My Paradise in Celebes Sea 2011 - Day 4 , 7 June 2011, Sipadan Island

Today is our highlight of the whole trip - Sipadan.  After breakfast, We went to Wet Market in Semporna for a walk, later we went to Sipadan Scuba.  We used our own gear, so the check in is fast.  We saw John. Last year, John was our guide, he is a bit lazy and didnt show us any, so we do hope he is not our guide.  A Malay man introduce to us he is our guide for the day, so we were very happy as John is not with us.

The speedboat of Sipadan Scuba is really fast, about 30 minutes, we pass Mabul Island.  Soon we arrived our paradise - Sipadan Island.  The island look the same, only the beach is shorter.  At least the landscape didn't change as much as Timba-timba Island.  After we registered with the National Park Ranger, we set off to South Point for snorkeling.  In a sudden we found out they change John as our guide, John also remember us.  In a speedy time ,we jump into the beautiful Celebes Sea.  The current is so strong and very fast drift us away.  If you are not a vivid snorkeler, it is not save to snorkel in such a big current.  John also asked from his friend to give him a life jacket.  All the diver in our boat dive underneath us.  We saw lots of marine life, all of them are active.  They are big in size too.  In a sudden we saw a turtle, the visibility is excellent, so both me and sister swam really fast to follow the pace of the turtle.  The turtle swim against the current, it made us difficult to follow its pace.  When I saw a reef shark, I stop and change my target towards the shark.  The shark swim underneath me, is about 30 cm from me, so close.

After that we swam back to meet with Ching and John.  We saw a lots of big fish too.  parrot fish, butterfly fish, angel fish, etc.  Sipadan has it all.  The highlight is the way back to the beach in Sipadan National Park headquater, we saw more than 50 turtle from our boat, we are so exited and ask to snorkel there, but John said cannot.  We told him, last year we do a round island walk.  In my memory, I still can't remember whether we saw turtle in the stretch of beach with cyrstal clear water.  Anyway we are not allow to walk this year, so while we are waiting for the diver to recover, we snorkel around the jetty.

I really disappointed with the situation as 50% of the coral damage and dead compare with last year, only 12 month, can it change that much?  I think 10 years before, Sipadan should be a jewel.  We saw some white tip reef shark and off course turtle in the drop off.  We were so happy the turtle just swim side by side.  After that we join the diver, the diver dive in Turtle Cavern and we snorkel at Barracuda Point.

Finally I found my favorite coral fish - blue surgeon fish

The current still strong and we follow the drift , we were so happy to see school of Jacks, we swim with them and go into the middle of the school of Jacks, we were so excited.  We keep on asking John where is Barracuda and John manage to show us a few Barracuda about 10 metre below us.  After that John found his girl friend and we also happy he is not around us.  We saw tons of colourful fish and beautiful coral as we drift to Coral Garden.  We free dive to the coral to take photo and video.  we really enjoy our day.

Barracuda

Later, we were pick up by John.  The best thing about Sipadan Scuba is the boat follow us, no matter where we are, the boat is always near us and pick us up.  After lunch, we ask John when will we leave, they said 10 minutes, so we decided to admire the beauty of Sipadan Beach.

We waited for 20 minutes, they still not yet moving, so we asked again and they told us 20 minutes more, so we quickly snorkeling in the drop off.  This time, we manage to see the turtle swim so slow and it just stop by a coral.  We saw its penis, I think it just finish its" business", that why its swim so slow.  John told us he saw 9 pairs mating yesterday.  Unfortunately we didn't see any.  I saw once in Redang Island while we were diving in 2001.

We dive down to take lots of photo with it and enjoy ourselves very much until John call us off.  I feel a bit sad as this is our last snorkel before we leave Sipadan.  The last snorkel today didn't disappointed us, immediately we jumped into the water, a school of Jacks is around us, we dive and took lots of photo.

We play around for more than 10 minutes until we encounter our first turtle in this snorkeling, we join the turtle for the swim and we saw another, follow by another, another, another, until I also lost count.  Ching counted and told us 19 turtles in total in this snorkeling.   We took tons of photo and when we look at our photo when we are back in the hotel, we saw another turtle that we miss.  The photo has 2 turtle, but during our snorkeling we only saw the turtle that swim.  I even managed to take a photo the turtle breath in the air. Wow, marvelous.

The turtle is breathing

Later, we didn't see any turtle and we know it is going to be time to go back to Semporna, I pray hard and I hope to see another turtle before we need to leave Sipadan,  in a sudden,  we saw another turtle, really big with penis.  It swim so slow and float in the water.  We manage to swim with it for more than 10 minutes, we took lots of photo and John is calling us.  Ching shouted back, our last turtle.  We took our time with him until it dive into deep blue water.

When we are on our way back to Semporna, we are so happy and keep on looking at our valuable photo.  This is the best experience we have to end our trip.  真的很兴奋，非笔墨所能形容。

Bye Bye Sipadan, I will come back.

We had dinner at Ah Long, actually we order 3 days before as Ah Long off for 3 days.  We ordered the squid soup, very delicious as last year.  The food is good.  For me, I like Thien Wang best.  The sad thing is the cook in Thien Wang left.  Mei Xiang also not bad.  After we had our dinner, we went to Mei Xiang to eat 东风螺，unfortunately they can't find any in Semporna, so we had to go back to the hotel to rest.  We look through our photo again and sleep well.