PART ONE:

Day One

Nashville, Tennessee

Our flight from Nashville to St. Paul, Minnesota left at 6 AM. That meant, since it was were going all the way through internationally on a single check-in, that we had to be at the airport when the ticketing counter for Delta opened at 3:30 AM. Which meant we had to leave the house around 3 AM just to be there in time. Thankfully we had the Delta Sky Club to wait in at BNA as well as a couple of solid hours of sleep at our backs to guide us along. We both slept the entire two hour flight to St. Paul, which helped as well.

Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota

We arrived in The Twin Cities early in the 8 o'clock hour. The reasoning for our excessively early departure was made in attempt of meeting up with the rest of the group from Midwest Aquatics along the way to Malaysia, so that we could all be in the same place at the same time for our Malaysian domestic flights. We did , in fact, succeed, & met the majority of the rest of the group that was coming from Kansas City here while in yet another Delta Sky Club.

Our flight over the Canadian Wilderness & the Arctic Circle to Seoul left around 11. Evan had graciously upgraded us on this fourteen hour flight to Delta One seats, something that neither of us had ever flown before. He did this for a couple of reasons. First, Evan has been recovering from a lower back injury for the last couple of months & still has a very hard time sitting for long periods of time. This allowed us to have a lay flat bed during our very long flight & prevented him from being worried about spending the duration of the flight in a middle seat unable to get up & stretch as needed. Second, the tickets for the Delta One spots ended up being cheaper than if we had upgraded to Economy Comfort or Premium Economy. So, thanks to him, we ended up getting to lay down & sleep majority of the way to Seoul.

We both opted for the Korean meals on the flight & ended up sleeping around half of the total time in the air. I was amazed as a 6’4” person that I could fit majority of me in the lay flat cabin! The only issue we ran into ended up being because of the lack of windows. The only upgrades available at our time of change were the middle cabins. Typically we fly on either side of the plane with a window view. Without said window view I became very motion sick on our decent into South Korea, to the point where I was locating the barf bags. Note to self for future upgrades I guess.

Seoul, South Korea

Our layover in Seoul was a pretty short one & it was about mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. I was honestly a little bummed when we arrived because I was looking forward to raiding their food court for some Korean bites, but the nausea from the flight took a bit to clear up & took my appetite with it. We departed for our six hour Korean Air flight to Kuala Lumpur shortly thereafter.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It was around 10:30 PM when we landed in Kuala Lumpur. Once we had our bags & cleared immigration we were met by a woman named Jasmine. Jasmine was sent by Tune Hotel to collect us all. She took us through the airport to the bus that was waiting to take us & our belongings over to the hotel where we had a couple hours stay before our domestic flight the next morning.

Evan & I got to our hotel room, quickly went about switching over clothing for the morning, showering, recharging devices, & were out before our heads hit the pillow for our five hour nap in the middle of our travels.

End Of Day One

Day Two

Our wake up call the next day was around 5 AM for a 5:30 AM lobby call, where we would once again be met by Jasmine to help us navigate our layover. We packed up any remaining items from the ‘not too far away’ night before & descend the hotel to meet the rest of the crew for our return to the Kuala Lumpur Airport.

We managed to make it to the airport around 6 & were immediately glad to have Jasmine again. The airport proved to be a bit of a maze; entering in on one level, having to avoid barriers, ascend up three floors by elevator, then meander through the mall til we got up to ticketing. It is here that we met the rest of the folks from our group who had flown in a day or two prior to spend a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur prior to moving on with the rest of us.

In hindsight Evan & I kind of wished that we had done the same. Not because of the travel exhaustion, but because neither of us had done the research into Kuala Lumpur & realized just how massive & in-depth a city it is. Noted for next time. We did have the foresight to tack Singapore onto the end of our trip, though we would end up wishing that we had one day longer there than we did.

Evan & I were the second to be checked in for our massive group reservation & with a little bit of time to kill while others did the same, we sauntered over to The Coffee.. The Coffee. is a Japanese based coffee shop with a small shop near international ticketing at the Kuala Lumpur Airport. They honestly may have made one of the best Iced Hazelnut Lattes I’ve ever had. It had tiny little chocolate shavings at the bottom which ended up making it taste like a Ferrero Rocher!

Once everyone was all checked in, we bid goodbye to Jasmine & thanked her for all of her help.

By the time we got to our gate we had about an hour before boarding. We used this time to do some quick money conversion/withdrawal & to try grab yet another coffee, this time trying Malaysia’s famous White Coffee. In addition to the coffee Ev & I also split a Kaya Toast, which felt like a mandatory way to start a morning in Malaysia.

Something that we all as a group debated about was the popularity of the 7-Eleven in the airport. The shop had locals wrapped around the shop & out into the pathways with baskets loaded with goods. It was mostly bread, dry/canned goods, & the like, as 7-Elevens in Asia are more akin to a high end convenience store with a lot more of a grocery element than they have here in the states. My running hypothesis is that when you get out to more remote parts of the country that certain amenities naturally become harder to come by, so you do a bit of shopping in the 7-Eleven before you go.

Our flight aboard Air Asia was around 2 hours from Kuala Lumpur to Tawau, Sabah on the island of Borneo, which is the third largest island in the world. They clustered us all together in our seating assignment &, appropriately enough, gave us the plane that had the Sea Turtle & Coral wrap. I’m going to claim it was intentional. Upon our descent into Tawau you could see all of the Oil Palm Farms. They stretched endlessly across the land, their palms arranged meticulously in neat rows that were visible from thousands of feet up.

Tawau, Malaysia

When you land at the Tawau Airport, you once again have to go through Malaysian customs & immigration. The airport is mostly outdoors with several food & souvenir shops scattered around the concourse. We were all pretty hungry when we landed & weren’t sure we’d make lunch at the dive resort so we split up to get something quick to take on our hour & a half bus ride from Tawau to Semporna.

Soon to be friend & recent acquaintance, Erica & I decided we wanted to get ahead of the week & went for a local foods stall simply titled “Noodles.” Through the exchange of Google Translate they informed us that the only things on the menu that they were currently serving were the soups. We both opted for the Penang Curry Noodle Soup.

Oil Palm Farms. Photo Credit: Evan Buddenbohn

We ran into two problems here. First, the soup, though it smelled heavenly, came in a plastic bag with nothing but a little plastic box of the noodles & toppings to pour the broth into. Not exactly bus friendly. Additionally, even though we iterated it a couple of times through translation, the noodle box was loaded up with shrimp & that’s a problem when there’s a shellfish allergy involved. So, we both opted to go with the US staple the rest of the group had ended up with, Subway.

The drive across Sabah gave us much closer views of all of the oil palms. They were legitimately about 90% of the view as we headed East.

Once we got to Semporna we were ushered onto a boat. Our luggage was transported & stowed in the back & off we went on the 30 minute crossing from Semporna to the isle of Mabul.

Mabul, Malaysia

On our boat ride over we passed by a series of villages that were situated over the top of the shallows. Majority of the houses set disconnected from one another on high stilts & there had to be over a hundred of them. Some were in clusters ranging from dozens to a handful, some sat out in the water by themselves. They struck a curiosity in me. I had remembered reading at one point about groups of people who were adapting & evolving to live more aquatic lives. Turns out this was one of the groups of said individuals! They have been found to have larger spleens which allow them to hold their breaths for about 15 minutes & dive down to around 225 feet. They are known as the Bajau People & they are considered sea nomads!

Cat On The Jetty. Photo Credit: Evan Buddenbohn

We arrived at Borneo Divers Mabul Resort in the early afternoon. Turns out they had saved lunch for us & we were shown, first, to the dive shop to set up our gear, then down the jetty to the dining hall where we were greeted with cold towels, lemon iced tea, & lunch. While we ate they had us fill out our check-in forms, our diving waivers, & all of our information for the Sipadan Island Park license. Once all of that was concluded we were shown to our rooms where our bags were already waiting for us.

Evan & I were given a double full bed room on the second floor overlooking the pool. We got all of our luggage sorted out & our remaining dive gear prepped for the morning.

The rest of our day was pretty relaxed. We went down & sat by the pool for a couple of hours, swimming occasionally. We walked long the jetty to go look into the souvenir shop & scope out the bar, then in the evening we made our way to dinner before calling it an early night. Getting some much needed rest following our two days of travel.

End Of Day Two

Day Three

We both woke up pretty early. Part of that may have been the adjustments required for the time zone shift to the other side of the world, part of that may have been the Sunrise Call To Prayer. We had arrived in Malaysia, a primarily Muslim country in the final couple of days of Ramadan. It had been a while since I had been in a Muslim country, the last was Bosnia in the summer of 2012, & I had forgotten just how cinematically beautiful the call to prayer can be. I remember telling Evan that I’ve been spending too much time in the film work & I would easily picture the tripod shots of the foliage in the dark of the early morning, cut to the waves on the beach, a cat asleep under an overhead light, the lights on the dining hall illuminating, all set to the call to prayer that happened each morning as the sun began to rise.

We ate a light breakfast, which started service around 6:30 AM, then went back to the room to collect our things & head down the jetty for our first dive at 8 AM.

Once our entire group was gathered at the dock we were given our briefing, split into groups, & assigned to our dive guide for the week. Evan, Darin (the owner of Midwest Aquatics), his daughter, our friend Deb, & I were all put into a group with Roy who was the Dive Master of the resort. The crew had come in early to set up our tanks & brought out the dive gear we’d dropped off the afternoon before in totes. Mine came with a small visitor, one of the island cats, she was a stunning mixed calico & tabby & she would spend majority of the next week either following after me or in my lap.

Our first dive was to be at the house reef, a site they had designated as “Paradise 2.” Where “Paradise 1” was, I couldn’t tell you. We never saw it, but Paradise 2 was meant to be our checkout/reacclimatizing dive. Sipadan is strictly protected & they want to certify that the divers coming in have the skill set to be diving there without harm to the local ecosystem. Most of us with cameras opted to not bring them since they add an additional layer of maneuvering & proficiency & we wanted to test the waters, literally. Which sucks because at Paradise 2 we saw a Flamboyant Cuttlefish, a huge Sea Turtle sleeping under one of the sunken boats of the manmade reef, & one of the largest Giant Frogfish that I’ve ever seen.

Our surface interval came with the usual toast, tea, & coffee. Anything that needed tinkering with on anyone’s kit between dives one & two was handled & before we knew it we were off to dive number two, a boat dive around the south end of the island.

The second dive site was “Eel Gardens” I site that I was excited for, because of the local colonies of Garden Eels that live there. I am a massive lover of Garden Eels, they bring me such joy. Our boat consisted of the five of us who had been assigned to Roy, Roy (of course), & Erica (who you met yesterday) & Jennifer, who were with a private guide named Tonny. Jennifer had booked Erica a private guide for the trip as a gift for her completion of her Masters in Photography. Part of the thought here was also that Erica, who loves Macro Diving, would be free to take her time photographing & not be bunched up with a lot of other people.

The tide at Eel Gardens was definitely stronger than on the north side of the island. We were fighting it more than Evan has hoped but all in all, we saw some pretty interesting things. The fields of garden eels were there, though they are very hard to capture on video or photos because they’re incredibly shy & retreat into the sand as soon as you get about 10-15 feet from them. The visibility was also fairly low which made any footage I did have of them incredibly out of focus. The visibility will, unfortunately, be an issue all week, we’ll discuss it & the reasons behind it in part two, most likely.

Right as we got in at the site we found two turtles resting near the surface. In addition to the garden eels, the site was full of different kinds of Nudibranchs & Flatworms. There was a Stonefish, a Juvenile Emperor Angelfish, a tiny little Decorator Crab (I can’t find what kind for the life of me), a Torch Coral with a Gall Crab living inside, Bubble-Tip Anemones with Saddleback Clownfish, & schools of Black Triggerfish.

Lunch followed our second dive, back at the resort, with the plan to reconvene around 2:30 for the final dive of the day. When it became time for dive three only Jennifer & I ended up wanting to go back out. So we buddied up along with Roy & made our way to a wall dive called “Nudibranch Center.”

Jennifer & I did see quite a few nuidbranches here, though that ended up not being the central draw of what would probably end up being one of the best dives of the entire trip. As soon as we were in the water we found a rocky outcropping covered in Maxima Clams. Their electric blues & greens were outstanding against the rocks they were embedded in. Just over the edge we found a Orbiculate Batfish, followed by several Moray Eels (one of which was massive), a handful of Sexy Shrimp, even more turtles, Blue-Spotted Stingrays, schools of Anthias, a couple of Comb Jellyfish, a Lobster, & a rather large Day Octopus. We both agreed upon surfacing to tell no one about how amazing the dive was, then immediately spilled as soon as we got back to the dock to anyone who would listen.

I was met on the end of the jetty by Evan who had been sat in one of the lounge chairs reading. We headed back to the room to debrief & get changed for dinner but were stopped along the way by a dinosaur. In one of the beds behind one of the villas was an Asian Water Monitor Lizard basking in the sun. It had to be at least 4 feet from snout to the tip of its tail. It froze as we walked by, lowering its head to appear more like a log or a rock when I shifted around a tree to get a better look at it. Eventually I let it back to its sunbathing & went about my evening. Evan & I would play “spot the dinosaur” the rest of the week as it popped up almost daily in different locations around the resort.

*I’m going to insert a footnote here, because I have friends who, like me, are NERDS. I know monitor lizards aren’t dinosaurs. I know they’re more closely related to ancient reptiles, not of the lineage of dinosaurs. The moniker for the monitor was merely for laughs as it was massive. I also know that a footnote typically must appear at the foot of a page of text. Can we suspend our rigid rules for this small segment, please? Thank you.

Dinner was served around 6:30. It typically was rice, a chicken dish, a fish dish, two types of veggies, a seafood dish, & a western dish. There was always a soup of the day, fresh papaya & watermelon, & two types of desserts. Occasionally they also had barbecue or satay going outside.

Our night was an early one. Diving is exhausting, we were still adjusting to the time zone, & our departure time for the following morning was set to 6 AM because we were going over to Sipadan for the first time.

Bougainvillea. Photo Credit: Evan Buddenbohn

End Of Day Three

Day Four

Dive Boats At Sunrise. Photo Credit: Evan Buddenbohn

Another morning where the call to prayer beat the alarm clock. 5 AM, bright & early, we were both awakened by it & decided it best to go about our morning, preparing for the 6 AM boat call.

We first went down to the dining hall in search of something small or transportable to eat, but we came up dry. Evan had medication that required food to take but he had saved some cake from dinner before that allowed him to still ingest it in the chance that there wasn’t food available in the morning before we made our way to Sipadan.

Down at the docks everyone filtered in in small groups or duos, dreary eyed & seemingly a little reluctant, but we gathered our diving belongings & loaded up into our designated boats for the voyage across the open ocean to the island.

The trip from Mabul to Sipadan takes around 45 minutes. The crossing this morning was a choppy one & I think we were all grateful to be already in wetsuits once the splash from the waves began to pepper us in the back of the open sided boat.

I suppose that it is here where I should explain to you all a little about Sipadan & what makes it so special.

Sipadan is an inactive volcano that juts out of the ocean floor. The surrounding ocean measures around 2,000 feet in depth just off the steep slopes of the island. In 1933 it was declared a bird sanctuary (with many guests at the resort coming for that reason) & in 2004 it was declared a marine park. The island park only gives out 178 dive permits per day, requiring an Advanced Open Water level certification to dive there &, in addition to the park staff, employs a number of dive marshals who observe the visitors to the island & help maintain the protection of its ecosystem underwater. The main draw of diving Sipadan is its visibility, typically exceeding 100 feet (keyword typically), the schools of Bumphead Parrotfish that nest here at night/early morning, the schools of Barracuda & Jacks, giant Napoleon Wrasse, the over abundance of turtles, as well as the likelihood for Pelagic Species like sharks, manta rays, & even whales! The hunt for the bumpheads in the early morning was the reason for our 6 AM departure.

We landed on Sipadan just before 7 AM. We were shown to the park office where we each had to verify our identity & dive certification before we gathered to brief for the dive. The site we were to hit that morning was “Coral Gardens” the intention, again, to hunt for bumphead parrotfish. Once we were briefed we reloaded into the boats & off & around we went.

I now must now interject two story details that were previously omitted from the day prior & diving in general. They involve Evan.

Evan, to his credit, got into diving because I am very into diving. I gifted him a certification course one Christmas & he has now been around the world diving. Evan, to a degree, is not the most comfortable in water. I think that’s fair to say. Additionally, he has a very hard time in dives with large groups where people end up a little on top of one another to see the things we’re all trying to stop & see. He also tends to get into a bit of a panic when his air consumption hits half a tank & really doesn’t like current as he’s afraid it’ll sweep him out to sea. He is not a bad diver by any means, in fact I would argue he’s better than around half the divers that I’ve dove with over the years. His problem lies in the panic & anxiety. He gets down under the water, something might be off, & instead of listening to the advice of me or Darin or our dive guides to do something that would mitigate his fear, he leans towards calling the dive.

On our first dive at Paradise 2 he remained about 5-10 feet above the rest of the group, never coming down closer to view whatever we were looking at. That was a case of our entire group being bunched together though. On our second dive at Eel Gardens there was a light to moderate amount of current, but instead of coming down closer to the ocean floor, he remained up in it, fighting it. All of these were fixes that both Darin & I offered fixes for in the moment & following that were not heeded. Let those anecdotes be indicative of this next dive…

When we were being briefed for Coral Gardens Roy had informed us of three main things, the first being the current. Coral Gardens has a tendency to have pretty steep levels of surface, & potential overall, current. Second, since Coral Gardens has such steep surface current, it requires us to be ready to throw & go almost as soon as we arrive at the site & to then go down so as not to get swept one way or another. The last thing that he warned of was the potential depth. We would max out at a possible 80-100 feet in depth. So we all were in a bit of a rush getting ready on the boat.

Once in the water my dive housing for my phone, where I take video, started screaming at me that it had a leak, so I had to pop back up the maybe 5-10 feet I’d gone down, flag the boat back over, & pass them my case. I think it had just gotten splashed on the way over & had a water droplet or two inside tripping the moisture sensor, because the problem never happened again.

I met Evan down with the rest of the group at around 25-30 feet & immediately we all found ourselves railing against the current. At this point I turned to Evan & asked, through hand signaling, if he wanted to switch places with me. I was closer to the wall of the reef where the current was lighter & he was more out in the open. He said no. Not a minute later he’s giving me the “something is wrong” signal & pointing to his mask. He then spells out the word “burn” in sign language to me. I can visibly see the dish soap that was used to clean his mask & prevent fog on his mask. The gel of it is entirely still there. So I tell him to clear his mask. He does not. I tell him to do that a few more times, he never does. Then he gives me the signal for “go up.” He’s calling the dive.

Let me make two things very, very clear right now. I will never be upset with someone for calling a dive if they need to. It is always about safety & comfort over anything else, but a part of that safety & comfort includes self assessment & deciding during your dive briefing if the dive is something you are comfortable with or not. Additionally, if the things causing you discomfort are things that can be attempted to fix with the help of others, those prompts & suggestions should be tried first. So we flag down Darin & I tell him that we’re going back to the boat as he & the rest of the group continue along the reef.

We did our safety stop, I inflated my SMB (Surface Market Buoy), & we made our way to the surface. Once there he went into full panic that the boat wasn’t right there to pick us up & then then one was there they thought that they were the wrong boat for us, even though they were the correct one. We got back on board & I didn’t hear a word from him until the end of the surface interval.

I myself was naturally incredibly disappointed. We’d flown halfway around the world to dive this one site that we were only allowed four total dives at the entire time we were there & we’d just had to call one. Again, my issue with the whole thing was not that the dive was called. I’ve had to call dives myself for a number of reasons, my issue was that when all of the ‘this dive is not something you are going to enjoy’ flags were handed to him, he ignored them & went anyway & that he once again ignored those trying to help him calm back down & get collected when he anxiety kicked in. He had even acknowledged that he wasn’t comfortable with the sound of the dive after receiving the briefing & had gone in anyway.

Apparently the dive was a bust though. The visibility that’s typically over 100 feet was barely thirty. They only saw a singular bumphead & a Napoleon wrasse from a distance.

Our surface interval was at the covered shelters on Sipadan. It consisted of boiled eggs, fried noodles, fruit, toast, & cake along with coffee, tea, or juice. We returned back by the park office for our briefing & were met with our second site of the day, “South Point.”

South Point was also a wall dive, though, as the name implies, it was on the southern side of the island, the hope here being that the current & visibility would be better. They were as far as I could tell. The goal here was to search for Barracuda & Jacks, along with an abundance of turtles. Evan opted out of the second dive. He would not dive the remainder of the trip.

South Point was another sheer drop. My dive casing cooperated & I went down with Darin, his daughter, Deb, & Roy. We certainly saw a lot of turtles, probably about a dozen. They were either nesting in the reef, coming in to rest, or swimming just off the wall looking for spots to sleep. The amazing portion of the dive came near the end of it when we all suddenly heard a loud rumble that sounded like a stampede or thunder.

It was a massive school of jacks, they came flying over the top of the reef, down the wall in the hundreds. They were swimming away from the Giant Trevally that were hunting them. Jacks are definitely not the smallest of fish either, so having hundreds of them swim within 5-10 feet of you at full speed is quite the experience.

We concluded the dive, returned to the park office to drop off the flag that showed we were permitted to be there, & made the trip back across the open water to Mabul.

Ev & I then spent around the next hour discussing what had happened. We talked about what upset either of us, how we could do better, what the next steps for him should be as a potential diver, & what the rest of the trip would look like for him. He agreed to sit through briefings with intent & assess how he felt about the potential of the dive following each one.

We then went down to lunch where we sat & talked with Darin, who is the dive shop owner/head instructor & has been diving his whole life. He offered Evan a bit of advice & also reaffirmed that he isn’t a bad diver by any means, he just needs to listen to briefings & those around him who are trying to help alleviate his anxiety underwater. He also suggested that the next time Evan was in Kansas City that he should just come to his 15 foot pool, kit up, & sit at the bottom of it for a while so he can get more comfortable being in the water.

Resort Pool. Photo Credit: Evan Buddenbohn

After lunch we went & hung out by the pool for a bit. Everyone had decided to pass on the afternoon dive because of the early morning that we’d had so the rest of the afternoon was ours to do whatever we wanted with. When we’d had enough of the sun I went & gathered my laptop & hard drive to go down the jetty & edit videos in the ocean breeze. Evan brought his laptop & edited photos in addition to doing a bit of work. At 4 PM, when it opened, we moved our party to the bar.

The bar at the resort is about halfway down the gangway to the jetty. It serves some pretty basic options; two or three kinds of beer, two or three kinds of wine, two rum options, a tequila, a scotch, a vodka, a gin, a whiskey, & that’s about it. You’re limited in your mixers to the canned beverages provided at the resort; coke, coke zero, sprite, tonic water, seltzer, & a flavored sparkling water. The bar also serves a little bit of food & by a little bit I mean french fries & samosas. Ev & I drank rum & coke zeros the whole time we were there, except for one evening that we will get into in part two…

A short bit after the bar opened, the rest of our group began to trickle in. First came Erica, Jennifer, her husband Dale, & their daughter. Thirty minutes later it was Darin & his daughter. About another thirty minutes later came Deb. Then again, like clockwork we had two or three other members of the party join us at the large U-shaped outdoor couches we’d claimed. We all were starting to get a little tired of the food in the dining hall, it was almost identical night after night, so we all went in on several plates of fries with samosas.

We were all expecting the larger Indian style samosas, but these were small, one or two bite sized, & wrapped in rice paper. They were honestly incredible. The fries were very good too & were served with mayo & sambal.

We did migrate down to actual dinner at some point, though I think we were all fairly full from our fried feast on the dock. I’m pretty sure it was also an early night all around because none of us had napped following our 5 AM wake up.

End Of Day Four

END OF PART ONE