Sipadan Water Village sits on what is known as the Ligitan Reefs, a very extensive stretch bordering the Sulawesi Sea. It is dubbed a "Water Village" because it is built entirely on pilings, connected to the island of Mabul by a long pier.

Mabul is a small island, surrounded by sandy beaches, and notably known as one of the world’s best "muck-diving" sites. The reef is on the edge of a continental shelf, and the seabed surrounding the reef slopes out to 75 to 100 feet deep. Mabul is one of the richest single destinations for exotic small marine life anywhere in the world.

Our check-out dive is on the house reef, Paradise One. The usual reaction to this shallow dive is, If this is the checkout dive, can it get any better?  On every dive there are surprises, a rare or strange-looking species of fish, invertebrates, and cephalapods such as flamboyant cuttlefish, blue-ringed octopus, mimic octopus and bobtail squids found in abundance at this magical macro site!

Our dive package includes diving at Sipadan. No other dive destination has more marine life than Sipadan. More than 3000 species of fish and hundreds of coral species have been classified in this ecosystem. Sipadan is also a small island. It is covered with rain forest. It is the peak of a steep underwater mountain which lies separated from the continental shelf by deep water. It is a mere 20 minutes from the Water Village. Most of the dives are on steep walls with ledges at various depths with a larger shelf at around 90 feet. Sipadan is well-known for its unusually large numbers of green and hawksbill turtles which gather there to mate and nest, and it is not unusual for a diver to see more than 20 turtles on each dive. There is a famous cave (Turtle Cavern) which has stalagmites and stalactites growing inside and which is the tomb of turtles which haven't found their way back out. If you have a cave diving certification, you can visit it.

Barracuda Point is where a diver may swim amidst schooling barracuda and big-eye trevally, which form spectacular tornado-like formations. With the possibility of seeing bumpheads, mantas, eagle rays and hammerhead sharks, each dive at Sipadan is an adrenalin-pumping experience.
The macro life is equally amazing; garden eels, leaf scorpion fish, mantis shrimps, fire gobies, and pipefish are guaranteed at various dive sites. Sipadan also boasts a rich variety of colorful soft and hard corals and feather stars of all shades and hues. The most popular dive spot to view these is the Coral Gardens. The diversity and abundance of marine life found at Sipadan gives it the reputation of being one of the best dive locations in the world.

Our dive package also includes diving at Kapalai. This unique dive destination is built on a sand bar only 15 minutes from Sipadan Island. The underwater scene is completely different from Sipadan’s. It is a macro world of rare subjects ranging from dragonets, fire gobies, wasp or leaf fish, gurnards, the strange seamoth, the crocodile fish, giant frogfish of different colors, eels, rays…and the list goes on.

There are about 17 dive sites in Mabul and about 13 dive sites in Kapalai. It takes less than 15 minutes to get from the resort to any of the Mabul dive sites by the dive boat and less than 15 minutes to Kapalai. Most of the diving is very shallow with depths from 60 feet to as shallow as 10 feet.
Crocodile Avenue, Mabul, is a: flat sandy area from 15 to 60 feet. You can expect to see seahorses, sand eels, pipefish, crocodilefish, tube anemones, ghost pipefish, the baby cuttlefish called sepia.

The Seaventure Platform, which you practically swim to from your sundeck, is a flat sandy area on about 50 feet. Littering the bottom are some coral blocks, pillars of concrete, piles of metal rods, debris from an old oil platform that has been converted into the Seaventures Dive Resort,  It is  an amazing dive site! There are always several frogfish. On one dive we saw yellow, black, red, and gray ones! We also saw morays, harlequin ghost pipefish and waspfish, nudibranchs, stonefish, batfish and a flying gunard.

At Ray Channel, Kapalai, you will find here and nowhere else in this area, the Pegasus dragonfish.. This small animal lives in pairs on sand and feeds on invertebrates. There are some leaffish here, too, and the spiny devilfish

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Hotel Kota Kinabalu

Hyatt Regency Kinabalu is located in the heart of the Sabah capital city of Kota Kinabalu, facing the South China Sea. Only 15 minutes from the Kota Kinabalu International Airport, the hotel sits in the hub of the vibrant business, shopping and entertainment districts.

Where is Mabul?

Mabul is a small island off the southeast coast of the state of Sabah in northern Borneo, Malaysia.

Malaysia is a country that consists of thirteen states and three federal territories in Southeast Asia. The country is separated into two regions — Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo — by the South China Sea. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia borders Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philppines.

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located at the center of Maritime Southeast Asia, the name given to the island nations in Southeast Asia, collectively known as the Malay archipelago. Nations in this region include: Malaysia Singapore Brunei, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor.  Administratively, Borneo is divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Indonesia's region of Borneo is called "Kalimantan", while Malaysia's region of Borneo is called East Malaysia or Malaysian Borneo. The independent nation of Brunei occupies the remainder of the island.

Borneo is surrounded by the South China Sea to the north and northwest, the Sulu Sea to the northeast, the Celebes Sea and the Makassar Strait to the east, and the Java Sea and Karimata Strait to the south. To the west of Borneo are the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. To the south is Java. To the east is the island of Sulawesi (Celebes). To the northeast is the Philippines.
Sabah is a Malaysian state located on the northern portion of the island of Borneo. It is the second largest state in Malaysia after Sarawak, which it borders on its southwest. It also shares a border with the province of East Kalimantan of Indonesia in the south. Sabah used to be a British crown colony known as North Borneo prior to partnership with Federation of Malaya, Sarawak and Singapore to form the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. Sabah is just a two hour flight east of Kuala Lumpur.