Mabul island, Sabah, E Malaysia.

The last few days have been dive, drink tea, dive, eat, dive, eat, sleep. Add possible dive at sunset. Repeat.

Am staying on Mabul, a tiny island off the SE coast of Sabah, close to the even tinier islands of Kapalan and Sipadan. Yesterday at Sipadan, while most folk were watching a manta ray, I was confronted by a 60-foot wall of 1-metre barracuda, and found myself mouthing an awed and reliable 'fucking hell' at a depth of about 20 m while trying to keep my mouthpiece firmly in place and my bowels tightly under control. I swam closer, to within a metre or so - couldn't make myself go into the fish. Very, very real. One of those few sights in your life that really make an impression. More fun and only slightly less intense, was finding myself in the middle of a huge school of jacks, just me and about a thousand big silver fish circling round and round, with a couple of reef sharks and a huge trevally mooching about on the sea bed a few metres below. I spent a happy few minutes in the midst of this whirl of fish before some primeval urge prompted me to rejoin my school of fellow divers outside.

Sharks and turtles are all over the place here, and there are also lots of unlikely wee beasties on the Mabul reefs to investigate at a more leisurely pace. There are also some very unpredictable currents, going up-and-down as well as along the reef.

After being surrounded by things that could eat me if they felt like it, and buddying for a few dives with a gangly Swedish giant whose buoyancy skills alternated between those of a brick and a dirigible, I have been forced to adjust somewhat my appraisal of diving's Seriousness Level/Cockup Potential from Dancing In The Park/Low to Quite Exciting/Excellent.

On one dive with particularly poor visibility, we lost the Divemaster and another duo, and got swept away by a strong current. I was having great difficulty equalising (a blocked sinus in my left ear sometimes prevents me from descending quickly), and my mask was simultaneously leaking and steaming up, forcing me to clear it every minute or so. Meanwhile my buddy kept dissapearing to the surface and back like a yo-yo. Twice I was in the water on my own for several minutes, thinking 'this isn't in the manual', whose rather glib advice is to make a dive-plan and stick to it. No real danger though.

Have to leave today or I won't have time to see the orang-utangs and proboscis monkeys. 'Tis a tough choice, but it's probably best to leave on a high, plus I could use a rest!

...i-pod and pics fully functional. Internet connections are few and far between, so apols for the bloggus interruptus. Pictorius imminentus, given the chance.