Kinabantangan to Bohey Dulang
After our exit from the River we stayed the night in quite a picturesque place, it was only a brief visit but beautiful scenery around us.
Next stop was Lahad Datu, a small town of 30,000 where we anchored off the marine police station. I have to say there is no shortage of maritime police presence all down this east coast of Borneo, probably for good reason. A day trip was organised for us to a traditional mountain village where we were entertained with music and food. This village was struggling to hang onto their cultures with deforestation and the decline of village life in general. This was followed by a visit to another local group who were tree planting to reestablish the riparian margins of the local river. Again we were treated to food and local dance and music. Their intentions are good but hard to get excited when you see the endless rubbish floating past in the river.
Enthusiasm abounds!! Mind you the kids did volunteer.
We stayed here for a couple of days and much to the kids delight there was a fun park nearby with bone shaking rides, one where everyone sat in a circle on this hideous round disc which shook and pulsed while spinning round. You weren’t strapped in and just hung on hoping for the best. The kids and a few adults enjoyed it immensely while my spine and bony bum was pummeled to death and I lost my voice screaming at the operator to stop the bloody thing so I could hop off. I never learn. But in my defense these rides looked old and I have mentioned before that maintenance is not a word in the Malay vocabulary. Hence my trepidation.
After this I wobbled over to the bumper cars deciding these were more my kind of ride. At home you are required to wear seat belts in these with a limit of 2 people per ride. No working seat belts here and you had whole families cramming into cars with mums clinging onto their babies, hijabs flying, the bigger kids clinging onto anything they could hold on to and fighting their fathers for control of the wheel . Probably the most fun they’ve had with their hijabs on. They ride scooters in a similar fashion.
From Lahad Datu Warren left to Perth for a week for family reasons, and Morg and I were entrusted to skipper Kanaloa to the next two destinations. Something I wouldn’t have been willing to do without Morg as he is proving to be an indispensable crew member. Morg and I carefully plotted our next two passages through some reefy areas and the next morning the 2 of us set off for W Bay. We had a lovely motor sail with Morg up the mast on reef and bombie (big lumps of coral) watch as we entered W bay. We chose to anchor on the outer reef away from the rest of the fleet in deep water of 24 meters with 80 m of chain out. All the reef areas had steep drop offs, so shallow anchoring was not an option.
The reef looked so inviting we were in for a snorkel pretty quick. The nearby beach had a net cordon to stop crocs entering but we convinced ourselves that they’re not really into reefy terrain. Again, pretty sad looking coral and an abundance of spiny urchins. One poor lady from the rally rolled out of the dinghy on her back straight onto a load of spines, ouch, the pain.
W Bay had a nice jetty and a lovely relaxed feel, so evenings were spent under a covered jetty eating Jos’ mums food. Jo is an enterprising young Malay man affiliated with the rally who organised dive trips and events for us. He also introduced us to the local fermented rice spirit, a very strong alcohol, personally I thought paint stripper tasted better.
Morg and I spent a day diving at Tabawan, (also known as Pearl Island as it was a former pearl farm ) an island about 20 miles out from W Bay that houses another police station. Below is a photo of the blue hole dive spot off Pearl Is. It was a beautiful dive with clear waters and pretty good sea life. Also did a wreck dive on the way back, a sunken timber ship, it was rather ominous seeing the great bulk looming out of the cloudy water.
After a few relaxing days here we left for our next destination of Kunak. This was a new stop for the rally and the locals put on so many activities for us that after 3 days we all were after a bit of down time. On the way here Morg managed to reel in a nice big fish, but found it had funny worm things attached to it and he was ready to chuck it back, but I put it on the forum and every one said no! don’t chuck it away its a spanish mackeral. Sazli, our rally co coordinator bagged the head as no part of the fish here is wasted. He offered to make me a nice fish head soup, he probably guessed by the look of horror on my face that I preferred sausages. The clingons (later identified as anchor worms) didn’t look appetising but we were assured they didnt affect the flesh. So Morg spent an hour filleting it while we were trying to negotiate our way into a reefy anchorage. The Mackeral proved lovely eating, so in the end we were very glad that it hadn’t been fed to Neptune
Warren rejoined us at Kunak after missing various connecting flights and having to stay in KK for a night. He came armed with 3 starter motors and a chandlers store in his luggage and was very happy to see the boat in one piece. Oh ye of little faith.
We sailed off to Bohey Dulang on the 19 Aug, this is the second largest island in the Tun Sakaran Marine Park and would be our last stop with the rally and here we had our final dinner. Everyone was excited about this destination as it is a marine park and from here we would be taken for some great diving on nearby Sipidan island.
The entrance to the lagoon into Bohey Dulang was fairly straight forward. We anchored with the rest of the rally in a beautiful area to the east of the lagoon in 15 m of water, with reef surrounding us. 100m from the boat was great snorkeling with lots of turtles and small fish. One day was spent on an organised boat ride to Sipadan Island, a privilege as only 250 people are allowed here per day. The difference here was that besides good coral and tropical fish, there was an abundance of big fish such as hump-head wrasse and giant trevallys. What a day that was.
Trish, thank you. I am so enjoying reading of your travels. Absolutely spellbound. Be safe and enjoy. Love to you all.
As always amazing writings by the author! Thank you for sharing. Await in anticipation for the next episode.