Sipadan Rediscovered

So you want to go on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure - you know, something exciting and, well, different. Something that’ll register big on the brag-o-meter back home, but with photos and a tan rather than a limp to prove it. Trouble is, you’ve only got a week off. What to do?

Paradise Lost - and Found

Sipadan, a tiny fleck of land off Sabah's east coast, is one of those rare projects of Mother Nature that simply defies lame superlatives like 'stunning' and 'breathtaking'. If I want to be stunned and breathtaken, I'll blow-dry my hair in the shower.

When Jacques Cousteau, the renowned oceanographer and co-inventor of scuba diving, visited this marine paradise for himself in 1989, he was so impressed by its dizzying plethora of marine-life that he was moved to say, "Now we have found an untouched piece of art."

For the rest of his life, he considered Sipadan one of the best dive spots on this little blue planet of ours. Sure enough, Sipadan has consistently been ranked among the 10 best dive sites in the world ever since.

Unfortunately, the last few years have been a PR disaster for this forlorn atoll. The hostage taking a few years ago brought more bad press to the island than mostly destinations get in a lifetime. People around here tend to talk about the "bad days" as if it happened a loooong time ago. It can seem that way sometimes.

This northern tip of Borneo kept its collective mind busy playing host to the Eco-Challenge and the American hit-show Survivor during the long hostage crisis just offshore. Talk about grace under pressure.

In a show of typical Sabahan resilience, the state has pulled itself up by the bootstraps. And now, with the security situation sorted, this not-so-remote corner of Asia is back in the spotlight again. This time, for the right reasons.

A few facts about Sipadan first. It's considered the top dive-resort in Malaysia (indeed, the region), followed by Layang-Layang and Mabul. Besides Layang-Layang, Sipadan is the only 'oceanic' atoll in Malaysia.

What that means is that it is a limestone and coral pinnacle 600 metres tall, swept by deep oceanic currents, rather than being a clump of land that's basically a geological extension of the mainland, like Langkawi or Tioman.

To better understand this topographic uniqueness, look at an upright pen. Sipadan is the top1% of your pen. The rest of it represents the limestone pinnacle that Sipadan sits on. If you could see to the bottom of the surprisingly deep oceanic trench that surrounds the island, you would be forgiven for getting vertigo! But it is exactly this layout that makes it such a magnet for marine-life and divers alike.