The magic that was found at Kalimantan~eddiebckhoo

On a quest to fulfill our dream of swimming with the famed stingless jellyfish found at Lake Kakaban, 20 dive buddies took an arduous route of 19hours and more to reach the pristine islands found at Kalimantan, on the northern tip of Borneo.
For those of us residing at KL, we had to awake at 5am to start our journey over 4 sectors:

1st sector : fly AA @ LCCT to Balikpapan (3hours) transit at airport 3 hours
2nd sector : fly Trigana Air @ Balikpapan to Berau (1 hour)
3rd sector : 4WD ride (3.5hrs) over hilly bumpy jungle terrain in pitch darkness bec here the sun sets by 5pm . This part of the journey was spent like on the backs ofbucking rodeo horses, apprehensively watching the driver steering thru fogging windscreen, avoiding huge potholes ! Welcome to Kalimantan road maintenance style which means they will dig up half the road and leave evidence of uncompleted works haphazardly left right or centre in no particular order, many gigantic holes for the risk of road users! These dangerous holes are only demarcated just by 4 wooden poles) . So we can consider ourselves lucky not to hv landed in a ditch!

4th sector : 1 hours speedboat ride over low lying corals due to low tides, guided only by torch light ..... Bonus? We have the lovely starlit sky with intermittent shooting stars overhead and displays of fishes jumping due to our torch lights! Very romantic indeed :)

We ended up at Derawan Resort at midnight , 19 hours later from waking up at 5am ....
Would I do it again? Yes!!!!!
Diving Sangalaki Island with its manta rays in abundance was way way better than diving at Maldives.
Diving Kakaban Island with its unique colonies of jellyfish in a secluded jungle lagoon was a once in lifetime experience, available at only one other known location in the world.
Some of us opted out of Diving Manatua Island , too tired out to wake at 4am to catch the incoming tidal currents bringing with it, the resident school of huge fat barracudas and healthy turtles (easily 30-50) as told by buddies' video footage! It reminded us of what it was like diving Sipadan 10-15 years ago.

So indeed we feel blessed to be given opportunities to experience some of god's gifts on such pristine corners still to be found on this part on earth.
Kudos go to our other dive buddies, from HK, Spore, K/Trengganu who had to put up with even more discomforts.....flying or driving into KL to join the band.

We look forward to more diving ahead with the fun group.
Cheers!

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• kalimantan
• derawan
• sangalaki
• lake kakaban
• jellyfish
• blue ring octopus
• cuttlefish
• mantas
• michellechoongkhoo
• eddiebckhoo