My last dive trip of 2023 was an international trip to Malaysia. We were headed to Sipadan, off the island of Borneo (the 3rd largest island in the world – Thanks Wiki). I heard this is one of the MUST dive sites and I was intrigued and was ready to go. The other part that intrigued me was Malaysia. It was one of the countries on my list.

What I learned before the trip was that Sipadan was known for sea turtles, barracuda cyclones and bumphead parrotfish (not just the lone fish, but a school of them). There’s also opportunities to see sharks (deep blue ocean and all).

Getting to our final destination was quite the journey. First, we departed from Bangkok early in the morning (our departure time was at 5:40am (like what?!?!?). We had all agreed to meet at the airport at 3am. OMG, that’s so early. From BKK, we arrived in Kuala Lumpur for a 5 hour layover before our flight to Tawau. From that airport, we were in for a 1.5 hour car ride. After arriving in Tawau around 5:30p…collecting our bags and going to the coast, it was late (enough for dinner). After dinner, we got some dessert before everyone headed to bed.

The next morning, we’d be boarding a boat headed for Mabul Island (where our actual resort was). We were staying at Borneo Divers Mabul Resort. Our package included breakfast, lunch and dinner. We had a house dive site available to us at any time, as well as a pool.

Each day of diving included 3 dives with a possible 4th or 5th dive at the house reef (basically the resort’s front yard). I wasn’t going to hit 200 dives this year with only this trip left, but I could hit 190…so that was the goal.

To say the least, the dives did not disappoint. We did see a lot of sea turtles. The bumphead parrotfish were also pretty amazing. We, however, did not encounter the cyclone of giant barracuda as expected. There were some pretty giant nudis (that if you missed them with your naked eye…you were probably blind).