We said goodbye to the orangutans and journeyed on to the island of Mabul - the gateway to Sipidan (AKA one of the world's best dive sites). Once again, things didn't quite go to plan...
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| Sipidan island |
The accommodation we were supposed to stay in burnt to the ground a few weeks before we arrived (this is becoming a recurring theme for us!). We had two choices - spend twice the amount on an alternative hotel or spend less than half the amount to stay in a nearby 'guest house'. We settled for the latter.
Our loosely named alternative 'guest house' was located in the heart of the water village (i.e. a shanty town on stilts).
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| Our next door neighbours |
Let me describe try to recreate it for you...
- The whole place was surrounded by rubbish, mangy cats and dogs and sweets little kids who played marbles all day rather than go to school
- Most 'buildings' were made of corruaged iron and other odds and ends and looked like they were about to collapse at any moment
- We had no electricity between 6am-6pm
- There was no wash basin
- The shower was a cold drip
Add to this the fact that we had torrential rain from the moment we arrived so we were permanently caked in mud and you get a glimpse of life at 'Long House' and why it was a bit of a shock to the system. Our initial reaction was to abandon ship and check into the nicer hotel on the 'nicer' side of the island but in the end we thought better of it... realising as we stepped over several people who slept on the dining room floor that we were lucky to have a bed at all and it would do us good to live a little more primitively for a few days.
The poverty and people begging for money was incredibly sad but the guest house owners were lovely, the scuba diving was absolutely incredible and i'm very glad we went there...I just wish it would have STOPPED RAINING!!!!!
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| Swimming in sharky water! |
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