Sipadan (Sabah- Bornéo)

Ahhh... Sipadan!!!! A divers paradise! 

As a family, it was quite complicated to visit these dive sites but ultimately, we put in the money and found an acceptable option. We therefore ended up staying here for 8 days in an all-inclusive dive/snorkel resort on the island of Mabul. All we did was dive/snorkel and eat all day long under the splendid sun. Sipadan is renowned world wide for it's amazing diving, especially it's large schools of fish and the size of the others. Legend has it you can loose your dive buddy in a school of Jackfish ;)
The schools of barracuda are huge and come together in large tornados... and the bumped head  parrot fish are as large as the divers... the underwater world here is just out of this world impressive!

There were a few monitor lizards wandering around the property, you can witness here they were not tiny!!

Since it is really hard, not to say impossible, to describe what we saw during this amazing week, here is a lengthy video compilation (almost 8 minutes) of our best of moments of Sipadans underwater world. Hope you enjoy!

One moment that we didn't get on camera but that felt like a live National Geographic take happened as follows:
​The kids and I are snorkeling when I notice a local guy swimming around with his tiny boat. To make this more visual, this is what I am seeing, a wooden boat barely longer than the guy lying down in it with half his body hanging over the backend of the boat. 
He is wearing his googles and I am not so sure what he is doing... so I get up nice and close to have a better look.
Now that is when it happens, right there in front of us, live a movie without the borders of the TV screen.
​The guy was stringing along an octopus decoy on a fishing line. It is hanging close to the bottom when a real live octopus cames out from hiding, chasing after the decoy. We see it so well, out in the open swimming after it's prey and then boom! The fisherman is in the water, grabs the octopus which quickly wraps itself around his arm. Without hesitation, the fisherman takes a bite in the neck area and that is that.. supper goes into the boat for the fisherman and his family before he settles right back in to his original position and its out to fish for another victim. 
​What a scene!!! Very, very impressed to have witnessed this live!!