddy and cheaper transport by boat, but it gave me, in caroline, and amazing dive buddy. She's an excellent diver and has advanced open water like me, so there wasn't ever a problem with depth or if there was a strong current or running out of air or anything. And also, caroline is a go getter like me. So we made sure we dove as much as was possible according to dive limits with surface intervals and all that. The 2nd dive under the rig was quite cool for me b/c it was the first time I had gone diving with no dive master, and we did it with an insane "hurricane" current. So it was just us finding our way around and deciding where we would go. After the 2nd house reef dive, we went to Mabul Island for a dusk dive. This was another great muck dive. Saw some mandarin fish (the most beautiful fish in my opinion), some cuttlefish, some sort of eel I'd never seen before, several unique crabs and prawns, and even some turtles overhead.
That night after an amazing meal (of course) some of the divemasters and staff started playing music. I, of course with my new found love of karaoke from the philippines and somehow courage (it helps in these countries when you're the only native english speaker so they can't really tell how bad a singer you are) got up to sing a few songs while the band played the music. Of course I had my backup girls of caroline and frida. So we spent the night singing, dancing, and of course crazy dancing. It was really just the three of us and this one chinese guy, Lie Yi, who I really liked and spoke pretty good english for chinese. We eventually headed off to bed, me full of excitement for the day ahead as tomorrow would be sipadan

6/25 We left at 6am for the 45 minute boat ride to sipadan, full of expectation as this is listed as a top 5 dive spot in the world. The boat ride was bumpy and you could see a malaysian destroyer battle ship off in the distance. We got to the tiny island (similar size to the Estes Park Highschool building I would say). Beautiful island of course with a white sand beach, palm trees, and aqua water. The reef is highgly protected (a great thing) so you have to get off the boat, sign in, and show the permit (they only let like 100 divers a day go). A funny thing that you notice right away is a building near the beach, with barbed wire fences it, sand-bag hideouts and trench things built with millitary guys behind holding huge machine guns. You may think that this is to protect the reef from illegal fishing, but you'd be wrong. C'mon, this is asia, they would never protect a natural thing that much. They're there to protect the island as malaysia's. See one of the amazing things about this dive site is that it has amazing wall dives b/c from the reef, the wall drops down 1500 feet. What this means, is that the island is not really part of a major land mass such as borneo, so it went unclaimed for a while. Then malaysia figured out the tourist potential and claimed it. Since then the philippines and indonesia have attacked it on a regular basis to try and lay claim to it. The last major issue and the reason for the millitary presence now was that a couple of years ago a philippine group attacked the island, overan the few police on it and kidnapped about 20 tourists. So it was quite the funny contrast of beautiful coral and millitary base. We did three dives there. All three AMAZING! Great wall dives with gorgeous corals and so much fish. Then dives with monstrous schools of barracuda and jacks and other schooling fish. Whitetip reef sharks everywhere. Green and hawksbill turtles everywhere. You'd get out of breath you were so excited. Look right shark, left turtle, up barracuda. It was crazy. We checked out the opening of this giant cave. It goes in like 70m and apparently there are lots of turtle skeletons b/c sometimes they go in to sleep and then get lost and drown. For the same reason, we didn't enter (but actually more like the extra 150 ringitt charge). But all three dives were just amazing, seeing so much. Frida was only snorkelling, but she saw everything and turtles and sharks too. In between each dive we'd go on shore for our surface interval and eat and eat (of course). After dive 3, we headed back to the our home, the rig. Caroline and I of course headed right down for another dive on the house reef where we explored some more. After that, considering it's not too good to push the dive limits, we decided to not do a late afternoon dive and wait for the night dive. Instead we swam from the oil rig to mabul island for some snorkelling. They said it was 1km to the island, but I'd say more like 600 meters, but maybe fins make it that much easier. The workers on the rig, were all like, don't go, don't go the current is too strong, you'll be swept out to sea. But I wasn't too worried as we'd been diving in the current, and I knew I was strong enough to swim it and plus they'd all be watching us and would send the boat after us if we did get pushed far out. Caroline seemed comfortable with it as well, so we headed out. Cake. didn't take too long. I went a bit slower to make sure caroline would be ok as I didn't know how good of a swimmer she was, but she kept up quite well, which is mainly props to her, but also my saddening state of swimming strength on this trip. We got to the island and snorkelled a bit. Saw a couple turtles and even found the mandarin fish again. We were going to get a lift back from the boat there that had divers, but the swim wasn't bad, so we swam back. They were all quite impressed with our swimming when we got back to the rig. We had found out earlier in the day that they had 2 more permits open up for sipadan so we could go again if we wanted. This is very lucky b/c it's hard enough to get one permit. So we had the difficult (but good kind of difficult) decision to make as to whether to go back to sipadan with all the big stuff or do the dives at mabul witht the macro stuff. We decided on sipadan as it is world class and hard to get. That night we went to the huge sundeck and brought some mats and fell asleep on the deck watching the stars and enjoying the breeze. Sometime in the middle of the night it started to rain and we were forced back to our cabins

6/26 Got up early again for another 3 dives in sipadan. Again AMAZING! I think even more sharks and turtles this time. The great thing here is that either the sharks and turtles are so used to people or haven't been hunted, but they are quite friendly. You can get really close to the sleeping sharks before they swim off and the ones swimming about will swim up pretty close. And the turtles will just swim up really close and when they're resting you can get really close to them and could touch them if you wanted (though this is bad b/c the oil on your hands can allow things to grow on their shells). One of the dives we did we just came upon shark after shark after shark. It was unbelievable. And of course turtles left and right and a few napolean wrasse's as well. Besides all the great fish, sharks, and turtles, I alway got a good laugh out of Lie yi and his wife (she told us to call her daisy, and I don't remember her chinese name). Daisy never swam independantly and Lie yi would just pull her along everywhere by her hand. Never separated. And they weren't the best divers, so at times they'd go in a spin or just be kind of out of control. One of the highlights of the day was this octopus. I'd only very briefly seen an octopus before as they quickly go for a whole the second they see you. But this one wasn't too scared. When we first saw it, it was greyish yellow, just sitting on a coral. Then when we got closer it swam to a different coral. In mid swim it was jet black, and then it turned to a whitish color on it's new coral. We watched it for a while and it wouldn't swim away. I put my fin down near it and the octopus shimmered a bit and turned a bit blue as if deciding if it should turn to blue like my fin. After the three dives, we headed back for the giant orange oil rig. We packed up and enjoyed one last great lunch. I had wanted to jump from the rig, which is a pretty decent height, so after lunch I did it. Caroline had said she would but she had gotten all showered and dressed before, so she said she wouldn't do it. I jumped in, but when I looked up, she had change and was getting ready to jump as well. I kind of wish I had jumped earlier there b/c it was fun and I would have liked to jump more and even perhaps go from the very top, but it was time for our ride back to Semporna.
Back at semporna we ate dinner and I said goodbye to my newest swedish friends as they got on the night bus back to KK. I was definitely a bit sad as they were great travel buddies and were becoming good friends. I really really liked them as they were fun, adventurous, active, not afraid to dance, and very similar to me in traveling and activities. They're the kind of travellers that stay busy all the time and don't ever just sit around. Aside from the one and only stringbean, they have been the most active travellers I've been with But Caroline had to get back to med-school and frida to finishing up her thesis and getting a real job. But who knows, maybe I'll see them again. Colorado is definitely a hotspot vacation spot for people like them and I now have quite a list of swedish friends (including peter forsberg =) so maybe I'll head back there sometime, or as we are all travellers, on the road again.
But it's time to get on the road again and meet some other cool people. Tomorrow I think I'll be heading to Lahad Datu to see what I can do about getting into Danum Valley Research Field Centre.