More of Mabul

Here's a few more pictures of Mabul Island's denizens. As we wade through the small village, kids were running everywhere, clad in next to nothing if not naked. They were tourist friendly though, smiling readily at the sight of a camera. It's unfortunate to see that many of these kids had bloated stomachs...a sign of malnutrition or worm infestation. We wished we had the thought of bringing some albendazole along to be distributed.

*If you're the squeamish kind, refrain from reading what's next :P What we witnessed was definitely 18SG stuff.*

As we made a move back to the resort for dinner, we saw two kids by the shore grabbing a greyish blob out of the water. The identity of the object eluded us at first, but it dawned on us as we saw it struggle in the kid's grasp. It was a squid the size of a football. Nice catch...we thought. Then the kid started punching the squid, like what a boxer would do to a bean bag, in an effort to kill it. As the squid started to go limp, the kids proceeded to 'clean' it inside out. They were soon in a puddle of seawater stained black by the squid's ink, after which they carried their catch of the day away...most likely to be laid on the dinner table.

Mabul here we come

That morning I leapt out of my bed with much more enthusiasm than I'd normally have at such an hour. It was 5.30AM and I was geared to embark on our 1 hour journey to Semporna whereby we'd catch a boat to Mabul Island. As I dropped by Pou Wee's place to pick the 4 of them up, I was met with 3 pairs of panda eyes XD which I was told the reason later that the guys were up all night choosing songs for Ron...for some reason that made me chuckled in amusement.

Nevertheless we went over to Wen Jiun's place and piled into her Unser which we used for our road trip. I was speeding at 110km/h along the way to Semporna. When I say speeding, I mean it, coz drivers in Sabah tend to crawl at 20-30km/h on an empty road. Besides that, what they call 'highway' here in Sabah, is what we call 'road' in peninsular. People who know me would know that I vehemently abhorred the traffic in Sabah for these very reasons :P

We had half an hour to spare when we reached Semporna. Our stomachs were already growling in protests (despite the amount of junk food we consumed en route) but no food outlet was open yet. So we stomached it and headed for Mabul Island on our boat.

We explored the island on foot. By noon, the restaurant echoed its gong. Boy were we glad that we could finally have our first meal of the day...and to top it off, the food was decently good. I think Pou Wee had 2 and a half beef burger besides the other food :P We could have attributed that to our rumbling stomachs, but the food was consistently good over the next 2 days.

Our snorkelling session at the house reef yielded some rather huge reaction from us. Donning the mask and flippers, I plunged in right by a HUUGGEEE school of fish. I was stunned for a moment by the intimidating sight before I started backpedalling to a safer distance. Say Wae plunged in at the very same spot where I started. Imagine the surprise she had...she literally scrambled for the safety of the jetty XD

I loved every minute of this trip. Here are some shots.

The eatery

Chun Keat

Ron & Wen Jiun

Pou Wee & Say Wae

We lived on those chalets right there