Malaysia: Peninsula and Borneo - July 2006
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation of an article originally written in French. I apologise for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have resulted. If you read French, click on the French flag below to access the original, correct text:
Français
Here I am finally arrival at Sempornathe gateway to Sipadan, in Borneo, with my companions Helena and Paul, a couple from Guernsey.
The dive-shops tour
After the trying journey in a collective Jeep, we are installed at the Dragon Inn, huge hotel complex on stilts. A shower and a nasi goreng later, we embark on the tour of dive shops.
They are all located around the Dragon Inn. And it's the rush for diving in Sipadan! The access to the marine nature park, for a fee (40 RM), is limited to 120 divers per day. There are waiting lists as long as my arm...
I was warned about this and that is why I had planned to arrive relatively early in Semporna compared to the date of my return to France. I have ten days ahead of me: I will dive on the sites of the other islands at the beginning, and in Sipadan at the end of my stay.
I register with Scuba Junkiewhich was spotted on the internet in advance, and of which one of the instructors ofEco Divers In Tioman, a guy from South Africa of Portuguese origin, answering to the evocative name of Che, also told me good things. He will soon come to work there.
The welcome is indeed friendly and smiling. What is not the case of all the shops. And it's divers who know the sites who inform me, not employees who have never put on fins and mask, and whose job is to make the sign-in sheet and to cash the ringgits.
First availability for diving in Sipadan, on monday 24th. It's full on the 25th. There is still room on Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th. I sign and pay the 40RM fee per day for the access to Sipadan to reserve my place for these three days. That is to say nine dives in all on the site. I also register to dive at Mabul, the neighboring island, the next day.
Allow more than three days ...
Helena and Paul have a long face. They intend to spend only three days in Semporna. They end up finding an exit for the 22nd, at another shopI will learn later that he takes more divers than he is allowed to on the site. And pays a few bribes to the authorities so that they close their eyes. At least, that's what he tells himself.
It seems to me that this mythical site generates a strange business... Cousteau, the first one to have explored it, must be turning in his grave.
