Travel & Living: 2012

We went to Mabul Island last month, we booked this trip last year before knowing that I would get pregnant again, I actually wanted to try diving in Sipadan Island but now all I can do is just relaxing at the beach :-)

The jetty :

It was a long journey for us who live in West Malaysia that is far away from the airport, we had to take 3 hours ground transportation to the Kuala Lumpur airport, plus 2 hours 45 minutes' airplane ride to Tawau, Sabah, followed by an hour's ground transport to the port at Semporna, and finally 40 minutes boat ride to Mabul Island, all together we spent around 12 hours from our house to reach the resort !!

Upon arrival, most people went straight to perform their checking dive after lunch, I got to rest with Tristan in the air-conditioned room :-)

After fully rested, brought Tristan to play with his favorite sand:

The evening is serene, like most of the beaches, it's a place for relaxing and rejuvenating :

The next day, most divers went to Sipadan Island to dive, I wasn't allowed to go along for snorkeling as the boat ride was said to be too bumpy for a pregnant lady :-( The daily number of divers allowed to dive in Sipadan Island is limited to protect the island from over polluted, some people in our group has to go to a different spot to dive, and wait for their turn to go tomorrow.

From the dive center, which is also the jetty, we could oversee a previously used oil platform, now become a small resort :

And the water is very clear, there were lots of starfish, corals and small fishes.

Luckily I still get to snorkel in the nearby area, called Lobster Point. There were more beautiful corals and fishes, and it was the first time I have ever seen a turtle swimming in front of me under the water !!!

Tristan did follow us to Lobster Point but he didn't want to try moving around the water with daddy, he just soak in the cold water :-( So that evening, we brought him to the beach again to play with the sand, he buried his own legs and felt very happy :

On the third day, it wasn't sunny in the morning, it was raining the whole night and early morning, the current near Sipadan Island was said to be so strong that the divers were forced to cut their target 4 dives down to 3, and most of them were exhausted ! May be it's good that I had to skip the diving on this trip :-) My hubby said his boat ride to the Kapalai Island were very bumpy, his butt leaves the seat most of the time LoL

But the sea looked so calm here at Mabul :

Due to wrong information from a friend, I missed the boat ride to another nearby island for snorkeling, luckily we can still snorkel near the dive center here in Mabul. Although we only managed to see some fishes, I get to see another turtle right before we ended the snorkeling session, yeah ! The water was kind of cold which caused me to end the snorkeling session, but the sun did come out later though :-(

Me snorkeling :

Tristan prefers to draw than go snorkeling with us :

From the jetty, we can also see another resort called The Water Village which according to my hubby is better than Mabul Resort that we are staying this time in terms of food and room condition :