Borneo! Diving, Orangutan and River Safari fit into 8 days!

Borneo

Where to start!! Most people I have spoken to had not even heard of Borneo! 😕

It is a beautiful country filled with wildlife, and surrounded by beautiful coral reefs home to thousands of sea life. I found it very hard online to find an itinerary that would suit my short time here, so I wasn’t sure if it was possible, but I managed perfectly, so I hope this helps any of you planning to go!

It sounds like a lot of travelling to get there, and a bit overwhelming, but once you are on the road, it is completely manageable. ➡

Diving

 The main reason I went here was for diving, after hearing that Sipadan is in the top 3 spots in the world I could not resist, so if you are not a diver skip this part! For diving you should stay on Mabul island. I stayed in Uncle Chang,and paid around €350 for 9dives/ equipment 4 nights dorm, food and transfer, and while the people were lovely, and diving very professional, the dorm was basic, with no toilet paper, and you shower out of a hose next to the toilet.  They were not accommodating to my vegetarian needs, even when giving plenty of notice, they had no wifi, and no electricity from 8am-5pm.

Also it is 90% Chinese who stay here so it is not easy to meet people who speak English, except for the people who work here. Other than that they usually have permits left for short notice for Sipadan, so if you are booking last minute book with them.

If I could recommend a place to stay, I would say to stay in Scuba Junkies, they are a bit more expensive but have a bar, wifi, big variety of food, and it is largely westerners that stay here, that have drinks and socialise in the evenings, so it is great for meeting people!

 

When booking a dive package you need to book online, so email the resort before, and make sure you organise a package which includes at least one day diving in Sipadan, as you need a permit to dive there. I would recommend to book a 4 night 5 day package, which most resorts on Mabul island have and, this will include your permit to dive in Sipadan, but ask is it possible to book 2 days diving in Sipadan, it is well worth your while!

The diving in the other places around Mabul are nice but if you are looking for the big fish book for Sipadan, as it has been voted in the top 3 dive spots in the world! When I got to Mabul I was so lucky and I managed to book a second day diving in Sipadan with Billabong due to last minute cancelation, so it is worth your while when you get to the island to go around to the different resorts to ask for another day diving in Sipadan if you only have the one day booked!

 

I would advise to do 3 or 4 days diving, I did 4 days, 3 dives a day with 2 days in Sipadan. You are usually out on the boat from about 8.30-4pm, and when diving in Sipadan you can go onto the island in between dives for lunch and a break.

 

The diving is amazing and it is so nice to see so much sea life in this protected area. Check out some of my dive videos here.

 

Getting there  

I flew from Kuala Lumpar to Tawau. From there your accommodation should organise transfer for you to Semporna, which you will need to stop over for a night before getting the boat ride to Mabul island. I booked into Aloha Hostel which was €12 a night including breakfast which was perfect and very cosy for a quick night stopover. The boat to Mabul island only leaves twice a day at 8.30am and 2.30pm and takes approx 45 minutes. The only thing that is so disappointing to see on the boat ride to Mabul is everywhere there is rubbish floating in the ocean. 😦

They are trying to educate the people, but between the people living on the main land, and on the islands, there is also sea gypsies it seems almost impossible, as a lot of the people are quite poor and don’t really seem to care. 😦

 

 

Orangutan Sanctuary 

 

After my time in Mabul, I had 2 more days left of my trip, so I decided to get the bus up to Seiplok to see the Orangutan sanctuary . It leaves Semporna at 2pm, (just ask the dive shop you book with to drive you to the bus station) and costs 8euro and takes 5-6 hours, but it is a very interesting bus ride as you get to see some of the country. It has spacious, comfortable seats with air conditioning,

The bus actually goes to Sandkan, so you need to tell them to stop at Seiplok to let you off. They will let you off at a roundabout on the side of the road with nothing around, but their will be some taxis waiting there to drop you to your hotel and they should charge €2 to bring you to the forest edge resort. 

 I spent 2 nights in Forest edge resort, for 10 euro a night including breakfast I could not recommend this place enough. Hot water, lovely variety of food and cosy beds and beautiful gardens with forest trail walks. Best of all it is just a 10 minute walk from the orangutan and sun bear sanctuary, which Is a must do in Borneo. It will break your heart watching the introduction video about the orangutans, and after the feeding you are free to roam around the forest. This is where I got incredibly lucky and one came right up to me, I think he thought my yellow phone cover was a banana!! 😛

The sun bears are cute to see also, they have all been rescued after being taken from the wild to be pets. However their habitat is under danger due to the palm oil plantations around the country, that is cutting down where these beautiful animals live. When you are leaving the sun bears they have a big nestle ice cream box selling all nestle products, which in coincidence they are one of the biggest consumers of palm oil in their ingredients. 😦

Kinabatangan river

From Forest edge they can organise a tour for you to go to the Kinabatangan river which is famous for having some of Borneos best wildlife living along the river edge. Depending on how long you have most people choose to do a 3day 2 night tour where you stay in the jungle. However, I was short on time so the resort organised for me a day tour for about 50 euro where they pick up and drop off. The drive takes 1.30 hour. When we got there, just before the river tour was to start, it began to rain torrentially. 😡 After about an hour it died down a little but it was still far to heavy to bring any cameras etc, so we were given ponchos and went out into the rain on this little wooden boat.

It was a 2 hour boat tour, and you see mostly different types of birds and monkeys, and if you are lucky crocodiles. Towards the end of the tour we were incredibly lucky, and managed to see a few wild pigmy elephants grazing by the river bed. It was absolutely incredible and everyone kept telling us how lucky we were to see these, as there might be no spotting of them for up to weeks at a time!! 😛 After this we were brought back for a lovely dinner before returning to the resort in Seiplok.

The next day I flew back to KUL from Sandkan airport which is about. 20 minute drive from forest edge resort.

It really is a beautiful trip and country and it is not crowded with tourists as some other parts of Asia are. If you are short on time I would recommend doing what I did, as I got to fit a lot in 🙂

Check out my diving video here.

 

Leave the resorts and explore Mauritius!!!

People talk about their holiday in Mauritius and speak about luxury resorts, relaxing on beautiful beaches in the resort they chose, but that’s it, they miss out on all the facilities that this magnificent island has to offer.

View from restaurant in Trou Au Bitches

 

The island is perfectly sized to explore in a week or so! To give you an example it takes under two hours to drive from the north to the south of the island.  I explored Mauritius for seven days and I am so happy I didn’t stay in the typical “honeymoon” resort for the week!

 

 

On arrival at the airport we picked up our hire car which we had pre-booked on the internet, but beware Mauritius we joked about, is the island of roundabouts! Every 2km or so on a motorway a roundabout would show up, so you will not get around the island fast!! But if you can count them let me know because we are almost sure it has one of the most roundabouts on any island!!! They are all over the island along with stray dogs you should be particularly careful about at night, as their is limited streetlighting!

Where to stay 

We stayed in a area called Trou Au Bitches, this is a very popular honeymoon area with luxury resorts stretching along the beautiful sandy beachfront.

From booking.com we found an amazing aparthotel called BeCosy which was across the road from the beach. It was US$65 a night, so if you are sharing its US$35 a night, can you get cheaper!!We had a very nice apartment with a fully equipped kitchen and beautiful balcony. We drove to the supermarket just down the road (10min) walk and bought breakfast, alcohol etc. The birds would come and join us for breakfast every morning on the balcony it was amazing! Their is lots of restaurants and bars around with very reasonable prices, a typical dinner would not cost you more than US$15.

The beach was across the road and as you walk along the beachfront you can have a look into all the amazing luxury resorts. The beach is the same from one end to the other so renting a bed on the beach is the same as walking on and sitting on the beds from the resorts. They offer water sports and you can go into the resorts grounds for a walk or to sit and have a drink.

 

 

The diving in Mauritius is a must. It has lots of colourful reefs, you will see all sorts of small fish and turtles etc, however if you are looking to see manta rays or sharks etc like myself, it is very rare to see this here! I went with a dive school called Pro Dive Mauritius. They were very professional friendly and supplied all the best equipment!

 

 

All around the north of the island stretches amazing beaches, each one more breathtaking than the last so it is definitely worth your while exploring the different beaches.

 

Dolphin Spotting 

We organised a day tour which you can book online or from the hotel you are staying in to do a dolphin spotting tour, and a island tour. This is well worth doing, we did a catamaran dolphin tour, which I will warn you the speedboat is more effective to get up close to the dolphins as the catamaran is more slow but it is a beautiful experience to be out on the catamaran.

 

After this you are brought to a island off Mauritius called Île aux Benitiers island. It is absolutely beautiful to go to, it is so rural and the water is crystal clear.

 

Seven Coloured Earths 

The Seven Coloured Earths are a geological formation and a big tourist attraction found in south-western Mauritius. It is an area of sand dunes that have seven distinct colours. The main feature of the place is that since these differently coloured sands spontaneously settle in different layers, dunes acquire a surrealistic , striped colouring.

Another interesting feature of Chamarel’s Coloured Earths is that the dunes seemingly never erode, in spite of Mauritius’ torrential tropical rains. You can drive here through google maps, download offline maps as I have said in other blog posts, It is very nice and interesting to see.

 

If you are driving in the same day you can go to visit The Tamarind Falls or Tamarin Falls are a scenic attraction of southwest Mauritius. The falls are a series of seven cataracts located on the Rivière Tamarin. They are beautiful to see however I will warn all vulnerable that it is swarming in mosquitos so bring your repellent!

 

 

Another amazing place to see is the Gorges viewpoint, the views are amazing, and families of monkeys live here so you can get up close and watch them in their natural habitat in the wild, up in the mountains is breathtaking!

 

Even just driving around in Mauritius getting lost, you will find yourself in somewhere beautiful and new.

Crocodile and Giant Tortoise Nature Reserve

Last but not least my favourite place, as an animal lover is the Crocodile and Giant Tortoise Park and Nature Reserve. They have a museum of insects like spiders and beetles and butterflies of Mauritius and it is very interesting! Fair enough the crocodiles are not in the wild which I do not agree with, but they are kept like they would be in a zoo to give you an example. The real reason to visit here is to see the giant tortoise area of the park. They are adorable and in such a big open space, so you can go in and sit and spend time with them without a keeper watching you or someone timing you. They are lazy animals so they are mostly sleeping or eating but the experience with them is unforgettable!

 

Overall Mauritius is a beautiful, amazing place to visit and renting a car and exploring it will really satisfy you. Sitting in a resort with such a magical country to explore is almost a sin!!

 

 

 

I hope this post is some help to if you intend to visit Mauritius and please let me know what you think! 🙂

 

 

Magical Iceland

❤ Iceland ❤ 

⭐ Before reading this I will let you know this is how we did Iceland on the cheap, so if you are willing to pay €250 a night on accommodation then this will be no use to you!! ⭐

My friend who I went with had a Mavic DJI and Lumix GH5 enabling us to shoot and put together an amazing video of the trip, have a look in the video above!! 

 

How I ended up road tripping in Iceland turned out to be so last minute and random!! 😛

We booked for five days in Maldives, but on the evening of the departure we checked the weather and it was to be thunderstorms for the entire week, so we looked on the map and on a whim jumped on a flight from Dubai to Frankfurt. We had a five hour stopover in Frankfurt and then flew with Icelandair to Reykjavík. It was so last minute, we were googling what to do when we were on the flight over!!

It is the most beautiful, magical place ever. Everything you visit is more beautiful than what you have just seen. It is so untouched, 330,000 people live in Iceland, and 1/3rd of the people live in the main city Reykjavik, so you can imagine how rural and untouched the rest of the island is.

They have one main road going around the island which you stay on most of the time, but before you go, download offline maps and pin each place to go to. We did 5 days in total and we got to see everything, but if you really want to take your time at each place it would probably be advisable to allow yourself 7-8 days.

What we did wrong! 

Firstly if your doing a road trip in Iceland, HIRE a camper van!!! They have all the facilities around the island for them, and you will not be able to justify the price of eating in restaurants twice a day so having a little kitchen area will go a long way! Also trying to plan each day what part of the island you have reached is really limiting yourself as to how much exploring you can do, and you will have to stick to a very well thought out plan. This means that at times you are only spending a few minutes at some of the natural wonders and you are not appreciating, or taking in what you are seeing because you’ll be stressing about how much more driving you’ve to do before you reach the next hotel etc.

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The prices are madness!! 

Another reason to hire a camper van is the prices of hotels and even hostels!!! Honestly you would think you are staying in Monaco or similar!! Each morning we booked a hostel that would be about four hours away, because we guestamated thats how much driving we needed to do each day including sightseeing to get around the island. So each morning we would go on air bnb or booking.com and book somewhere around 4 hours from us. A hostel with a private room, shared bathroom cost between €100-€150 a night and this is literally for the most basic bedroom you will see!!  Its fine though because you don’t arrive there till like 11pm and your up and out at 7am so its just to sleep!

 

Like I said if this is a trip you are planning for a long time you will not mind paying, but we were trying to do it on a budget!!

 

 

 

 

How to do it on the cheap!! 

We only realised how expensive it was there when we went to KFC on the first day and spend like €45 on 2 meals!! So we ended up every morning going to the supermarket and spending around €30 on a loaf of bread, tomatos, cheese, juice, biscuits, deli for himself and maybe one or two other random little bits!

Another suggestion is buy a big water bottle at the start and you can just refil it with tapwater anywhere, as the water is the most fresh water you will have!! Buy a jar of coffee in the supermarket and a small carton of milk, and go into the petrol station and ask for hot water in a cup. They usually wont charge you and this really helps because you will need coffee for all the driving and each coffee in a shop costs between €5-7 so it all adds up!! We sound like knackers I know but it ended up being all part of the experience and you wouldn’t even want to sit inside in a restaurant, because instead you can park up and have a picnic with literally a desktop screensaver as your view!!! 😎

Whale watching

 

There is a few different parts of the island you can do whale watching in and it costs around €100 each for 3 hours, it is well worth the money, however they are wild animals so it is the luck of the day how close they will come to you etc. We went North of the island in Húsavík. 

 

Geysers 

The volcanic activities underneath the surface means Iceland has a lot of geysers, underground springs and thermal pools are scattered all around the country. To see a powerful hot stream shooting from the ground is exciting to see. Beware of the smell from them, it is a very very strong smell of eggs and smelly socks mixed!!

 

 

United States Plane wreck 

In 1973 a United States Navy Douglas Super DC-3 airplane was forced to land on Sólheimasandur’s black sand beach in the south of Iceland after experiencing some severe icing. 😦

Luckily all crew members survived the crash, but the airplane’s fuselage was abandoned. You need to walk approx 3km to reach the site from the car park, and it is well worth seeing. It looks like a scene out of some post-apocalyptic zombie movie!

 

 

So sad to see the Glaciers melting, it was 16degrees here the sun was beaming down!!

It is such a beautiful place to visit and you will not find better scenery, it really is a once in a lifetime trip!!

Dive in Maldives on a budget!!

One of the most rewarding trips I have done and I get asked most questions about my five day scuba diving trip to the Maldives.

I did three dives a day which included equipment, breakfast, lunch, dinner, accommodation all for under US$500!!!

Maafushi Island

Maafushi Island is a relatively small island made up of mostly guest houses, where tourists can stay at very affordable prices in comparison to the luxury resorts around Maldives. It is absolutely perfect to stay here if you are looking to come to Maldives for scuba diving, snorkelling, etc.. The island is 1/2 a km wide and 2km long and you can find accommodation from US$30-$50 a night including food. Obviously prices will go up around summer so this is the prices I have found on http://www.booking.com in August 2017.

It is monsoon season between November-April. I went in mid October and it was perfect weather. Don’t let monsoon season defer you from going as it will literally shower for 30 minutes of the day and then back to sunshine!

I have my PADI advanced open water licence and for those of you who do not dive you can learn in the dive shop here. I have dived in a lot of places and I can say with confidence that Maldives is by far the best dive spot I have been to, if you want to snorkel it is a perfect location.

 

The dive shop I was dealing with is https://www.facebook.com/pg/MaafushiScuba 

 It is run by locals on the island who are the nicest and funniest guys you will meet!! On my last night they went night fishing and made a big bbq with all the catches and played Bob Marley on the beach it was bliss!!

How to get there cheaply!! 

Firstly if you are going for five days there is no need to bring a suitcase just bring carry on as you’ll be in a bikini for the week!!

Get a speedboat outside the airport to Male city US$2 which takes three minutes as the airport is on a separate island, then their will be taxis lined off as you get off the speedboat and US$2 for 15min journey to the pier at the other end of Male. When you get to the pier you have 1hr wait for the local boat to bring you to Maafushi island and it costs US$5. The boat takes 1.30min and mostly locals take the boat with the food etc they are bringing to the island. If you don’t want the hassle of all of this you can try to organise a private speedboat but they are quite a bit pricey, if I can remember correctly it was like US$50-$100 one way.

You will be picked up by the guesthouse you are staying in and they will bring you and your luggage to the reception.

Being honest if you are not planning on going for diving, they have one beach which is beautiful you can see in my pictures, but being a small island you could get bored. It is absolutely perfect for diving as you go out on the boat at 9am for two dives, then return for lunch and then back out for an afternoon dive. By the time you get home in the evening you have your dinner, look over the photos and are exhausted!! Being a island of muslim religion, they do not have alcohol on the island but they have a boat the will bring you out to a bar boat which is literally 50meters off the shore that has alcohol so its not a problem!!!

I went on my own and I really have never met more welcoming and kind people. I stayed in Summer Villa guest house  and I had three meals a day which I could literally not finish they were such big portions. They vary the food each day, the rooms are lovely and the family who run the guesthouse are very nice people 🙂

Luckily the people on the island I made friends with organised a 12 person local speedboat to bring me back directly to the airport for US$25, which takes 30min, but its usually for locals so I guess they will see if they have space on the day if you ask who you are staying with!

 

The Scubadiving

The marine life and reefs we visit are absolutely breathtaking!! Common sea life you will see are Sharks (not dangerous ones) Manta Rays, Eagle rays, Turtles, Dolphins and all kinds of fish you can think of!! The instructors in the dive shop are very experienced and have all the latest equipment and a perfect dive boat!!

 

I literally sound like I am trying to sell this place to you but I gave it a 10/10 trip, it has been one of my best memories so far and I would really recommend it!!!