On to Semporna (15th March 2010)

This mornings bus travel is feeling more upper-class than the journey from KK. There’s aircon, a toilet, leg room, more dodgy movies and even some food. :-)

The bus from Sandakan to Semporna is due to take around 5 and a half hours and apart for stopping for more passengers doesn’t stop for a break. Fine by me, the quicker the better.

The only way I knew I had arrived in Semporna was because everyone was getting off, no one seems to think its very important to tell you where you are or on other journeys how long you’re stopping somewhere.

I managed to get a vague indication as to where town was and made my way to Scuba Junkies backpackers. Scuba Junkies is supposed to be one of the best budget dive operators in town. I had called them about trying to get a permit for Sipadan but they were the ones who said April. Their hostel website describes the accommodation as being very clean and comfortable and for RM30 included English breakfast, sounded good to me. I managed to find the hostel to find the price had gone up by RM10 and that everything they said on their website about cleanliness was an absolute joke!

The thing is I had already called up earlier to book the bed and had kinda committed to it before I saw the room, I guess I just believed their website. Well it was filthy, absolutely filthy. They were extremely unfriendly, telling me to be sure I took the right number bed, yet when I got into the room the bed still had the last occupants dirty sheets on it, there were bugs running up and down the walls right where my head was supposed to go, there were just three toilets with shower hoses and they had seen better days and if the floors throughout had been swept that month I would have been surprised, and this place was full and a lot more expensive than it certainly should have been!!!

Now I love diving but there is always some kind of ‘in crowd’ thing going on within the diving community, there always seems to be this macho (amongst everyone) persona about divers where they think they’re the elite and no one and nothing else is relevant, this never has been and never will be an attitude I’ll sign up to and it’s something I really dislike about the sport.

They guy from the Scuba Junkies dive shop came over to chat to me trying to get me to book some diving with him, I asked again about the permit for Sipadan but again he said no chance. I told him I had one anyway with Uncle Changs, which actually he scoffed at, and despite living in this very small town tried to tell me he didn’t know where their office was. When I laughed at him and said ‘don’t be so ridiculous, do you really expect me to believe that when you live here’ he managed to remember and directed me on my way!

It just makes me dislike the diving culture even more, but don’t get me wrong, some places you go the people are just lovely, really nice and friendly to beginners and not dismissive of everyone apart from the hard core divers, unfortunately though this place was not that.
I found Uncle Changs office, confirmed my booking and paid my money. They asked me where I was staying and directed me to two other places which they said were a million times nicer and of course cheaper, Scuba Junkies like so many other companies around the world are still trading on a name and a reputation which is well out of date. The thing is I had left my bag there and committed to the bed really and in the end I thought for the sake of a few pounds I would bite the bullet and stick it out, I needed to be back at Uncle Changs office the next morning at 7.30am so it wasn’t like I was spending that much time there and they are reported to have the best pizza in town in their bar next door.

I had a bit of a look around town and unfortunately it had completely the opposite feel to Sandakan, the people were not even slightly friendly and in most cases seemed surprised to see someone walking around town and not hanging out in a bikini and scuba gear somewhere! I really didn’t get a great feeling for the place or the people and thought I would treat myself to pizza. So the reason they have the title of the best pizza in town is cause they have the ONLY pizza in town!
The bar is part of the Scuba Junkies company and despite being one room with a bar and a pizza oven you have to pay separately for food and drink to equally as miserable and rude staff. I think the worst thing about the whole experience, and it sure was an experience, was the filthy dirty half empty fish tanks in the bar area that had two very large fish in them as well as two turtles!!!!! This amazed and horrified me to be honest, diving is supposed to be about appreciating the environment and enjoying the wildlife under the water yet here were two relatively large turtles in a, by comparison, very small tank in filthy dirty water when outside the tank there is supposed to one of the top 3 dive sites in the world! I couldn’t make it out at all, I mean it’s not like these animals need rehabilitating like orang-utans or something, their mothers lay the eggs and leave them buried never to be seen again, as soon as the turtles hatch they make their own mad dash to the water edge and are totally on their own, so why on earth they had two turtles in this tank I have no idea, but it just confirmed to me what a joke their outfit was and how glad I was that I wasn’t diving with them and this was a mainly European run company.

The pizza actually wasn’t too bad, perhaps it was the fact I hadn’t had pizza in a while who knows.

Back in the room my room-mates were also die hard divers (!) mostly they were there long term doing different courses and seemed oblivious to the state of the place they were staying in. One of the guys went out for a run and when he got back and took off his shoes he found a very very dead cockroach attached to his sock! Another newly arrived guy sat on his bed the bottom bunk and the whole thing collapsed in two! It was going to be so good to leave tomorrow morning, the only thing to look forward to from this hostel was the English breakfast.