Diving trip Mar'06 - Sipadan (Summary)

Sipadan Water Village's staffs were superb, very friendly and good service. From the moment we reach its jetty till they sent us off at the airport.

The room was huge... very clean and comfy. Why didn't I take a photo of the room??? hmm.... well, I wasn't in the best of mood, in fact I've never been more miserable (at times during the trip) in any trip...... I would have taken more photos had I not been affected by some unforeseen circumstances...

Anyway, the resort itself was superb. But the dive centre... hmm... lousy. The dive sites were lousy, that's out of dive centre's control of course, but the dive guides were lousy as well. Caused us to fin for long distances unneccessarily due to their lack of experience and knowledge. Boatman and divemasters weren't helpful. Very very lousy service. We are not those pampered divers who need to be treated like princess but their service, basic attention to customers were really really bad.

Most divemasters were fairly new, very very inexperience. They requested us to follow their many ridiculous rules but they themselves did not seem to stick to basic dive procedures. If we were all new open water divers, it could be very dangerous to follow these young inexperience divemasters. For eg, they did head-counts, when the number didn't match, they just abandon the head-count instead of looking or waiting for the rest of the divers who were not in sight. So what's the point of head-counts?

But then, can't really blame them...Some of those divemasters are university students. Went there to look for a temporary job. That's why they are very inexperience. They weren't even divers when they came for a job. Unlike Tioman or Manado dive centres there are permanent divemasters or those who have worked there for many years. But what I don't understand is why aren't there experienced divemasters around?

All in all, it's a disappointing trip. Not only the dive centre didn't provide acceptable-level service, the dive sites were disappointing. Sipadan is so famous. So called world class diving. But the amount of corals... were devastating to look at. What on earth happened to the corals?? Sipadan has been famous for so many years, never would we had imagine seeing such a devastating state of coral life...

Many dives I was so bored that I played around by swimming in different styles... If not for the pelagics (sharks, turtles, dolphins, whale shark, etc..) that visit Sipadan, it would be... ... ... I don't even want to think about it...