I’m in Borneo now after a long night of travel. This place is as beautiful as Thailand in the water except that there is tons of trash floating around. The locals don’t seem to think that there is a problem with squandaring the beauty that they have. On an unrelated note. This town in particular is largely Muslim. The only major structure in the whole town is a Mosque (much more interesting looking than Churches as far as the archetecture goes.)
This is one of those towns that is out there. I am in the only Internet Cafe in town at the moment. you’ll want to check this out on the map at the bottom of the post (if I can get it to work) and see how close it is to Indonesia as well as the Philippines. I met a really nice man last night that was the Philippines and he said that I could take a 2 hour boat ride to get there from here. In fact, there are a lot of Illegal immagrants here from the Philipines. On an unrelated note, sadly these waters are the home of shark fining as well as fishing with Dynamite.
So why am I here anyway? Because, this is the home of one of the top 5 dive sites in all the world, Sipadan!
This is a 2000 meter drop off that leads to a reef/island. This makes for giant schools of fish, turtles, and sharks. When I say giant, I mean so many fish that the water goes dark. They have been known to block out the sun completely.
The guys work at an own the local dive shop are all really nice, but the way the government runs the seas here is atrocious.
It’s hard to get online here, but there isn’t exactly much to do here other that this and dive. One of the fellow divers told me of a place that consistently gets 10-20 manta rays every day in Indonesia. It’s about a one day trip each way that I will have to leave for next time. I’m already cutting into my Japan time as we speak. That’s the beauty of traveling though, there’s always something that you missed!
On the Malaysian culture front, I talked to some of the locals and found out why some people are very dark, some people are pale, and some people are in the middle. There are three major Groups of people In KL, Indians, Chinese, and Malay people. This makes the food situation out of this world as you can imagine!!
Tomorrow I dive Sipadan. I had to use two different dive companies to get 3 days of Sipadan diving in (a total of 9 dives!)