Sipadan Mabul Water Village

day 3 26, Apr.

Tawau. 45 minutes flight from KK. You'll get to see Kinabalu Mt., and endless palm tree plantations from the sky. I read somewhere that planting palm tree which produces palm oil is popular now, and they took over the rubber tree, which Malaysia used to be very famous for.

Again, another 1.5 hour drive from Tawau ( middle of nowhere) to Semporna. The resort that we were going to stay: Sipadan Mabul Water Village picked us up.

http://www.swvresort.com/home.cfm

then the 1 hour boat ride...
On our way, we saw cottages built on corals ( I think).
I was thinking... " OK, it's bit different from what I had expected ", thinking that the trip to Mabul would be like a boat ride to a resort in Maldives where you have a nice looking cruiser and well dressed captain, but every staff wore usual t-shirts, nothing special.

Just as we were reaching to our resort, I saw " Sea Venture ", right in front of our resort. It was originally an oil dig, now it's a lodging. I woudn't call that a resort. Sea Venture doesn't seem like a great place to stay, but as a dive point, it was great. Many things to see, big and small.
Finally, our resort " Sipadan Mabul Water Village"A lady explained us about the resort in strong accent, and off we went serching for our cottage.

Our cottage... cottage... where's our room ??? Sipadan 126, 126... It took us about 15 minutes to get to our room, I needed a bike. The resort next to us " Mabul Water Bungalow " was very close from our room and they had bikes, they even had a cart like the ones you use in golf courses. ( bit too much for a resort )
http://www.swvresort.com/resort_layout.cfm

I would say S109 - S111 are the best rooms. Great view, and still close to the front office, restaurant, and the dive center.
We had our first dive ( a check dive) right away in front of the dive center.

Our room was nice and tidy, 270 degress ocian view, spacious and the bathroom was clean.

Ok, just a check dive... but I enjoyed it, 2-3 lion fish, porcupine fish, black spotted puffer, and all. Kankichi didn't take his camera with him for his check dive, so no diving picture for the day.