Shark in Sipadan.

Sipadan flashback

Corinne Bourbeillon·
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  Borneo [Malaysia and Indonesia] - July 2009

Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text: 


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In July, during my stay in Sipadan (Borneo, Malaysia), I had prepared two short underwater videos, thinking to post them in the same time. But the wifi of the resort where I was connecting broke down, and the videos remained on Vimeo. So I forgot about them! Here they are.

These are two short "raw" sequences. I give them to you below, just to wait for the little underwater montages I'm preparing for future posts...

1) Shark Prayer

The first one shows my buddy Linda, hands clasped over a shark. This was her way of swimming. Always very still, as if in prayer, with her palms together.

2) Express tortoise

In the second one, I film a turtle, not at all shy, swimming straight on me and almost jostling me to go on its way! In Sipadan, turtles are everywhere.

A breath of nostalgia invades me by seeing these images again.

I dived there for a whole week, staying on the nearby island of Mabul. I would have liked to stay there for another week. Sipadan is, by far, the most extraordinary dive spot I have seen among all the sites I have dived in Asia.

(Sigh…)

To complete this mini-flashback, here are the links to the other articles I posted when I was there:
11.07.2009 → Posing with Sipadan sharks
13.07.2009 → Mabul Village
14.07.2009 → Latest bubbles in Mabul and Sipadan
15.07.2009 → Nudibranch Festival

  Borneo [Malaysia and Indonesia] - July 2009

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Crocodile fish. Derawan Island (Borneo, Indonesia, July 2009).
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Corinne Bourbeillon
Journalist, diver and underwater photographer, Corinne loves to blow bubbles underwater with fish! The beauty of the world and the ocean inspired her to create this diving and travel blog.

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9 Comments

  1. 😥 no comments
    just the balls and a big desire to go back what 😉
    Given the number of photos (very successful) videos how many dives do you average on a stay?
    After that, it's clear that the budget for one person is not the same as for 4 🙂

    In Bali, we did 3 days or 6 dives, but with 4 people, so the budget isn't insignificant!

    At least we've got you to make us dream and share other dives with us 😉

    friendly.

    Reply

  2. @@ lain: Good question, the average number of dives on a trip. I confess I've never bothered to count in detail before... So I've just reopened my logbooks to check exactly how many dives I've made on recent trips. For 2008-2009:

    • 33 in Malaysia-Indonesiafor this last one-month stay in July 2009 (including 21 in Mabul-Sipadan!).
    • 28 in Thailand, during my stay of three weeks in February-March 2009 (including Rescue training).
    • 35 total to Bali, for a month in July 2008 (my record, the blame for mola-mola!).
    • 25 to Philippines, for three weeks in January-February 2008.

    So that's about 30 on average per stay. A few years ago, I was doing more like twenty, sometimes less. But in the last two years, I've stepped up the pace, and I'm going to Asia specifically for this: to dive!

    As far as the budget is concerned, since I have my own equipment and I do a lot of diving, I always get a discount on the basic price and sliding-scale rates. The cheapest dives in Asia, depending on the area and the center, start at around a dozen euros, and can go up to around thirty euros depending on the distance to the sites, the number of divers in the group, and so on.

    I've just made some clever calculations to work out the price of a few individual dives during my last stay... For example, Sipadan came to around 23€ per dive (including site permit). Mabul, 15€. Derawan Reef, 12€.

    With these down-to-earth considerations in mind, I look forward to continuing to inspire you underwater!
    😉

    Reply

  3. ah yes anyway 😆 with my 50 dives I am acting as a rookie 😀 .
    I understand better the number of shots and diving posts 😉 I didn't have the impression that your stays were so full of diving, that's 2 or even 3 dives a day, isn't it?
    And by the way, for your photos following the "curse" of the old camera, which did you finally opt for? with or without an external flash?
    friendships

    Reply

  4. @ @lain: Yes, when I say that I spend almost all my vacations diving, I'm not exaggerating... 😉
    On the days when I dive, indeed, when I'm on site, I do 2 to 3 dives a day.
    Otherwise, the camera is still the same. I've kept the cobbled-together Powershot A95, and it works! I don't have enough money to buy a new camera yet... So for the time being, I'll stick with my little APN and its built-in flash.
    🙂

    Reply

  6. Thanks Corinne for the nice videos and also for introducing me to vimeo. I think I'll use it to store my next videos.

    Reply

  7. @ Marie-Julie: I've got a lot of bubbles in my video stockpile... I've got to get back into it (so to speak) to prepare a little montage worthy of the name.
    @Max: Yes, Vimeo is very good and degrades the image less than DailyMotion or YouTube. Especially for underwater films, with lots of blue, they come out less pixelated. For my little "raw" sequences, when I'm traveling, it's the most satisfying and the easiest. Otherwise, I usually host my edited videos on my own site. But given the quality of Vimeo, I'd be delighted to have access to the paid version, which offers even greater broadcasting flexibility.

    Reply

  8. Ahlala... the beginning of September and it's back-to-school spleen all over again. 🙁 Photos and videos scratched here and there are so many lifelines to get us through autumn until the new take-off. Your site should be reimbursed by the health system, it's a vaccine against the end-of-summer blues, and I think it's also a barrier against H1N1. ❗

    Like you, I believe that the Mabul/Sipadan duo has no equal elsewhere 8) . There are plenty of "world class" dives, but the spots mythicalI don't see many of those where you come away breathless, wide-eyed, heart pounding like after a roller-coaster ride, wanting to go back immediately - and on a regular basis.

    Sipadan does clearly part of the mythical spots.

    I discovered another mythical dive this summer. It's called the SS Pres.Coolidge and it's in Vanuatu. I'm not a wreck diver, nor even a fan of deep dives, but there... 😯
    we find ourselves... 😮 ...how can I put this... 😯 ... These are the two faces you can make during a dive on the Coolidge: 😯 and 😮

    I wrote a review of my stay in Vanuatu on another site: it's on right here.
    I've found myself a personal mission for this winter: to promote Sipadan and the Pres.Coolidge in anticipation of other mythical dives. 😆

    Debate : Is Lembeh mythical or not? 😛

    Reply

  9. @ Wet & Sea To read your fabulous report, it's worth the detour, the wreck of the SS President Coolidge... But it's definitely deep too (45-50 meters minimum, or much more if you feel like it...). The advantage of Sipadan is that it's accessible to divers of all levels, and that you can enjoy diving even at shallow depths for "leisure" diving, without having to go through interminable stops.

    So yes, Sipadan is a mythical spot, and I'll be going back!
    😯 😮 😀

    My contribution to the debate: yes, Lembeh is a mythical spot too (I want to go back there when I'm equipped with an SLR and a housing worthy of the name) and easy to dive, but to appreciate it, you have to be a photographer with a passion for bizarre creatures. In no other place do you find so many unusual antennae, rare creatures and other inventions of nature that you'd never have believed existed... The same:
    😯 😮 😀

    Reply
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