600 Meters Under The Sea: Palau Sipidan

After leaving the Kinabatangan, we boarded the bus, went back down the bumpy road, and headed to Semporna, which is the gateway to Palau Sipidan (Sipidan Island) where we would be doing most of our diving. I thought Semporna would be a biggish city, with all the amenities of home, but S and I walked from one end to the other in about 20 minutes, then looked at eachother and said "what now?"

We found hawker stalls - our favorite. This is my idea of Malaysian fast food. You go into an area that resembles the food area at your local county fair. There are tons of different things to choose from, all being made on the spot, right in front of your eyes. You point at what appears to not have chicken in it (and cross your fingers) and 2 minutes later you are sitting down having a wonderful meal. I have gotten lucky; nothing has had hidden meat (similar to hidden charges?) in it; somehow with all of my grunting and pointing I got my point across.

We spent the next three days diving in Palau Sipidan...this is a wall dive, which means that the coral reef at the shallowest is about 5 Meters down, but then falls off into a wall formation down into the deep sea. At the deepest, this wall goes down to 600 Meters!! That is about 1800 feet! You wouldn't want to accidently get stuck going down there! We saw so many cool things: sharks, tons of turtles, lots of HUGE fish (that's a huge fish!), schools of hundreds of fish, many different types of corals, anenomes, sea cucumbers, starfish, shrimps, eels, rays, triggerfish galore (watch out, they bite!) and even some weird animals I could not identify (I saw one fish(?) that looked like a lump of mud. It hopped along the ground and the mouth was on the top! what kind of animal was it...I don't know!) We stayed on an old oil rig which had been coverted to a dive rig. You could go diving any time you wanted...you just took a lift down, then jumped off the rig and took off. We also just jumped off the rig anyway for fun (it is about 25-30 feet off the water).

We left Sipidan and headed to Tawau, where we would catch a plane to go back to Kota Kinabalu...

Taming the Kinabatangan

Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my! Welcome to the Jungle! Actually, there are no lions, tigers or bears, but...there are: wild boars, elephants, snakes, monkeys, orangutangs, crocodiles and birds (oh my!).

After leaving Mt. Kinabalu, S and I took a detour on our way to Sipidan Island, where we are planning to go diving. We stopped at the Kinabatangan River, which is nicknamed "the Amazon of Malaysia". Well, I have never been to the Amazon, but this was pretty cool.

The first day we arrived, we got settled and then jumped right into a boat to explore the river. We saw tons of Probiscus Monkeys, which have huge fat bellies and big bulbous noses (hence the name). They can leap...(small buildings with a single bound) from tree to tree, clearing about 20 feet or so easily. We also saw a couple other types of monkeys, but the money shot was the elephants. There must have been easily 20-30 elephants all together eating, playing and swimming. We sat and watched them for a long time before it finally got dark and we went home for dinner. The place where we stayed was very secluded; to get to it you had to take a boat from the "town"; there were only 4 other people staying there when we were there.

The next day we were up early for another river boat ride... we saw 2 orangutangs! That night we saw about 4 crocodiles, which apparently you are not supposed to be afraid of, because they only eat small fish and...it takes them a month to digest that! Hmph.

We left the Kinabatangan with a newfound respect for the animals. Now I think that I not only want to take home a monkey, but also a Pygmie Elephant. Do you think it will fit in my suitcase? I may be a little over the weight limit!

Next stop: Sipidan Island for some very fine diving....

Hell on Knees: The Story of Mt. Kinabalu

I vaguely remember climbing Mt. Whitney. At 17, my attitude was - whatever my Dad wanted me to do, I did not want to do it. I thought that it was too hot, too cold, I was too tired, the pack was too heavy, the hill was too high, the tent was a pain to set up and I had to sleep with my brother who kicked, snored and talked in his sleep. And above all, it was HARD. Then I got to the top, took a long look around and realized that it was all worth it. The pain of the journey was worth the sense of achievement at the end. This is what spurned me to climb another mountain (ford every stream...).

Mt. Kinabalu, located in Malaysian Borneo (Sabah) is the tallest mountain in SE Asia, standing at 4095 meters tall, which is about 13,500 feet. Mt Whitney is about 14,500 feet tall. So it should be about the same right? No. Somebody forgot to tell these people about the beauty of switchbacks. So instead of a winding trail up to the top, there is a path STRAIGHT UP. I looked at the map, saw we were going to be hiking about 6 km the first day and thought, 'eh, no problem'. Riiiiight.. I was so tired by the end of those "easy" 6 km. The second day we got up at 2 am (I know, earlier than some of you guys go to bed!) and hiked up another 3 km to get to the peak in time for the sunrise. It was well worth it, but the temperature at the top was about 4 degrees C, which is about 38 degrees F. It was bloody cold! And we got up there faster than we thought we would (I didn't know I was in such great shape! ha!) so ended up having to wait for about an hour for the sunrise.

After the sun rose and we took the obligatory photos, we hiked back down to the midpoint, had breakfast and then hiked back down to the bottom again. I always thought hiking downhill was so much easier than hiking up... It is easier on my heart and lungs, but surely not on my knees! Today (the day after), I can barely walk on a level surface and forget about stairs (and of course our hotel is up a long flight of them!)

So once again, the climb was hard, but "the end justifies the means". The view from the top was spectacular and I have now hiked my second tallest mountain ever! And my dad didn't even make me do it!

Miles Hiked: well, 18 km, so about 11 miles
KM gained in Height: from 1500 to 4100, so about 2600...so, about 9500 feet...
Body parts totally wasted: Legs, gone. Knees, can tell when it is going to rain. Abs for some reason, sore. Feet, surprisingly good.
Snacks eaten in two days: about one Ton

Next up: Pulau Sipidan, one of the number one dive sites in the world!