Going diving to Sipidan I managed to get a direct flight into Tawau, where I stayed overnight in the small Chinese Soon Yee hotel that is friendly, cheap, and simple and came to my surprise with an ensuite bathroom. Yet, at first sight Tawau was disappointing, as there was a bit too much of unwanted attention in the forms of people laughing when they see you walking into a supermarket, or guys whistling and commenting when you walk down the street. Add to the list the amount of poverty that I have not seen in Malaysia before. There are many beggars and street kids, or children that look as if they were either orphans living in the street, or to a large part neglected children from super poor families. This is something you see in the many Filipino slums, but not normally in Malaysia. I was especially taken back when I watched three of such kids kicking and pushing a new hawker stall that was locked up for the night, and nobody made any effort to stop or reprimanded them. And what made it harder to get a good feeling about the place was the challenge to find a place that sells food that I can eat, aka meat free, in combination with beer. Normally all Chinese coffeeshops sell beer, so imagine my surprise when I walked past 5 Chinese coffeeshops and all of them had none! Finally I decided to sit down for dinner in the Kedai Kopi Ingot for a rather good claypot and and awesome avocado shake instead. On my return to Tawau after the diving trip I found a few more suitable food places for both breakfast and dinner, which made life in Tawau a lot more comfortable.

The next morning saw the minibus driver arriving punctually at 6:30 at my doorstep and off we went to Semporna, with only a 1.5h stop at the airport waiting for the three Japanese divers who were to share the Celebes Explorer liveaboard with me. Actually most of the day seemed to consist of waiting; first for the Japanese, then for the four Italians and three French who arrived only in the afternoon. Thus the four of us who had been on the boat since morning went for a late morning dive to the nearby Sibangkat Island, which was not exactly a fantastic dive, other than me finally seeing a crocodile fish, but in sad circumstances – we found it dying in a large piece of tangled finishing net that had been stuck on the corals and remained there. Our efforts to save the fish were futile, as it was much weakened and consequently died after its release. The afternoon saw us sailing to Mabul Island, where the boat stays at night. The dive there was most marked by strong current that send us drifting past the wall at rapid pace, too fast to see many small things, but I was lucky to spot two Banded Pipefish in a little cave.

Of all these events I have no images, and neither do I have any images of any of my dives, as I was recently told that against previous expectations there was never a housing built for my new digital camera, the Canon ixux 970, so I had to come to one of the best dive sites in the world without a camera. Yet, in a way, this seemed to be a blessing. I had the feeling that the fish know that I have no camera, because at numerous occasions individuals or even entire schools swam right into me, staying only a few centimetres away from me. In short I had some amazing wildlife encounters with all sizes of fish that are firmly set in my memory, which seems a lot more valuable than the pictures that I might have taken. Still there are many more pictures of the trip on my photoblog.

The second day on the Celebes brought us to Sipadan Island. One of the major advantages to dive from the Celebes is that it guarantees 4 Sipidan dives per week, and as I stay only for 4D4N I will get to dive in Sipidan two full days, which is brilliant. The first day of diving at Barracuda Point, White Tip Avenue, Hanging Garden, and the Drop Off was spectacular. The landscape is amazing, and the place is teeming with schools of Trevally, Round Batfish, and Humphead Parrotfish, as well as large fish such as tuna, Napoleon Wrasse, Yellow-eyed Snapper, and Whitetip Reefshark, not to forget the uncountable number of large Green Turtles, which I was fortunate enough to record mating from the upper deck of our boat. On the other end of the scale I was fascinated by the Purple Firegoby, who have to be one of my most favourite fish in the world.

When we dropped into the ocean Barracuda Point for our second day diving at Sipidan Island we virtually jumped into a arge school of thousands of Yellow Banded Barracuda. And as is this was not enough the sight was followed by a huge group of maybe 100 Humphead Parrotfish right after. The overall effect was quite astounding. The rest of the dive saw us counting about 15 Whitetip Reefsharks and numerous Green and Hawkbill Turtles. Three drives at Lobster Lair, Staghorn Crest, and West Ridge followed which was crowned by three sightings of Grey Reefsharks. The grand finale of the day was the dusk dive at Mabul Paradie 1, where we saw five Crocodile Flatheadfish, a free roaming Banded Murray, and the ever so elusive White Ribbon Moray. I also spend a lot of time watching Mandarin Fish as they are yet another of my top loved species. And this time I not only saw two adults mate, but also a 1cm long juvenile. And as if all these were not enough we spotted a tiny Papuan Cuttlefish and a Ornate Ghostpipefish just before surfacing at the onset of night.

The next day was to be my last day on the Celebes, and it saw us diving in Siamil Island. On arrival at the island the sea was teeming with tiny fishing boats from the fishing community on the neighbouring Danawan Island. Under the surface the reef had suffered equally from El Nino as from illegal dynamite fishing. Surprisingly enough there was still a lot to see. The sandy slope intercepted by some rocks, sponges and coral appears to be a fishy kindergarden; we saw juvenile Harekin and Spotted Sweetlips, Shaded Batfish, Flamboyant Moray, and Longhorn Cowfish. On the adult and non-fishy side of things there was no less than a few Orang-Utan Crabs, Peacock Mantis Shrimp, Giant Frogfish, Reef Octopus, Broadclub Cuttlefish, Leaf Scorpionfish, and – taking care of the next generation - a Jawfish with eggs in its mouth. All in all not bad for a badly damaged reef, that, if protected might slowly grow back to its original beauty. Returning for the night to Mabul we went for another dusk dive which brought us face to face with a gigantic and potentially deadly Esturine Stonefish as well as the tiniest baby Crocodile Flatheadfish, and a free swimming White-eyed Moray, and a large school of Yellow Tail Barracuda.

Thursday morning I had to pack and leave the Celebes Explorer. One of the smaller boats brought the two of us that were leaving to Semporna while the others went diving to Kapalai. I had about 3 hours to kill in Semporna before my trip back to Tawau and I found the small town rather friendly and pleasant to hang out in. As I could not fly after all the Wednesday dives I had booked my flight on to Kota Kinabalu on Friday. For some reason there were no direct flights back to Singapore available, so I had to fly first to KK and then on Sunday from there back to Singapore, and arrangement which allowed me to plan for some shopping and a good deal of avocado shakes :)

And KK was pleasant as usual; the town has not the charm of Kuching as it is lacking any form of old buildings, but it is great for just hanging out, sipping drinks in a coffeeshop, squeezing through the crafts market and the many night markets, or sitting at the food stalls at the harbour front watching the sun set behind the fisherman boats.I just had wished that Hakim could be here with me, because lounging around in coffeeshops and hawker stalls is just not quite the same alone. My guesthouse, the Borneo Adventure Centre, was the cheapest I could find with an ensuite bathroom. The room was great, but the place is a bit noisy with a main road behind the building and a mosque across the road. So after I had stocked up on all my essentials in Malaysia, it was time for me to return to good old Singapore.

december in the philippines will brighten your life with the most ugly-creative christmas trees and multi lingual carol-medleys. both form a stark contrast to the serenity and beauty of philippines' underwater world. once again i was absolutely amazed by what i saw, but before we dive into the sea lets just start in the air. mario and i flew with cebu pacific from singapore to cebu, jumped into a taxi to the bus station and took the first bus to moalboal before the sun was up, which meant that we arrived at the other end of the island around 9am, then checked out every single resort before settling for a beautiful bungalow in the first place we had seen ;) well you never know what might be at the other end of town...

actually moalboal is not much of a town, it used to be a fishing village and is now jam packed with resorts and dive schools. there is no beach in town, but people come here to dive at the house reef and pescara island offshore, and to be honest one can easily spend a week here and not miss the beach for one second, because between the amazing dive sites, and the nice little local restaurants with the obligatory sunset san miguel there is enough to keep the heart content. and after i had brought enough coffee bags to see me through the trip the instant coffee did not bother me at all, on accounts of it NOT landing in my stomach :D

yet one week in moalboal seemed enough, and so mario and i decided to swap location and because the philippines has rather a lot of islands to offer, 7107 to be precise, we decided to island hop as well and went from cebu to negros, to damaguete or dauin to be more precise. here we came, saw, and were shocked, as the prices were nearing twice what we had paid in moalboal. that was no good, but with a bit of compromise in quality of accommodation, a trip to the local market to buy food, and free access to the resort kitchen meant that we ended up sleeping expensive, but cooking our own food and thus made up for it. when it comes to the diving things were different, they were the for me rather typical veni vidi vici material, i came to see mimic octopus and saw the even rarer, but similar looking wonder octopus on my first dive in the black sands of the dauin shores, while a daytrip to the nearby apo island was colourful-fish-gallore ;)

in short travelling in the philippines is wonderful because every single of the islands is so distinctively different from the next, and this goes for landscape as well as people. and while the food is not as great as in thailand or laos, the spirited personality of the filipinos makes up for the lack in culinary diversity, and even for the ever present instant coffee. and bundle that with the most beautiful underwater world and seeing large whitetip reefsharks, seasnakes, wonder octopus, razorfish, flounders, leaf scorpionfish, green turtles, hawkbill turtles, ... but what am i jabbering on here, just go and see the video that says more than a million words ;)

AN INSTANT COFFEE COUNTRY, the philippines are indeed, but what is missing in terms of a local coffee culture the islands make up in the underwaterworld. while the land is a colourful mix of asian and american, maybe in nothing more visible than the famous jeepneys - american military jeeps, modified and beautified in true asian style - there are superferries, american style mega-shopping malls and inumerous fast food chains - actually everything comes in chains in the philippines, coffee, italian food, burgers, cakes, doughnuts, the lot -

and then not far down the road you find povertystricken slums, outrigger boats, and child prostitute, many of which one incidentially finds travelling with western tourists...

after 5 years in south-east asia the philippines resemble many other countries in the region, but, they are more christian, and speek more english, have more volcanoes per landmass than indonesia, and even more instant coffee than thailand, and the traffic in manila is crazier than in bkk, breed more fighting cocks than anywhere else in the world, but otherwise things are recognisably similar to the ones in the know ;)


but going back to the underwaterworld, as i experienced it in only two places, once diving in malapascua and then snorkeling in donsol - not that i am a fan of snorkelling in general, but when we are talking whaleshark then hey, bring it on :D - in short, malapascua was phenomenal!!! not only did i see the elusive thresher shark - the shark i thought i would never ever see in my entire life, the very shy, rare, longtailed one -

but also thanks to our fantastic local dive guide vic i saw mandarin fish - single and shagging (filmed in mid action, fishpornography so to speak) - giant frogfish, more seahorses than you could run in a race, pipefish, a seasnake, cuttlefish and, now get this, a 0.5cm round bottom sqid, or baby sepia :D


... not to mention the countless nudibranches, flatworms, whitetip reefsharks and of course the surprise butanding, the out of the blue totally unexpected whaleshark; a surprise that nearly got me to jump into the water with weightbelt yet without bcd, a small, yet usually fatal bounce into the unknown!!!!

and then, as if one was not amazing enough i went to donsol to see another 19 of the gentle giants.... which explains, even to the not-underwater-freak
why i make an exception when it comes to snorkelling at donsol :P hihihihi
but apart from the amazing encounters in the sea, i have also met the most amazing people, locals and tourists alike... in short, the trip was amazing, but like all good things in life, ended but too soon...