25 Dec 2010 - From Semporna to Kapalai

Good morning and Merry Christmas! Woke up early this morning for a quick photo session to catch the sunrise before our breadfast. Despite having checked the sunrise timing, I got out late for the shoot and the sun was already up. Nonetheless, we still have some beautiful colours in the sky and quickly setup for some shots. There's also a small fishing port behind our hotel but most of the activity has probably ceased by the time we got there. I guess the early bird gets the worm.

Sunrise at Semporna - Sabah, Malaysia

Small fishing port at Semporna - Sabah, Malaysia

I guess the rest of the groups are just about getting up by the time we're done with the photos. And it's time for some buffet breakfast at the hotel before we head out to the Sipadan-Kapalai Resort office at Semporna, which is just a short distance away. Compared to most other outfit, they seems to have the biggest jetty there on semporna.

Didn't take too long to get the logistics done and we're off to Kapalai on a 500 horsepower speedboat. Oh boy I can't wait! We arrived at Kapalai in no time and I'm thrilled with what I saw. Just like the relaxing resort that I always have in my dreams and here I am, finally! I didn't waste a second to enjoy the welcome drink and I'm off to look around. All the houses and walkway here are raised on stilts and surrounded by crystal clear water with fishes and many starfishes all around. It's hard to resist jumping in straight away.

Sipadan-Kapalai Resort - Sabah, Malaysia

As our rooms are not yet ready, we proceed to retrieve our dive gear and leave our luggage in the games room. By the time we arrived at the dive center for the dive briefing, our gear are mostly rigged up. Finally, we hit the water around noon for our check-out dive at Kapalai house reef. I'll do separate blog entries for the dive logs to reduce the clutter here. And then it's buffet lunch at the resort dining area. Food is fantastic with quite a good selection even for a vegetarian. The rest have apparently also enjoyed the rest of the non-vegetarian options.

Finally, our room is ready and we got our stuffs transferred to our room. For a dive resort, I'll say the room's size is generous and it comes with a big attached washroom and a balcony, which is one of my favorite corner in the room where I did a number of my birds and star trails photography. Plenty of electrical sockets are available for all those power hungry folks with 1001 chargers on all their gadgets.

Balcony at Sipadan-Kapalai Resort - Sabah, Malaysia

We have two more dives before our dinner. Dive plans for the next day is usually out in the evening and tomorrow's gonna be our big day to dive at Sipadan island itself! After dinner,  me and my dive buddy went around the resort to recce for any nice location dark location that I can do my star trails. The surrounding is too bright all around the resort. We heard from the staffs that the lights at the platform around the sandbank will be off but the area will be locked up at night. So no luck there either.

With that we head back for an early night to be ready for an early dive at Sipadan the next morning. Before turning in for the night, I set up my camera in the balcony and have my 1st attempt at star trail photography. Haha, made the mistake of not switching off the sound on the intervalometer so the whole night, I'm hearing ... click ... paused... clack.. beep beep beep.. *repeats*. But I'll say I'm pretty pleased with the final result.

Startrails from my balcony at Sipadan-Kapalai Resort - Sabah, Malaysia

It seems like the video was highly compressed by youtube that the stars all disappear when viewed via the above. You should still be able see some stars if you open the video in youtube (click twice on the above video), select the 1080p HD version and open it up to full screen. :)