Scuba Junkie

Yvonne and a turtle

This hasn't been a shiningly wonderful day, in fact it's been pretty bad. We woke up in time for the advertised "FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST!!!" (quote) to find that the restaurant was under construction and now we had to find somewhere else to eat and nearly missed the boat. Finally finding a banana roti place, we hastily got takeaway and sat in the dive shop scoffing it down just in time to get on board. We got to Mabul and it was chaos - "hand your stuff to Caris, put your bags there, get your dive gear..." We did it all ok but everyone was quite arrogant and rushed us everywhere without taking any interest. I guess this is the difference between places run by Westerners and the places run by Malaysians that we have been going to prior to now. Nazmi was right, we should have gone to a different place. We got on the dive boat and went to Lobster Wall. It was Yvonne's first dive after her Open Water course and she did really well. We saw 4 turtles and I came through with my promise to photograph her with a turtle - many times over! The water was 29º, a temperature I was having trouble visualising in cold cold Melbourne but which of course is almost uncomfortably warm! The second dive was at Artificial, and we saw 3 frogfish, 2 leaf scorpionfish and a big cuttlefish (Eliza he was asking after you!) The visibility was pretty bad here as it's actually the pylons right in front of Sipidan Water Village and I guess the sand gets moved around a lot. 

Our room - it opens onto a little deck

Time for lunch, which was nice. Noodles and curry, all good. We checked into our room which is very nice, the best room here so far! We wanted to get laundry done so we asked at reception, who pointed us in the direction of another hotel. I also needed to book a flight but the internet is not working - which I'm really annoyed about as we specifically asked at the dive shop and they said there was internet. So we took our laundry and walked around the whole of Mabul without finding the place. I stopped at Sipidan Water Village to use their extraordinarily expensive internet at RM10 ($3.50) per 15 minutes, but I couldn't book. By now we were getting pretty fed up. We got back and had a shower etc and my bathers reeked from the smelly rental wetsuit I had. I went in search of a plug for the sink and was pointed in the direction of the manager who said "oh no there's no plugs in the place." I got pretty annoyed with this and he was so rude! Rather than listening to anything I had to say he just barked at me and made excuses. He did actually sort out the problems in the end but he did it with such bad grace that I am left wondering why I'm still here! He said "all you have to do is ask at reception and we'll fix things", but when I said I had done that multiple times, he said "well you can't ask that person, or that person," or "but he's Malaysian!" (as if they were monkeys), so I don't know how you're supposed to know which is the right person. I suggested they wear different coloured t-shirts and he waved me off like I was an idiot. So yeah, even though the resort premises are fabulous, I'd avoid coming here again. Hopefully tomorrow is better. We're definitely not staying more than 2 nights now.