"After 850 dives-mostly in the caribbean, but two weeks in Australia, and a week in Fiji and Red Sea and Galapagos- I really enjoyed our trip to Malaysia in March 2003. At the Palau Sipadan Resort, we found a great deal of interesting marine life-lots of turtles, many nudibranchs, sharks, tunicates, crodile fish, lionfish, hawkfish, frogfish, manny types of sea cucumbers, schools of jacks, crinoids, tropicals, lg school of barracuda, and even some leaf fish- we had good chinese type food, not much breeze, 1-5 min. boat rides ,some currents, 40-50 foot vis., and i was comfortable in a lycra skin ( most people wore 3 mm)
15 min. away was Kapalai, a boardwalk resort above water. More breeze,no sand beach, vis.only 20 feet, good food, lg.rooms, lots of current, and all macro diving. And I loved it. Spent 20 min. photographing a Mandarin fish, found all colors and sizes of frogfish, cuttlefish, sea squirts, stonefish, crocodile fish, pipefish, all sorts of nudibranchs, flatworms, fire dartfish, mantis shrimp, leaf fish, ghost pipe fish, sea horses, razorfish, Wow, the marrine life was incredible. The guides were great at finding stuff.
A must side trip was to Sepilok Nature reserve to see Orangutan preserve and I found even more interesting the visit to the Probosis Monkey preserve. The probosis monkeys were fascinating and we saw
a closeup of a slow loris and many mudskippers-all neat stuff. A great two weeks."
Bill Jurney
March 2003 |
