Sipadan and Sea adventures

My Holiday began with 3 days with Sea adventure, living on board a tired rig platform now converted into a diving Platform not far from Sipadan. In my time there with friends Ivy and Sylvia we conducted 7 brilliant dives and saw a great range of fish from swarms of Barracudas to colourful Lion fish! Not forgetting the giant turtles and sharks about!

I took a underwater 35mm camera with me and will post here the resulting  pictures as soon as I can get my hands on the developed film!

Taman Nagara

Next part of my holiday was to catch up with my father (Roger) and his girl friend Yve in Kuala Lumpur and head north by dug out canoes to Taman Nagara!

It was a great boat trip up and allowed us to see some breeds of lizards and birds on the way up. Our engine also got tangled in a fishing line and we ended up bumping off the the river bank for a few moments till we where going again!

Once we got to our destination we where surprised to see a small river on the opposite side of our jungle home, the water currents where strong and there where floating restaurants and water taxis!

Once we where off the boat we where surprised to see what looked like a holiday resort in the jungle! We where expecting allot more simple wooden huts and tents for our jungle adventure!

The camp was very well layout and we all sorts of animals wondering around, including wild boars near and during the night time.

We where lucky to get a very good tour guide, who pointed out allot of animals and plants to us along the way. He also explained what uses the jungle life can bring to people surviving there in forms of medicines, hunting equipment and soap! Not only did he tell us what they can be used for, but he also showed us!

After a very interesting long trek (and Night jungle trek the night before) we got to the famous canopy walkways which comprise of 9 rope bridges and platforms high up. This was good fun, but there was so many tourists and the platforms proved noisy making any chance of seeing wildlife a rare chance!

Nice Views from above!

After a hard day of trekking, we where then taken further up river by motorised canoes in baby rapids (which was allot of fun to I got soaked in a splashed!) to a quiet part of the river where we could go for a swim and cool down!

Tmana Nagara is a fantastic place and great for the family, those more die hard backpackers can also arrange long treks to big waterfalls and sleep out in caves!

LangKawi Malaysia

The final 3 days of my trip where spent in Langkawi where I stayed in the Barjaya. I felt right at home here since it was positioned beside the jungle, half buried in it and by the beach (my dream location!), So I got to see lots of my relatives swinging around and climbing all over my hut! Waking me up in the morning, we all big monkies after all! Where did I put that Banana?

Nice beaches. Beach Chess anyone?

Next we headed up to Oriental village (very touristy but pritty) and from there proceeded up to the top of Langkawi by cable car!

Up top was some nice big observation platforms and steel canopy walk which was great. There where some fantastic views, but it was slightly misty when I was there and my long distant pictures didn’t look so great.

We loved it up here but after a couple of hours staring out, we had to head back down and catch up with Stardust!

Here is Stardust!  We booked an evening sunset cruise on her for the evening and found the trip to be far more fun than we expected!

Free drinks, BBQ and a big net to catch you when you jump off the bow! (If you don’t know what a bow is, well its the frront of the boat!), so we jumped off the bow and hanged around in the net for a while before chilling out back on deck! It was a good day!

We  then the next day did some boat and marina inspections! Since I am dying to get my own boat out here to do some serious sailing. If you gone through my website you probably of guessed I am seriously mad on sailing! Plus since except for a few odd trips it been over 6 months since i done some real cruising so I am developing a nervous twitch and driving friends and family up  and down the wall about it all the time!

Sun falling on Lankawi I am coming back!

Singapore

Coming soon! I need to collect the images from my father when back to UK!