89: Is the INSANELY LONG JOURNEY to SCUBA MECCA MABUL and SILPIDAN worth it?

Hey there! We are a few weeks out from hopefully getting our boat so for the next few weeks we're going to post videos on our trip to Borneo specifically diving in Mabul and Sipadan, the famous Sipadan. And one of our videos will be on is it worth going to Sipadan. So if you're a scuba diver stay tuned for that video as well as our time with the proboscis monkeys and the orangutans. We look forward to sharing those trips with you as we wait to see if we get the Leopard 44. So in the interim enjoy the series on our time in Borneo. In mid-January we left Qingdao for what we thought was a two-week journey to Malaysia. The plan was to spend some time in Kuala Lumpur, but then COVID-19 emerged delaying the start of the school term and leaving us in limbo. So we decided to head south to the Malaysian island of Penang to wait things out. But the pandemic only increased in severity so we flew to East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. The three-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur landed us in the city of Tawau on the northeast coast of Borneo. From Tawau we had an hour-long taxi ride to the town of Semporna and spent a night there awaiting our final leg of the trip, a 45-minute boat ride out to the island of Mabul. The pilot came on and told us he was turning the plane around and said there's something with the airplane. We go down we're getting the shot okay yeah post-mortem fame here please press like subscribe to our last video ever ever. Landing in Borneo made us one step closer to crossing off a long-lasting bucket list item, scuba diving around the islands of Mabul and Sipadan. We could not be more excited about this adventure. Welcome to Borneo sweetie. Yeah we're in Borneo we just learned that this region is actually considered a separate state than the domestic airport. We had no idea so thankfully we made it we landed safely we're really happy to be here and why are we here? We're here to we're here because we're here so that we don't have to go back to China. We've been given an indefinite school start so we decided to explore a little bit more of Malaysia. Bucket list item is diving Sipadan island which I'm really excited about and getting to see the orangutan in their natural habitat as well as the big old proboscis monkey it's the one with the super long noses. And if you're really wealthy out there and you love diving and can't make it to Sipadan please please adopt us before our first dive because it's really expensive and it's not that expensive when you put everything together but it's worth it it's the best diving in the world they say. Click our Patreon site that we don't have right now but hopefully it'll have up soon and we just ask you. Should we start a GoFundMe page? We just ask you to please pay for our travel please pay for our life please pay for our fun. Thank you we appreciate you. We were completely unprepared to see firsthand the impact of extensive deforestation by the palm oil industry. Almost 40 percent of Borneo's virgin rainforest has been destroyed in the past 20 years due to the increasing worldwide demand for palm oil. Take a look at an ingredient label in your home and you will notice that it probably contains palm oil. It's found in makeup, soap, frozen pizzas and even biofuels. But the impact of palm oil plantations is far more insidious than one even knows. Tropical deforestation destroys natural habitats depriving animals of the basis for their existence causing an irreversible loss of biological diversity. In Borneo this means a significant decline in orangutan and pygmy elephant populations. It's kind of ironic that to get to dive paradise almost everyone has to spend at least one night in hell. Okay not literal hell but given the touristic opportunity Samporna has failed in every category but you don't have many options when you're going to such a remote island as Mabul. 45 regions okay you don't we don't go tomorrow though we go on 20th February. 20. 20 so a week. Two days. It's Scuba Junkie, Sipadan. How cool is that? So the main man today, our captain here and also we have Shar here, one of our guide, one of our dive masters today. So again we are heading out to Mabul. You have to pass out some life jacket, make sure you wear them the whole time. There is a reason Scuba Junkie on Mabul island routinely gets five-star reviews. They are masters of logistics and trip organization starting from your booking all the way through to arrival at the resort. Well they have to be as they are usually filled to capacity with divers traveling upwards of two to three days and laying out large sums of money to fulfill their dream of diving Mabul and Sipadan. Upon arrival to the resort all of our bags were taken to reception. Our dive gear was sorted and our dive guide was waiting for us. During our surface interval we enjoyed a buffet lunch then went out on a second dive under the converted oil rig. These two dives surpassed our expectations for Mabul diving. After our second dive we were then able to check into our rooms before the buffet dinner and confirmation of our dive site for the next day. Everyone from the resort has run to the beach because they're releasing baby turtles into the ocean. So exciting. Naturally it's thought that about 25% of them make it through the first couple of days. So we're surely going to be on remote islands like this. The community normally eat turtle eggs. To try and stop that back in 2011 we came up with a program where the community get rewarded for their contribution to the turtle conservation. So instead of eating the eggs and then going nesting we will give them one thousand ringgit. We then bring the eggs into the hatchery where we can protect them and then wrap them safely We get to do this exciting part. One afternoon after completing our morning dives we took a walk around Mabul Island to visit the two villages that coexist with the dive resorts. It didn't take very long to circumnavigate the island as it is only 50 acres and it is quite flat resting two to three meters above sea level. Mabul has been a fishing village since the 1970s but in the 1990s it first became popular to divers due to its proximity to Sipadan Island. There are approximately 2,000 villagers living in Mabul, half of them children under the age of 14. The majority are immigrants from relatively nearby clusters of islands in the southern Philippines. The residents are mainly Muslims who live a nomadic lifestyle comfortable with rudimentary living conditions. As most residents mainly work as fishermen the village source of income depends on ocean-based products such as squid and fish and their catches are sold in Semporna on the mainland. Mabul is arguably one of the richest single destinations for exotic small marine life anywhere in the world. It's famous for what's called muck diving which gets its name for diving in a muddy or mucky environment. Thousands of divers throng to the island every year and increasingly more since Sipadan Island became a permit-only destination removing all resorts from Sipadan Island and restricting the number of daily scuba divers. In future videos we will give you a review of our experience diving Mabul, Sipadan and Kapalai. But given the sheer number of visitors to Mabul we were really pleased to learn how Scuba Junkie, our dive resort, is committed to the advancement and betterment of the community of Mabul Island. While the island suffers from overcrowding and local resource overuse the resorts are diligently fighting against the tide to reduce serious and long-term adverse and irreversible impact. Preservation of the island environment is essential and a big part of the local education programs supported by Scuba Junkie. By showing the islanders the beauty of the ocean and the underworld they gain the support of the younger generation and hope they will commit to the reduction of single-use plastic, more effective trash removal, the maintenance of clean beaches, and turtle conservation. The resort also employs many of the locals and financially supports the local economy in many ways. We hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to Mabul Island and our journey to Borneo. Thanks for watching and stay tuned to the next few episodes focused on diving around these famous islands.