Local Living on Mabul Island, Borneo: Part 2

Deramakot Forest to Mabul Island was another trek! An 11-hour journey from the jungle down to Semporna which consisted mostly of palm oil plantations and a bus ride full of local kids playing their video games on full blast.

After finding a guesthouse in Semporna, we rested up and boarded a small boat to Mabul Island the next morning. Mabul has become a popular spot for divers due to its proximity to Sipidan Island- one of the best dive spots in the world. Mabul island is also TINY- only .2 square kilometers (the size of Grand Central Train Station for reference!!) Online, it’s marketed as a slice of paradise with pristine turquoise beaches, overwater bungalows, and tranquility.

In reality, Mabul is occupied by thousands of Filipino migrants (known as Suluks) and sea gypsies (known as Bajau’s). They live on opposite sides of the island and have entirely different communities that barely interact with each other. They’ve come to Mabul, mostly illegally, and built their homes on stilts covering the beaches and shorelines as more of the island gets occupied. Most homes are made of unstable, rickety, wooden planks and there is a constant hum of repairs going on around the island.

The Bajau are also known for their freediving skills and the ability to hold their breaths for up to 13 minutes. Some can dive as deep as 70 meters with nothing but wooden masks and makeshift goggles. This has evolved their spleens to be 50% larger than normal, which helps them catch fish and octopus by hand while spending close to 8 hours underwater a day.

The census recorded 2,500 people living on Mabul in 2021, which feels wildly underreported. There are children EVERYWHERE. We asked the locals the average family size and they said 10 people, most of which seem to be kids under the age of 4. Our dive master, Husin (who is the eldest of 13!!), claims the men are ‘very strong’ and never fail to put their swimmers to work (Sam wrote this vulgar language). To me, this means strong birthing women hehe

Experiencing Mabul also finally allowed me to come to terms with the fact that football (soccer) is undeniably, the most popular, impactful, influential sport/thing in the whole world (as Sam’s been telling me for 4 years 🤨 ). Every kid (and adult) was dressed in a knockoff soccer jersey, and the kids REPEATEDLY questioned Sam on his allegiance to ‘Messi or Ronaldo’. They never liked his answer (Messi of course) and proceeded to ‘Siuuuuuuuuuuu’ and act like they were Ronaldo scoring a goal every single time. These kids, and adults, were infatuated with football & mainly Ronaldo lol. If it’s reaching this remote island in that sort of way, then I digress any future opinion or argument for life (Sam wrote this but it’s true).

Unfortunately, the island is polluted beyond belief despite its close proximity to some of the world’s healthiest and most diverse underwater marine parks. There’s trash, clothes, toys, etc. covering the entire beach that then funnels into the shallow waters beneath the floating villages. The locals learned to live with the trash (or don’t have the infrastructure/ care to fix this), especially with the island’s overcapacity. It’s such an interesting contradiction living beside one of the world’s most beautiful natural places underwater, yet above water, there isn’t a care to take care of it. (And yes, it’s filtering into the ocean and reefs too - we picked up trash on every dive!)

Our dive instructor also shared there’s a huge lack of education among the Bajaus, both about environmental protection and children’s education. NGOs set up a school on the island for the Bajau kids but parents prefer the kids learn to fish rather than attend school. There’s also minimal access to fresh fruit and vegetables (besides coconuts) and the few food stalls only sell processed junk foods (full of palm oil) and soda. Alcohol isn’t sold at local stores since the Muslim Malays don’t drink (wish we knew that before we left the mainland!).

Nestled among the local’s shantytown-like villages, Maldives-style overwater bungalow resorts do exist and are catered to rich Chinese tourists on holiday. Obviously, we’re on a budget and Sam couldn’t convince me to splurge this time, so we settled on a mid-range accommodation filled with more Chinese tourists.

Mabul became super popular among the Chinese about 10 years ago. We were 2 of the 4 Westerners in our entire accommodation. The Chinese arrived on multiple boats with CASES of Tiger beer and were a hoot to watch (and get to know!)

Throughout the day, local fishermen kayak up to the hotel docks in hopes of selling fresh (read: ALIVE) seafood to tourists. The tourists will then bring the still-flapping fish to the kitchen for the hotel staff to cook during lunch or dinner.

The Chinese were incredible negotiators with the locals and bought pounds of fresh crabs, giant prawns, sea urchins, and fish for each meal. They even helped Sam and me negotiate a good price for our fish too. The negotiations would go on for quite some time and quickly became one of the highlights of our trip.

After dinner the first night, the Chinese were buzzing. Their Tiger beers were free flowing (although they hadn’t offered any to the thirsty, sober westerners) and started cheering as a group of four 20-something-year-old local Filipino boys serenaded the hotel guests with guitars while walking down the dock.

The local band sang most songs in Malay, a few songs in Chinese, and one song in English (Take Me Home Country Roads I.e West Virginia!). We all danced together on the dock, waving cell phone flashlights in the air and Sam and I finally got offered some tiger beers after we participated in the festivities. We “Kampaid” ( the Chinese version of cheers!) with our cold tiger beers and continued the party. That night broke the ice with the Chinese guests and we were greeted very graciously for the days to come by them all.

We spent our days diving around Mabul but were most excited about our day trip to nearby Sipidan Island. It’s run by the Malaysian government and permits are hard to come by (and extremely expensive) but all for good reason. Our day there did not disappoint !! We weren’t briefed much on what it’s really like, other than safety tips by our dive master. Our previous dives around Mabul were cool, but nothing all that mindblowing (I still favored our dives around Koh Tao in Thailand), so expectations weren’t too high. The only information we knew about Sipidan was that you needed to have advanced certification to dive because the current can sometimes be strong.

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around the two dives we completed on Sipidan, which felt like a real-life amusement park ride. Picture this:

The minute you descend, you’re immediately sucked into and drifted inside a strong current whirring you around what feels like an underwater circus. There’s activity everywhere, you don’t know where to look and barely have enough time to soak it in because the current is pulling you in whatever direction it feels fit. To your right, a magically healthy reef with thousands of fish across a multitude of species is buzzing, picking at the coral, and fighting over space. It feels like an NYC morning commute but underwater (some fish have bulging eyes, large underbites exposing their bottom row of teeth, or leopard-like scales).

To your left, the turquoise water quickly cascades to a deep dark blue - an unknown abyss. It makes your heart beat faster, realizing just how large the ocean is. But quick! Your gaze shifts ahead- There’s a

2-meter white tip reef shark just yards in front of you. You then look down and notice 5 more sharks, circling, hunting for their next meal. You remind yourself they are harmless to humans (they eat fish, not you lol), but you kick upward to give them a bit of space. You continue to take big breaths, trying to calm your heart and conserve your air tank.

You then look up and notice your dive master floating directly above you, drifting seamlessly in the current. Your dive master looks like an astronaut geared up with the deep dark sea behind him. For a second, you wonder whether this is what it feels like to float in space.

You turn around to make sure Sam is still there (what divers call a buddy check!), he’s also drifting with the current but is unaware two HUGE sea turtles are drifting perfectly beside him. You get his attention and hand signal for him to turn around to enjoy this unique moment. You then notice the sea turtles are accompanied by their fish friends who are perched on their shells as if they are hitching a free ride. Although you are fully in the current’s control, being whirled around at significant speed, at that moment you feel still, as you and the turtles glide along in perfect unison before they take a peek at you and deep dive into the abyss.

You look to your right again and see a huge school of barracuda fish swimming in a whirlpool. It must be 15 meters long with close to a thousand barracuda swimming in perfect formation. You notice a few lone barracudas occasionally venture out of the swirling group but quickly swim back into their place. Up ahead, you see dozens of large jackfish and turtles being pushed diagonally down into the deep by a strong down-current. It reminds you of finding Nemo when Crush (the sea turtle) takes Nemo’s dad through the whirling current during their quest across the sea. You have a quick panic hoping it doesn’t suck you down. You kick harder through it, and you make it to the other side unharmed.

Our second dive (two is the maximum the permit allows in a day) on Sipidan also resembled this experience, and I must say, this description is no exaggeration. It was one of the most magical experiences that has left us in awe. Every diver needs to visit Sipidan at least once. We hope we can come back to explore the handful of other dive sites around the island.

We spent the rest of our time after diving Sipidan sneaking into a nearby resort that sold beers to enjoy the last bit of island life.

The next morning, we boarded a boat back to “mainland” Borneo to catch a short regional flight from the southern part of the island back to where we started the trip 10 days prior (Kota Kinabalu).

After a 2-hour bus ride to the regional airport, we quickly realized Sam booked the wrong flight for us (smh). We spent the next few hours weighing our options: taking a 12-hour bus overnight, begging a taxi driver to take us, or risking our luck to get standby seats on other flights. We managed to get on an afternoon flight and made our way to Kota Kinabalu just before sunset.

We forgot to mention in the last newsletter just how lucky we were in our quest to find binoculars for our jungle trek. While in mainland Malaysia, we were scrambling to find affordable binoculars before our flight to Borneo. We couldn’t justify paying $80 for the one pair we did find, so decided to risk our luck and find a cheaper pair in Borneo.

When we landed, we quickly realized there were no places selling binoculars (dumb mistake.. it was also 10 pm so shops were closed). We asked the hotel owner for recommendations and he graciously lent us his pair of Nikon binoculars(a VERY nice pair, and FREE! A win-win 😁 ).

We returned to the same hotel that night to return the binoculars, thanked him for his generosity once again, and proceeded to sit in the lobby and chat over Tiger beers (he was boooozer) for the next 5 hours. The owner was an Indian Sikh man born in Kota Kinabalu, and to put it lightly, he was an incredible intellectual. After receiving his Ph.D. in Bio-Chemistry at the University of Liverpool in the ’60s, he spent his life across a variety of trades and industries (a diamond/gemstone collector being where he made most of his money!) and had some incredible stories. He ‘retired’ 8 years ago and opened the hotel in his hometown. We discussed his take on palm oil (and he reminded us that the West had been cutting down natural resources WELL before Borneo), existentialism (that part went over my head LOL), his views on the Muslim-dominated Malaysian government (he’s not a fan and said Borneo has gone downhill since independence from the British), his book recommendations that Sam promised to read and pretty much everything in between.

It was the perfect way to cap off our experience on the island. I’m filled with contradictory feelings of awe yet sadness after our trip to the jungle and Mabul. But hands-down I can say this was the most unique experience we’ve had to date.

After a few hours of sleep, we were up bright and early for a flight to Taipei (Taiwan) to start country #4! :