Me!!
As far as the English breakfast is concerned I should have known better really. Breakfast was from 7am to 10am and as I had to be at Uncle Changs office by 7.30 I made my way to breakfast at just gone 7am. I was surprised that my other room-mates were also getting up early when they had said they weren’t diving today, when I asked them they said they were only up for breakfast and were then going to go back to bed again, because apparently if you get there too late they run out of everything! So it seems 7.05am was already too late and all that was there was left was toast and beans, no egg, no sausage and certainly no hash browns, not quite my idea of an English breakfast.
I decided to put the whole thing down to experience and make sure I didn’t book back in here after diving.
I thankfully made my way well away from Scuba Junkies and off on the next adventure, Uncle Changs!
It was almost an hours boat ride out to the island and I hadn’t been given a great deal of info really but I had got a bit of a gist of it in that as soon as you arrive you grab a bite to eat and then gear up. There was no welcoming committee when we reached the island, there wasn’t even a welcoming smile to be honest! People were tucking into breakfast so I grabbed a quick cup of tea and some bread before trying to work out who was in charge here and who I should see about booking in, leaving my backpack and getting ready to dive, by my calculations in around 10 mins!
No one really seemed to know what was going on, apart from the fact that a couple of boats were going to go out diving soon. I eventually found someone who told me where to leave my backpack and then told me to ‘gear up’. The guy in the dive shack with all the gear was equally as miserable as everyone else in this part of Sabah seems to be and just handed me one of everything regardless of whether it fitted or not! You really had to take control and responsibility of your own gear and safety, which is fine of course but whenever I dive for the first time somewhere I’m always a little anxious and so far these guys weren’t doing anything to relieve this. There was a woman called Lisa who seemed to be in charge of the whole operation, I asked her who the divemaster on this trip and she just gave me a wave of her hand! At this point I’m thinking do I really want to dive that much? As I was getting my gear I noticed one of the pipes on my BCD was frayed and coming apart so managed a quick change before heading onto the boat. Just as we were about to leave the island Lisa leans against one of the oxygen tanks and all of a sudden it goes ‘bang’. OMG! It had better be REALLY good this dive site!
Turtle! On his side (blogger playing up again!)
Once in the water it was fine and of course once we started seeing turtles and sharks it was even better. Today we dived just off of Mabul island and the second dive was off of Kapalai Island. This was all in preparation for diving Sipadan tomorrow, all the dive operations want you to dive somewhere else before you do the big one, I’m not sure it’s really necessary to be honest but it doesn’t seem to be an opt out type option here. I was just doing two dives today, I could have done another one if I fancied but it’s actually quite a tiring sport and multiple dives definitely is quite tiring and with climbing the mountain in a couple of days I thought I’d take it easy.
Lion fish
Moorish Idol (I think)
Frog fish
What we did keep hearing while we were down there which literally made me jump right out of my skin and nearly back onto the boat was dynamite fishing. I heard it during the first dive and this was just after the tank had gone bang on Lisa! So there I am, several meters under the surface, thinking is the same thing happening to someone under the water somewhere, now that really can’t be a good thing. Fortunately once back on the boat I asked and that was something Lisa did know about, dynamite fishing, now really that can’t be a good thing for anything else that’s trying to live in the area, I don’t know how far away it was but it was very very loud.
The rest of the day was spent chilling out on the island or more precise at their stilt resort. All the accommodation on Mabul is in wooden stilt houses over the water which is lovely. At Uncle Changs it’s basic but still very nice so the rest of the afternoon and evening was spent relaxing and chatting with everyone else staying there. Despite the rather frosty and uninterested start to the day it’s all turning out quite nice, I just don’t think customer service and customer care is at the top of the list of priorities, I’m not sure even the safe return of all their divers is at the top of their list of priorities but hey they were the only ones who could get me a permit!
Uncle Changs on Mabul Island
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