Sipadan and Hockey

Repost from long long loooong time ago.


Preparation:
Nothing much, as Anthony had prepared everything and kept close contact with Alan, the Sabah side. We had our regular meeting to discuss small things, big things, etc.
First time meeting Cynthia, Leonard and Ee Chiew. We met Anthony and Froggie before, in fact, we had never dived without them.

A week before Sabah, we got the news that monsoon was over. From November to February was the worst time for divers stay in Singapore. West Malaysia closed for diving, so we were fasting for few months.


UNDERWATER HOCKEY

In those few months we picked up underwater hockey, which was a hilarious but serious sport, the sore muscles proved it all. The glove was made with ordinary glove with layer of dried white glue on the upper palm. The purpose was to prevent injuries, to be worn in whatever hand used to push the ball. Then, the stick is a boomerang shape (and size) made of wood. The ball is a heavy rubber ball, looks like hockey ball, short cylinder shape. Other things used are dive mask (not goggles, dive mask is the one that cover your nose also), snorkel and fins (preferably full foot fins).

The game is like this. Two teams, each consists of six players, using half Olympic pool size. The pool depth has to be minimal 2.4 meters. So one team stand on the edge, and the other team, with disadvantage, standing in the middle of the pool. Fins can help us standing, if we pose ourselves like ballerina. There were two goals at the bottom of the pool in each team’s position; the goal is made of steel, like a triangle with gutter in the middle (to push the ball in). It is about 20 cm high. The ball is put in the middle of two teams.

When the game starts, everyone will sink to the bottom and drag the ball with the stick. It can become a very rough game. Kicked by fins, hands hit by stick (which is why we used thick glue to protect it). The ball can’t be lifted from the floor/touched by hand, and hand without glove can’t be used. The biggest challenge for me was how to flip your self 180 degrees from the surface, head down, then made the body paralel with the pool’s floor, and stayed there and fought for the ball. Breathing and speed are the keys, and of course, endurance.

We looked like a bunch of hungry fish fought for food. The worst thing was by the time you managed to get your stick on the ball, you ran out of breath. When you wanted to surface to gasp some air, everyone was either above or beside you. Sometimes it felt like dying. :)

When a goal had happened, everyone had to swim back to their position. Before you reach the position or steady yourself, the team leader had shouted, “White readehhh (ready)”, and you heard sound the opposite site of the pool “Black readeeeeeh.” Then,”Three…two..one..GO!” Holly molly.

But it’s a good workout for muscles and lung. Too bad after monsoon we had never come back to play. I heard the group grew quite big and even went to competition, and now they have proper glove and stick.

Hmm.. I tend to talk about other things I remember along the way.


ATLANTIS BAY

So, back to a week before, we decided to go for a weekend trip, to test out our confidence and new equipments. We were not skilful at the last trip, as it was only our second, so we had to prepare for the big trip.

February 25-27, we went to Atlantis Bay. That time we tested out a lot of things, fins, BCD and camera. We didn’t have regulator yet, fortunately everything was good and smooth. I won’t go into detail about this trip, just one memorable point, as we saw four big cuttlefish circling around their nest, taking care of their eggs. It was an amazing moment; I didn’t dare to stay too close to them.

That trip we first time met Joshua etc.
After that trip, four working days, we were heading for the big journey.


TENGKU ABDUL RAHMAN NATIONAL PARK

Our original destination was Tengku Abdul Rahman (TAR) as we thought Sipadan was very expensive.

Friday, 5th March 2005.
We took full day leave. Since the week before, we put our gear back in the living room, everything we remembered, we threw inside to be arranged again later.
At around 3 p.m, Cynthia and Ee Chiew picked us up, we chartered a car, and it drove us directly to Senai, Johor Bahru Airport, Malaysia. From there we took Air Asia to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Anthony, Leonard and Froggy were in another car.

We met them in the airport, I thought we were going to be shy shy, but apparently not, everybody got along with each other, and we cracked jokes like old friends. Froggie showed us his sunburn (At the journey home from Atlantis Bay, he overslept at the sundeck for two hours). It was very bad, like second degree burnt.
Advice, don’t sleep in the sundeck after diving trip, because you will be too tired, tend to overslept, and your friends are also sleeping so they can’t remind you. :)

Anyway, we boarded the plane. Free seating, first come put their bums first. No food. Excess baggage. Budget Airline. The journey took four hours? Can’t remember.
We were picked up by Alan and Bob with two big foot jeeps, checked in at Daya Hotel about 9 pm. We walked around, bought some tidbits and had a dinner with a machine gun auntie.

What do you want to order? Fried rice, bee hoon, bak kut the, cha kuetiau, or you want to order some dishes, toge, kangkung, steam fish, and miss, what do you want to order, what about this guy, where are you come from, so you like toge, tea?…

Tea would be good..

What tea? Sabah tea? Chinese tea, hot tea, dark tea, cold tea, tea-oh-ping? Or do you want barley? Good barley, home made one…..

Well. It was a good introduction day.


Saturday, 5th March 2005

Woke up early morning, breakfast and we headed to Alan’s shop. Only Me, Hubby, Ee Chiew and Froggie were going to dive. Leo was not feeling well, he had been sick since the previous week. Cynthia and Anthony had to go to their theory class for rescue course.
Three of us except Frog would go for Advanced course, he is an Advanced already.

We chatted with Bob and Neville along the way. They are British and Aussie if I’m right. We boarded the small speedboat with another divers.

First dive, surprise surprise! We were imagining beautiful diving, but found out that the diving was quite a disappointment. Poor visibility. It was cold, around 24 degree. The corals were dull, most of them were dying and not many fish to be seen. The color of the water was not blue. The best thing we saw was only a big puffer fish.

We had our lunch at Pulau Sapi, on our own expenses. Hmm…not a good first impression I must say. So we proceed to second dive. Froggie was still with us as the lessons were like common dives.
Second dive was not bad. We saw school of squids, which was a rare thing; first time saw juvenile sweetlips and honeycomb moray eel.

Then that was it. Only two dives a day. Another disappointment.

PS: Somehow we were convinced that we were going to have three dives a day and lunch provided.

We went back to hotel, showered and walked around KK town, ate delicious bak kut teh. Strolled along kaki lima and bought local fruit, and chendol, how I miss this Indonesian ambient.


Sunday, 6th March 2005.

Today Froggie couldn’t join us. He was in different group with Cynthia, Anthony and other divers, three of us studenst would do the lessons separately. Leo went along, but he didn’t dive.

First lesson was deep diving. It was my worst dive ever! Because the weather was bad, the water was like...hum..miso soup. The visibility was 0.5-1.5 m only. We barely saw our own hand.
So we sinked down, me and Ee Chiew followed Neville. I didn’t want to take a chance, so I held on to his tank strap. Hubby and Joyce, Neville’s assistant, were behind us.

Without seeing a thing in front, we kept sinking. It was all mud,no fish, no coral, no blue color. At one point, Neville stopped, I thought we reached the depth already, and Ee Chiew was gone. I also couldn’t see Hubby, was so worried but I kept holding to Neville. I couldn’t see him also, as I only could see up to my elbow, it was only two of us in presence. We searched for the rest, and after a while, Neville led my hand to hold into something, apparently it was Hubby’s hand. Three of us with Joyce clang together, Neville brought Ee Chiew up I guess. So three of us held hands and floated in the depth. I think that time we tried to ascend slowly. I really couldn’t see them clearly, but I didn’t worry anymore.

After what felt like forever, we did safety stop and went up to the surface. Neville pulled us to the boat and told us he was very worried. It was his first time that he lost his divers, and he thanked us to stay calm.

We were exhausted. Lunch in Pulau Sapi, we were all frown. We were still joking, but very disappointed imagining that we had to spend our holiday with louzy diving and service from Alan though Neville and Bob were very nice and friendly.

After lunch, we did land navigation. The compas was not working properly. So, I had difficulties practicing my weakest knowledge of all. Navigation......Arghhhhh..
After about an hour, we boarded the boat again. We did the surface navigation, Cynthia and Anthony did their rescue course, Froggie aborted the dive, he was very pissed off with the water condition, so he and Leo stayed on the boat.

After surface navigation, we sank down. The water was freezing cold, because we stayed at one place. Four of us, with Bob, knelt down together, and pair by pair we did triangle, rectangle navigation. So, sometimes paired with Hubby, sometimes Ee Chiew, we had to perform the tasks. The visibility was slightly better, but still very poor. We lost few times, and hit a school of barracuda, and almost, a stone fish. Lucky, the barracuda was yellowstrip, not so fierce.

Poor Bob, because he was only waiting for us, he shivered heavily. It was better for us because we still moved time to time. I think that time I had small holes in my wet suit because I knelt down on sharp corals, I couldn’t see the bottom!

So, after the dive, we packed up and went back to main island. Night dive, our last lesson, was cancelled because of bad weather.

It was raining when we headed back to Alan’s shop. So we were running. Froggie, being a National Service man, sang a military tune to kept us running. It was very funny and cheered us up.

After went back to hotel, washed up, we had dinner. Then we gathered together in Hotel Lobby and ordered some beer. (planning not to dive tomorrow, not much, only one glass per person :)) We discussed about the holiday turned ugly, and desperately tried to plan something else. Cynthia shared a story about her wonderful dive in Langkayan. I think most of us were drooling listening to her story. So, we opened our map and tried to plan to jump boat. Either we changed the dive operator for better service or we went to another island, hoped for better diving.

At first, our choice fell on Pulau Tiga. Pulau Tiga was used for first season of Survivor Series, so it shouldn’t be worse than TAR, and it was located nearby. So, we asked around looking for information, and planned to go survey around KK as soon as the morning came.


Monday,7th March 2005

We went to Alan's shop in the morning. Five of us, except Anthony and Cynthia who did their course, went around to other dive shops to look for another dive location/better deal. So we went to Borneo Diver Head Office (Leo heard they have better price).

In BO office, we met a nice lady, Ursula. We had great conversations and laughs with her, she offered us a good deal to Sipadan. Something that we thought impossible, was made possible by her.

Sipadan is one of the world best dive site. Actually it was quite laughable to go so close to it without planning to dive there. We didn't plan it because Sipadan was not affordable (if we buy from Sgp). Ursula gave us good price and we decided to take her offer. We would keep it from Alan of course. We even chartered a van to send us to Semprona, where we could take ferry to Sipadan. The van cost as much as plane, and took ten hours instead of 45 minutes by plane. But we chose the van because we didn’t want to spend some time. We had to delay one day if we took the plane, because that night we still had to do night dive, and we couldn’t fly at least 24 hours after diving.

So, there born the best planners in the world. Hehehhhe….We signed up Dive plan for the rest of holiday, which was about five more days and booked a van. While having lunch, we shared tasks. Leo would go to the travel and picked up our air ticket back to KK (we went by van, and came back by flight). Four of us would go to Alan’s shop and packed our gears, we decided to use rented gears that night. After packing gears, we would pack up our belongings, checked out hotel, and entrusted the rest of un-use bags in Ursula’s office. Three of us student would complete our night dive and we pushed for certification to be completed by Alan that night also.

Alan was very anxious, he sensed something was wrong and kept asking us why we rushed him for certification. We told him we were planning to go somewhere else. After many interrogations (and we put all the blame to Leo, who was hiding in the hotel :D) he confirmed that he would issue temporary certifications that very night.

So, we waited for Cynthia and Anthony to come back. They were very surprised but very excited. They cancelled their night dive of course and went back to wash up at the hotel. We followed Neville to the basement and picked the rental gear, and headed for the dock.

First time night dive, I was very very scared. I always wondered whether I dared to enter it one day, and there came the day. My torch was very bright; I swore I would hold it tight.

Actually, thinking about departing for Sipadan that night helped me a lot. We determined to finish the course as fast as possible. I made Hubby promised to hold my hand during the dive; I didn’t want to get lost in the dark. Thinking about the miso soup dive made me shivering, if daytime was like that, what about nighttime.
Cut it short, we jumped in, and it was really really dark, as the boat didn’t has spotlight to help us shine into the water.
Surprisingly, the dive was good although I felt restless because we needed to keep the eyes on everything. There were many stonefish in the seafloor, so we had to beware. And one time, ugh, my first encounter with shark.

Hubby asked me to look in front, and I saw a baby leopard shark was resting on the coral, and a bigger one swam by. Nervous, but I was excited, we didn’t dare to shine our torch too long at them.

So, it was over. Mhaha, we could tell the rest of the gang proudly for that encounter. :)

In the boat, we were fighting with the wind. Neville shared his story with me, about his life and relationship. He told me this dive was his one thousand-th. Wow, one thousand dive, I was 2% of that…? He looked quite lonely that night, and told me his plan to go back to his hometown.

We proceed to the basement to wash our gears, time was ticking, but we tried not to look so nervous. We met Cynthia in the basement; she came for her certification (Anthony got his already). We asked her to buy some beers for Neville while we washed our gear. Ee Chiew went back to take her shower already.

After that, five of us, fresh Cynthia and Ee Chiew while me and Hubby still tasted like fish, sat in the class with Neville. We evaluated our dives, which felt like forever. It was 9 pm, and the van picked us at 9 pm also, we hadn’t had our shower, dinner..
But we felt quite bad to be parted with Neville. We had a little ceremony when he handed us our certifications. We presented him the beers, although we couldn’t drink with him like what he asked. He walked us to the hotel and said goodbye. Nice fellow he is.

After saying goodbye, we rushed to the room and showered. Everyone was ready, we were told to take our time as Froggy and Leo was already buddy-buddy with the driver, and he was happy to wait. We bought a cartoon of mineral water for our supply there (we had to supply our self in TAR). Leo bought us dinner, so we ate at the hotel.


MIDNIGHT TO SEMPRONA

At around 10.30, we started our journey to Semprona. Ten hours!
The van was spacious for us and our gears, so we positioned ourselves to sleep. I tried to wake up once in a while to take turn to accompany the driver. Middle of night, I felt the van went faster and faster, it was raining outside. The road was dark and scary; I had to remind the driver to slow down. The road was winding, at times we were worried because we were like tracking up and down the hill. There were certain height limit we couldn’t exceed for our safety.

At one point, the van went rough, I heard sound coming from the machine, the driver kept looking at the rear. I was full awake now, so was Froggy who sat in front of me.

Then, POFF…the was smoke coming up from the cockpit. All the light went off. It was a complete darkness. Everybody was awake now. We didn’t know what was going on, so was the driver.

We searched for our dive bags and grabbed my torch and Anthony, which were the biggest.

And believe it or not, we shone the road with those for the car to keep moving.

We did that for a while, and then the machine was dying. The driver parked the car in the road shoulder, and there it was. The car died, we were in the middle on nowhere.

Nervous and confused, the driver tried to contact its base. I understood the Malay language, and it sounded like we had to rely on our selves. Lucky, all of us kept calm, and although we were nervous, we tried to cheer our selves up. Froggie called Ursula to let her know what was happening. It was 2-3 am. There were few other trucks in the road shoulders. We couldn’t see any dogs, but they were barking continuously which made us felt really uncomfortable.

Finally, our driver went out and waved down few heavy vehicles. They only could help us by informing bengkel two three hours away from our location to pick us up. Then our driver went across the road and disappeared. We could only see the torch and wondered what he did. Few scenarios were forming in my mind. How if, we met somebody evil and they harmed us? How if (turned out there were drivers resting in their trucks) they were bad? How if our driver was bad too? The only weapons we had were diving knives and fins.

After what felt like forever, the driver came back with somebody else. Turned out he agreed to send us to Semprona, but we all had to squeeze in a Land Cruiser. But thank God! Although nine of us (seven plus two drivers) and seven big gear bags had to squeeze like sardine, we completed the last four or five hours to Semprona safely.


SIPADAN
8-12 March 2005

We reached Semprona about 8 am, hung around for a while, then we boarded a forty five minutes ferry to Mabul.

Sipadan island was closed for staying, since Indonesia and Malaysia were in the row to fight for it. Actually, we just found out that we were in the middle of conflict between them. There were soldiers and warship at the other side of Sipadan, while we dove on the opposite. Leo knew it, he didn’t tell us so we were not worried. Lucky everything was fine.
So, we stayed in Mabul, about 20 minutes from Sipadan.

Along the way, although we were very tired because lack of sleep, things were looking good. The water was so clear that we could see the corals below, and important thing, it looked blue down there.

After we were in the hand of Borneo Diver, we were treated like kings! Never did we had to put our hand to lift our gear back, they did it all. And they gave us twin/single sharing beautiful room.
Two super duper single beds, attached toilet, spacious space, sofa bed and private deck. Ugh…:”))
All the meals were excellent. Fruit, ice cream, food all day long, even on the boat they provided towel, drinks, tea, coffee and cookies. We were never been happier to be free from Alan.

We were asked for certifications, lucky us, we finished jusssst on time. I think they required at least Advanced level to dive in Sipadan.
So, after short briefing, there would be two orientation dives that day in around Mabul.
When I go for a dive trip, usually I’m not awake. I have to rely on my seasick pills so I’ll be high almost all the time. :) I almost gave up diving on my first trip because I was throwing up the whole day, fed the fish.

So, because I’m high, I hardly write anything. I can only write what type of fish I saw in the logbook, the rest I leave it in my brain. But Hubby encourages me to keep a journal, to write down and keep the memories safe, especially long trip. So far, all my stories are all back tracked, hopefully in my next trip, I will able to write it along away. :)

So, no date or whatsoever here yet in Sipadan. I’ll just write.

Back to orientation dives.
Good dive sites, they always have orientation dives for those who had never been there or just arrive. The purpose is to make you familiar about the water condition and for the Dive Master (DM) to see how is your dive pattern.

But, oh but…It was magnificent! Blue water and colorful corals were all around us. Fish…! Many of them! On the second dive, we were drifting because the current was very strong. Nudibranches everywhere! Those beautiful invertebrates and macros were Hubby, Froggy and Cynthia’s favorite. Leo prefers pelagics (big fish). I love both of them!

We were so excited, after TAR nightmare, we felt like jumping and shouting. :) We had our own boat that day, with Melvin as our DM and Black Horse as the boatman. All the gears and tank were put in the front and we sat in the back. When we reached dive point, Blackhorse would carry the tanks for us, especially girls. We geared up and did the back roll from either side of the boat.

That was only the first day around Mabul. Tomorrow, we would go straight to Sipadan.

So, Sipadan the next day.
Our first dive site was mid reef. My goodness!

We went down to forty meters! I was almost chocked with my regulator. There were fish and corals everywhere. Busy busy busy. Colorful. So many types and variety that I can’t remember. And…turtles everywhere. Looked up and down, turtles. And they were huge! At least 1,5 meter long and very big, and they swam in groups. Looking at them from below, saw their silluetes in the blue…I am drooling now.

Then there it was. Shark! Ups.. Sharks! They were…everywhere, not the small tiny ones we saw at TAR, they were adult black tip and white tip reef sharks. They were down there and swam up to us occasionally. I always thought that I would freak out when I see them, but apparently, they were beautiful and I didn’t feel a slight fear.

Visibility in Sipadan was amazing. We saw big leopard shark down there at 60-70 meters, while we were floating at 40 meters, we also saw turtles at the surface. So it was perfect!
It felt like the dive was always too short, when we finally did our safety stop, me Hubby and Froggie, others were drifted behind, we saw ehm…a school of grey barracuda. They were those scary types, they were swimming at one direction, and suddenly, they stopped, turned around slowly and all of them looked at us. It was so scary that we were ready to fin. Huayah…! My dear heart, those barracuda were so cool!

So everyday, all we did was dive, eat, sleep and shit. :)
We woke up early in the morning, had breakfast, and went to Sipadan.
First dive was always up to forty meters. Then we had a break at Sipadan Island, sitting in the beach with all the military and bunker around us, had tea break, cookies, and went to second dive, second dive up to thirty meters.
Then we went back to Mabul for lunch, delicious lunch and had a nap.
After nap we went for third dive around Mabul or Kapalai, then went back, tea breaks, cookies, ice creams, peanut butter. Then showered and had dinner.
After dinner, we played for a while. Sometimes played pool, or watched TV, talked and compared pictures for a while and went to sleep.
Yess….one shower a day. :)

On our third day, we had to say goodbye to Tatsuya, our Japanese friend who shared the boat with us, he had complete set of camera with all the strobes here and there, and his pictures were excellent. We took pictures together and promised to keep in touch.

I can’t describe all the dives in words, nobody will ever could. After every dive, we would talk and shared about what we saw, compared pictures and couldn’t stop grinning. Ee Chiew left for Singapore on third day, she had works to do, so I was the only one without camera. But it was a good advantage for me, as I had so many pictures taken by them. Mhhehehhe…

There were many memorable moments.

We were just descending for our first dive on the last day, then suddenly Melvin our DM banged his tank continuously and he finned so fast. We tried to follow as fast as we could, but gosh! He was like flying to the blue. We were quite far from the reef already. He kept putting his two fists in front of his eyes and pulled them to the right and left.

Then I saw it. Visibility was not very good as it was raining. So it was dark below. We were at around 42 meters and I saw whites. There were white things, many of them, moving. I thought, dear God! Holy Cow! There must be school of manta ray. After looking at them, we swam back to the reef, all panting and excited. Apparently, it was school of hammerhead shark, and Melvin was so excited because he said ha hadn’t seen them for a year. So, we were the lucky group, too bad it was our last day.

Another one, first time I saw school of jacks, trevally big eyes. There were so many of them until we couldn’t see the surface. I was so excited and used all my strength to catch up and swam inside the groups. Amazingly, they didn’t hit me once. When I turned around, my dear Hubby was there and gave me a best shot with his camera. What a coincident :)

Another, almost every treat after forty meters, we would float around the shallower reef and found bunch of sharks sleeping or resting there. Tried to lie down beside it, but it went off. There was big one circled around me so close, about a meter only. I was only need to stay as calm as possible, but they didn’t look unfriendly. Dig dug dig dug. Of course I was scared.

Didn’t know how, a fish with flat head that likes to attach itself to big fish, attached to me, to my tank or my leg. Maybe it thought I was one of the ‘big’ fish? It was hilarious, although I didn’t realize it; Cynthia managed to capture short video.

Attacked by triggerfish, I already write about it in my first journal.

Once we found a huge dead turtle. It had broken shell and lied down motionlessly in the reef. It was quite a sad sight.

There were many types of fish we saw there. Mandarin fish, crocodile fish, great barracuda, giant squid, boxfish, garden eels and many, many of them I couldn’t name.
Such a short four days. :”( we had to pack. Last day we couldn’t dive because of non-flight time, so we spent time around the village, bought souvenirs, strolling around the beach.

When we left the island, as usual, all the DMs would sing, 'I’m leaving on the jet plane…’ :D They sang it for every one who left the island.
Melvin just came back from his dives when we already boarded the ferry. He waved us goodbye from the pier, and kept make hammerhead sign. We promised him we would come back the following year.

We took the flight to KK, hijacked the van driver and had a very nice seafood dinner then flew back to Johor and took taxi to Singapore.

Went to Sipadan, I had best diving in my life so far. It could be either good and bad. Good things was obvious. Bad thing was like, they kind of spoilt the market around West Malaysia (short weekend trips). When we dived in West Malaysia, the DM had to work hard to impress us. Once DM James banged and finned tirelessly to show us a turtle, one small turtle, we gave him a nod and moved on. What an attitude. Mhehehhehe….the other thing was we kept thinking of going back there or other excellent dive sites. Of course we had restrictions, money and leaves. Always those two. Huh.

But actually we are very lucky. We live around the most magnificent dive sites in the world; Sipadan, Bali, Menado, Komodo, Papua etc etc. Those bules have to travel thousand miles to reach here. :)