Sipadan Permit Week from Mabul

Pulau Sipadan, Celebes Sea, Sabah · Malaysia

Moderate7 daysAsia~£1,300 est.

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Overview

Sipadan is an oceanic pinnacle rising 600 metres from the Celebes Sea floor, and Barracuda Point delivers the sight every diver keeps on their list: a thousand chevron barracuda wheeling into a silver tornado that swallows you whole. Green and hawksbill turtles are so numerous you stop counting by breakfast, grey reef sharks patrol the Drop-Off — a wall that begins one stride from the old jetty — and South Point occasionally coughs up a hammerhead. Access is the variable that catches people out. Sipadan is a protected island with no accommodation: you stay on Mabul or Kapalai and your resort secures one of the 178 daily permits, which typically means one or two Sipadan days in a week. The rest you spend on Mabul's genuinely excellent muck diving. Book three months ahead and carry your passport for the ranger checkpoint. Fly to Tawau via Kuala Lumpur, transfer to Semporna and boat out. April to September is prime. Around £1,300 covers a week full board with dives; the currents at the point are honest, so bring a delayed SMB and twenty-plus logged dives.