Borneo Trip, September 2007

At the end of our first season with the Curragh SAC three new members decided to put the Irish experience to good use in some warmer waters. With a flight over that went to Birmingham, Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and finally to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo we were very happy to arrive and have a couple of days to figure out where we were and what time of day it was.

We decided to spend a couple of days above the clouds on Mount Kinabalu before heading underwater. The views when the clouds parted were spectacular and the islands in the distant sea made us dream about diving while we struggled to breathe the thin air at 3000m.

With sore legs and in need of some rest we got an early morning flight to Tawau on the eastern coast of Borneo. Following a bus ride and boat trip we were finally in Mabul which was to be our home for the next week.

Our diving was split between the island of Mabul famous for its muck diving and the island of Sipadan. Sipadan is a protected national park reserve and since 2005, all resorts based on the island closed down to protect the reserve. Jacques Cousteau said, while filming there in 1983 “I have seen other places like Sipadan, 45 years ago, but now no more. Now we have found an untouched piece of art.” It only took one dive there to see what he meant. About 10 metres from the shore a drop of more than 600 metre provides the backdrop for all the dive sites in Sipadan.

Every dive you are guaranteed to see turtles. The turtles are so used to divers they look at you as if to say I’ve seen thousands of your type before. I’m not the least bit interested in you. Everywhere you looked there was so many fish, sharks and coral that it was hard to know what to look at or photograph first.

We had been told that there were pirates off the coast of Borneo so I was looking forward to meeting a real life Johnny Depp but there was none to be seen.

The island of Mabul was a different world to the turtles and sharks of Sipadan. Here there are all sorts of interesting looking creatures many of which wouldn’t be seen without a guide to point out. Nudibranchs of every colour shape and size could be seen. One of these days I may have to learn the names of some of them.

After a week of diving it was time to go and see some of Borneo’s most famous inhabitants, the orang utan, so we spent couple of days in the jungle seeing the exotic creatures above the sea.

It turned out that the weeks diving wasn’t enough for us so on we booked ourselves another couple of days diving on an island called Lankayan off the north coast of Borneo. After another couple of days of doing as many dives as they would take us out on and an unscheduled night-time swim, it was time to go back to the cooler waters of Ireland.

Hope to have lots more diving to report on in 2008.

Curragh divers on tour
Fiona Lane
Olive Marshall
Cora Marshall

Newsletter Articles

Notes From the Chair
Beyond Lambay
Borneo
Breathless
Cuba 2008
My Trainee Weekend