After days of "cleaning," cropping, tagging, and organizing, I am pleased to announce that the photos from my recent dive trip to Sipadan are finally available for viewing on . Since some of you asked, the photo collection from the previous dive trip to Manado is also available here.

Slideshows to these photo collections:

• Sipadan 2007
• Manado 2006

8/4/2007 5:31:27 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Scuba Diving

Our stay at Seaventures, an oil rig that has been converted to a dive resort, was very pleasant. When I first looked into diving and accommodation at Sipadan , Seaventures was recommended by some who had stayed there before. The rate for staying and diving at Seaventures is cheaper than other resorts around Sipadan (except those in Semporna, but the downside is the hour long boat ride from to Sipadan). Ultimately, it is the novelty of staying and diving from an oil rig is that what drove me to select Seaventures. And that was a decision I didn't regret.

When we first arrived at Seaventures after a 45 minute boat ride from Semporna, we were greeted by a big elevator which was lowered from the upper main deck to pick the passengers from the boat. The whole platform is raised about 15m above sea level. The main deck houses the dinning area, diving station, a part of the staff quarter, and offices. The area where the drill tower normally resides has been converted to a dinning area where guests come not only have their meals but to socialize and relax. Dinning tables dot the most of the area with a few sunbathing chairs and sofas on the edge. Three meals are served at the dinning area everyday. Similar to a typical live aboard, water, coffee, tea, and other hot beverages along with light snacks like bread and biscuit are available for free every time. Beer and soft drinks cost extra. The dishes served for lunch and dinner are mostly Malaysian and very delicious. Adjacent to the dinning area is the diving station where the real action takes place. It is here the divers get geared up for their dives. While the rental equipment there aren't in tip top condition, they are functional -- but then again, I have yet to find a dive operator that offers immaculate rental equipment. One thing that I appreciate from Seaventures ground staff is the quality of their filled air. The resort director Joe had indicated to me that the center change the air filter in the air compressor regularly to ensure that the filled air in their tanks is clean, making it more pleasant for divers to breathe underwater. The rooms at Seaventures are like, well, living quarters of an oil rig. Each room has an air conditioner and bathroom. Nothing extravagant but functionally comfortable.

At Seaventures, you can dive as many times as you want -- limited by your surface intervals -- in the waters immediately below the oil rig between the hours of 6am to 8pm daily. But house dives can be boring as the area around the rig is quite devoid of interesting marine life. Much better dives are found in nearby Mabul, which arguably has the best muck diving in the area, and slightly further Sipadan. Nonetheless, you can't beat the convenience of diving right from the oil rig -- just don the scuba gear and jump right in. In the day, Seaventures organizes day trips to these islands. Divers are ferried on speed boats. Boat ride to Sipadan and Mabul take about twenty minutes and one minute respectively. A typical diving schedule in the day is as follows: two dives at Sipadan in the morning, then back to Seaventures for lunch, followed by an optional house dive on your own accord, and finally a dive in Mabul in late afternoon. Because there are no organized boat trips in the evening, you do house dives. Alternatively, you can charter a boat for 250 MYR (Malaysian Ringgit), which can be split among interested divers, to ferry you and fellow divers to dive in nearby Kalapai or Mabul.

Most of the divers I met at Seaventures were experienced divers. In fact, several professional dive masters and dive instructors from other various dive resorts across S. E. Asia were taking vacation at Seaventures while I was there -- that's right, diving professionals taking diving vacation. Nonetheless, this doesn't mean that the dive resort only caters to experienced divers. But being a world renown dive location, Sipadan seems to attract the more hardcore divers. The local staff at Seaventures are cordial and competent. Our dive master is the ever genial Eve (pronounced as duo syllabi E-Vi). Always cheerful, we practically heard her laughter even underwater.

While it wasn't my best dive vacation, I did had a good time at Seaventures. If staying and diving form an oil rig appeals you, then this affordable sea resort with a down-to-earth attitude is definitely the place to stay when you are at Sipadan.

8/2/2007 11:48:49 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Scuba Diving

First there was Jacques Cousteau who declared diving around the island of Sipadan superb. Then there were several dive magazines, including Rodale's Scuba Diving and SkinDiver, that named Sipadan as one of the top dive sites in the world. Indeed, I have been itching to visit Sipadan ever since I heard about these broad accolades. Last week, I had my wish fulfilled.

I waited this long to dive Sipadan was due in part of logistics. Getting to Sipadan in the past was a journey itself. The closest airport to Sipadan is Tawau. In the past, you had to fly to Kota Kinabalu or Kuala Lumpur first before transferring a flight to Tawau. Alternatively, one can take a bus there cheaply but the downside is the 8-hour long road trip. While there is still no direct flight from Singapore to Tawau, getting to Sipadan today is made considerably easier with the advent of Air Asia. This Malaysian-owned, low-cost airline has added a flight route from Johor Bahru to Tawau. Getting to Johor Bahru Senai International Airport (JHB) from Singapore does require a bit of effort. Fortunately, Wikitravel provides quite a detailed article on traveling from Singapore to JHB . If you wish to travel by taxi, then you have to take a Malaysian-registered taxi, which can go anywhere in Malaysia, at the Malaysian taxi station at Queen Street in Singapore. The taxi fare from Singapore to JHB is S$55 (Singapore Dollars). From the opposite direction, the taxi ride from JHB to Singapore is more expensive. You will have to purchase a taxi voucher in the JHB terminal for RM160 (Malaysian Riggit), which is roughly equivalent to S$70, before presenting the voucher to a taxi usher outside who will then direct you to a taxi to take you over the border. Actually, taking the bus from JHB is a much cheaper alternative and it isn't as difficult as it seems. Here is a rough guide to the bus ride from JHB to Singapore. One thing to keep in mind is that the traffic at the border (or commonly known as The Causeway to the locals) is horrendously bad during rush hour, so allow ample leeway in your travel schedule.

No-frills Air Asia	Tawau airport terminal

Once you are in JHB, the rest of the journey to Sipadan is actually quite easy. Boarding an AirAsia flight is pretty straightforward. I find the experience similar to that of RyanAir: straightforward and no-frills. Since most dive operators in Sipadan will offer to pick divers from Tawau airport for free, you can expect someone to receive you once you step out of the terminal. From Tawau, it takes about an hour to get to Semporna, a fishing village and gateway to Sipadan. If you haven't booked for accommodation in advance, taking a taxi to Semporna from Tawau airport is the other viable choice. In Semporna, you have several choices for accommodation. You could stay in Semporna and do day-trips to Sipadan or stay at one of the many dive resorts found in nearby islands of Sipadan. On the first night, we stayed at Dragon Inn, which isn't bad at all. However, the walls there aren't soundproofed, so just make sure you don't stay next to someone who sings loudly or is noisy. If you stay in Semporna, the boat ride from Semporna to Sipadan is about one hour. Staying in nearby islands like Mabul, Kalapai, and Mataking can dramatically cut your boat ride to Sipadan by another 30 to 40 minutes depending on the speed of the boat. For the rest of our trip, we stayed at Seaventures, an oil rig that has been converted to a dive resort. They provide not just accommodation but all meals, transportation, and air tanks for diving. In my next post, I will focus on my diving experience in Sipadan.

Seaventures - the oil rig converted dive resort	The area in seaventures where our scuba gears are stored

7/31/2007 11:45:41 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Scuba Diving

Here is a sample (the top 12) of the photos I took from the dive trip to Sipadan last week. I will upload the rest of the photos to Flickr and write a blog about the trip later.

Chromodoris annae (nudibranch)	A nudibranch (4 cm)
Clown fish Finding Nemo... There he is.	Unidentified fish (6 cm) I can probably identify this fish, but at the moment of writing, I am just too lazy. Let's just call it the upside down fish.
Frogfish (6 cm)	Clown frogfish (5 cm)
Tube anemone	Sea anemone
Phyllidiopsis Fissuratus	A school of jacks This school is small (but it is the best picture I got) compared to the much bigger ones which I have seen, literally thousands of jacks swimming in a tornado formation. It was bewildering to watch.
Green sea turtle (close-up) There are so many sea turtles in Sipadan.	Another green sea turtle

7/30/2007 1:22:55 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Scuba Diving

I have finally identified the critter shown below, which I initially couldn't. It is nudibranch, not a sea worm. It has a scientific name of Pteraeolidia ianthina but also referred to as "the Blue Dragon by divers in Eastern Australia." For more details read here.

9/10/2006 10:36:22 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Scuba Diving

I just can't wait. I was going to write about my trips to Amsterdam and Beijing before anything else; but I was just too excited about my recent dive trip to Manado, Indonesia; especially the underwater photos that I took there. I spent the first day back in the States not resting but busily "cleaning" and "cropping" the photos with Adobe Photoshop, organizing the photos (including tagging and file naming), and finally uploading them to Flickr for sharing the photos with the rest of the world.

The entire collection of my underwater photos can be found on my brand new account.

Below is a sample (the top 20) of the photos that I took from my dive trip to Manado, Indonesia:

Anemone Crab (3 cm)	Anemone Hermit Crab (10 cm) Notice the sea anemone on the hermit crab's shell. The crab is chewing on something.
Blue Spot Sea Hare (18 cm) One of the most bizarre creature I have seen in Lembeh Strait. It's a sea slug, and it is shaggy and big.	Clark's Anemonefish (6 cm) One of my favorite fishes to photograph underwater. This one was quite startled by my presence but it settled down when I took the picture.
Cleaner Shrimp (2.5 cm) Cleaner shrimp provides cleaning service to fishes by eating parasitic creatures on the host skin. This one, however, was found sleeping in a burrow during a night dive.	Coral (Heliogungia Actiniformis) Close up shot of a coral.
Flower Soft Coral (Xeniidae) This is one of the most beautiful corals I have ever seen. Each of the feather-like feeding tentacles displays a beautiful fluidic movement.	Juvenile Clark's Anemonefish and Anemone Shrimp (3 cm) Close up shot of a juvenile Clark's anemonefish and an anemone shrimp.
Mantis Shrimp (25 cm) I was lucky to find this elusive mantis shrimp hiding in a hole. Treat this creature with great respect. Also known as smashers, they have powerful claws that they use to attack and kill prey by spearing, stunning, or dismemberment.	Nudibranch (Chromodoris Elizabethina) (4 cm) The highly ornate nudibranch conspicuously warns predators that it is toxic.
Ornate Ghost Pipefish (7 cm)	Pink Anemonefish (8 cm) Another Nemo moment.
Ribbon Eel (40 cm) Adult females have blue/yellow colored body. Males and juveniles have black body.	Snake Fish and Transparent Cleaner Shrimp Another bizarre fish with only the head protruding out from the sand. Notice the two transparent shrimps (look very carefully, click on the picture for the magnified version if you can't see them).
Soft Coral (Sinularia) (Close up)	Tube Sea Anemone (Close up)
Tubeworm (2 cm) (Extreme Close up) A tubeworn with its feather-like feeding tentacles. It is found next to a sea urchin.	Two Undulated Moray Eels Morays are usually solitary creatures. I was lucky to find a pair of morays.
Unidentified Creature I cannot identify this creature despite consulting several marine field guides. From a far, it certainly looks like a sea worm but upon closer inspection, it looks more like a nudibranch. Is it a sea worm or nudibranch?	Frogfish This is a bottom-dwelling fish.

See more of the underwater pictures at !!!

9/5/2006 12:32:41 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Scuba Diving