Into the great muck open

Our hotel in the morning

Waking up at 6 is bliss when you have a full day of diving ahead of you. Although my day started off on the wrong foot when I did not get my fried banana for breakfast. The floating Dragon Inn Hotel we're staying (which is an exceptional value for its novelty and copy-the-luxury-at-almost-backpacker-price) does not have a big breakfast to start off with. Coffee, toast and a fried banana. So when I heard from the waitresses “Sorreee sir. Still cooking” after thirty minutes, I got pretty miffed. No one separates Bart from his food, even from a fried banana. Gimme my fried banana bitch!

Big John's was closed when we showed up at 7:30. Apparently polychronic attitude to time is common in all hot tropical countries. The girl showed up at the shop near 8 and we went through some of the bureaucratic procedures, the main one being me paying the remainder of our fee for diving. Our divemaster, Usman, who came highly recommended from diving forums showed up late as well. Very nice guy, although despite being an English teacher, I could barely understand a word he was saying. We picked up some partial equipment for our dives today and got on a boat to Mabul. After an hour of speedboating across the sea, captained by a 16-year old boy, we arrived at a budget dive resort and our base of operations for today. Although Mabul is nicer than Semporna, the nicest dive resorts cost an arm and a leg and only come in packages. And this one was a budget one, which meant... pretty much crap. I have to say that my decision to stay in Dragon Inn was a spot-on winner.

Boats going somewhere but probably not diving

I'm not going to go on describing every dive today, for I did that on the blog from the Philippines. Just to say: TURTLE BONANZA. On our three dives today we say about 20 different green turtles, from baby ones to massive adults (probably over a hundred years old). Nudibranchs, frog fish, one baraccuda, two stingrays (congrats to my hon for the good eyes), sea spiders, crabs, giant shrimp and a countless number of schooling pelagic fish of the smaller variety (not even counting the small stuff). Having said that, the reef is mostly dead. And this is a tragedy. I read in Sipadan almost 95% is still alive, here in Mabul and Kapalai, the number is closer to 25%. Visibility was bad, with tons of sea snow floating around, the ground pretty muddied up, but all in all these were three great dives. In between we grabbed some lunch at the resort which was included in the price. Although Krysia wasn't happy that her lunch was looking at her (fish with a head).

Evening presented us with another problem: money running out and we need some for the next couple of days, but unfortunately the exchange is closed, we're leaving tomorrow morning into the jungle. Great. We'll have to think of something. So after dinner we went back home to think of things and here I am on the computer. Goodnight.