Heading south from Semporna we travelled to the uninspiring city of Tawau, close to the Indonesian border. We had planned to cross over into Indonesia from here in a few days time but after hearing of very recent ethnic conflict, closed airports and ports we thought it best to re-evaluate plans a little.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, before all this we made fruitless attempts to visit a cocoa plantation, the draw of seeing a chocolate tree up close was understandable. Unfortunately it was not meant to be so Tawau did not offer us much other than a dinner consisting of the biggest prawns I have ever seen. And so on to Semporna, the hopping off point for the coveted island of Sipidan, a divers dream. An early morning boat ride took us to the island of Mabul where we would be staying in stilt huts over the water for the next few days. Our accommodation was basic but functional and the novelty factor of looking straight out over the ocean and down onto the fish, starfish and odd turtle floating beneath our feet soon made up for it.

Sipidan is a small island in the south east of the country and is another of the top dive sites in the world, renowned for its turtle graveyard and schooling barracuda. Getting permits to dive here is no easy task as only 120 are issued per day shared between each of the resorts in the area. James was lucky enough to secure two days of diving and he was not disappointed. A huge abundance of turtles (we're talking 50 plus, according to James!), sharks, big schools of fish and octopus all featured. Overloaded with the spectacular marine life we headed back to Sempora before a quick shuttle across country to Sarawak.