Cindy and I left for a jungle experience out of Sandakan on June 5th. The schedule we were informed we had was:
- Jungle cruises, walks, etc. on June 5-June 7
- June 7 - meet the bus to Semporna at "the junction" at 9am, Arrive in Semporna at 4pm and begin our PADI instruction. North Borneo Divers, or Borneo Divers, would be paying for our accommodation and meals on the 8th & 9th
- June 8 & 9 - Open Water certification
- June 10 - Dive Sipadan (included in the price we paid for the open water course), then we're on our own
In addition to our boat tours, we did one night walk in the jungle, where most people saw a Civet cat (I didn't) and a Garett Pitta (bird), which we also saw on a jungle cruise. The Garret Pitta was more impressive at night than during the day. Overall, the night walk was pretty uneventful because 6 people make quite a bit of noise while walking around in a pack. And when you're covered in leaches, it's hard not to make any noise. :) OK, so we weren't covered but we definitely had our fair share clinging to our pants, shirts, and a few on our skin.
The 3 hour jungle trek we did during the day started out rather uneventful, but we had fun walking through the mud and trying to step lightly to avoid sinking or being covered by leaches. At the very end of the trek,Kai, our guide, spotted a family of Orang-utans. They were high up in a tree, but we got right under them and came away with some decent pictures. It was way better than seeing the ones in the Orang-utan sanctuary.
The highlight of the jungle trip was the second night. I was wearing my Cougar poncho because it had been raining, and a guy who had just arrived that day yelled out, "Go Washington State!" I was hoping that would happen at some point, but definitely didn't expect it to happen the first time I wore the poncho! The guy who recognized the Coug logo is from Seattle, but is a Sun Devil, so at least I wasn't ganged up on by Huskies (Cindy is a Husky). I LOVE encounters like that. Good thing the Coug logo is so recognizable!
Then our problems began.
On the 7th we left the jungle early in the morning in an effort to make it to Semporna in time to take our table course and prepare for our first day of open water PADI certification. Before we left the lodge we'd been staying at, we were informed that the bus we had reservations to be on was "full". We insisted that the reason the bus was listed as being full was that we had a reservation, so they were holding our seats. WE WERE WRONG. When we got to the junction to catch our bus, we were shocked and dismayed to learn that the bus was, in fact, full and that our reservations had not been made 5 days in advance, so even though we had a reservation we did not have a seat. We ended up sitting on the floor of the bus for 5 long hours, back-to-back. Every time Cindy moved, I moved, and vice-versa. It was not a pleasant experience.
We arrived in Semporna in the middle of a torrential downpour, and were greeted by Ed from Sipadan Scuba, who was there to pick up 2 girls and drive them to the dive shop. He asked if we had talked to Jerry to make reservations for our PADI course. We told him we'd gone through Polly to make our reservations and that we'd be diving with Borneo Divers, so Ed gave us directions to Borneo Divers and we began walking to the shop. As we crossed in front of the Sipadan Scuba dive shop, we were hailed by Ed and a couple of women who told us there'd been miscommunication at the bus stop, and we were booked with Sipadan Scuba - also known as North Borneo Divers. At least we hadn't made it past the shop and we didn't have to turn around. We were drenched.
After dropping our bags at Sipadan Scuba, Cindy and I ran for a cup of coffee and a snack, then began the first part of our certification, which involved watching about 5 hours of video on diving, reading a PADI book, and taking quizzes. Before we ever started we were tired, but after sitting in a classroom for what seemed like forever, we were exhausted. Lucky for us, I remembered to ask about our accommodation for the nights of the 8th and 9th, and what the meal schedule was. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE JAWS DROP. Apparently the package we had paid for was only for the open water course, not accommodation, not food, and certainly not diving Sipadan on the 10th - the whole reason we'd decided to get our PADI certification in Semporna in the first place. Luckily, after several phone calls and explanations we were able to get Polly, the woman we had booked our dive course through, to agree to pay for our accommodation the nights of the 8th and 9th, and for our dive at Sipadan, which saved us US $175 each.
The days of the 8th and 9th were spent completing our PADI certification with Ed, our instructor, who was a great teacher. We got to do our confined and open water dives in tropical water, on beautiful coral reefs. The first day, Cindy, Ed, and I had a boat to ourselves, and the second day we shared a boat with Liz, a scuba instructor from Koh Tao (Thailand), and 2 other dive masters with Sipadan Scuba, Ice and another guy whose name I can't remember. The locations we went to for our training were better than any place I've ever even snorkeled, so that made me very, very, very thankful I didn't do my open water certification before coming on this vacation. Pools and Puget Sound don't sound that fun. The only thing that could've made the certification process better would've been a little bit of sun. My toes were purple after every single dive even though I was wearing a wet suit because I was so cold and it was so rainy. At one point, my lips even turned purple! Liz got some photos of Cindy and me diving on the 9th, and I'll upload them ASAP.
On June 10, we did 3 dives at Sipadan, the world's #3 dive spot. There were two dive masters from Sipadan Scuba on board, Ed and Arwan, as well as a dive master from Phuket, Thailand, Todd, who was taking video (I'll put the link to the You Tube video of us diving when Todd edits it and sends it to me), and two other divers - Jules and Dane. We only went down 18 meters, but that was far enough to go into Turtle Tomb and down to Barracuda Point. We got to see frog fish, angel fish, anemone fish (Nemos), giant puffer fish, green and hawk-billed turtles bigger than me, unicorn fish, black tipped and white tipped reef sharks, goat fish, parrot fish, a school of 1,000 barracuda, and so much more! I was bummed that I didn't see any hammerhead sharks, but they're down at 80 meters and you can only see them from 40 on a day with good visibility, so there wasn't much of a chance that I'd see one.
The evening of the 10th, Cindy stayed in because she thought she was getting an ear infection, so I met Ed and another instructor, Tom, for drinks. All three of us spent most of the next day hung over, but that was OK because Cindy and I didn't have anything planned other than taking the night bus to Kota Kinabalu, which is where we are now. We're planning either to go to the beach or to go to Mount Kinabalu tomorrow, and that will be a game-time decision determined by the weather. We fly from KK to Kuala Lumpur the night of the 15th, then will spend the night in the airport, waiting for our flight from KL to Siem Reap, Cambodia, on the 16th. Hopefully we'll see some good stuff before we take off. We're going to miss the twin towers in KL - we thought we'd have time to see them on this trip, but didn't see them the first time we were there and didn't leave ourselves enough time to get into the city from the airport and back again before our second flight takes off. I guess that means I need to make it back to KL at some point in the future.
That's all for now. It's time for me to figure out how to share more photos!
Cheers!
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