Tunku Abdul Rahman Park

One of the activities I wanted to do during the Labuan trip was to explore its dive sites., namely the marine park, Pulau Kuraman and surrounding islands. Labuan is famous worldwide with its wreck diving as you can see from the map above. But that wasn't my target, it's now Chinese Lunar July month aka Month of Ghost, I did not want to meet Jack Dawson and sketch naked Rose DeWitt Bukater underwater...

Opps! 18SX! But may be not so arousing anymore, it should be like this since it's after X years... Haha!

I intended to explore its marine park, and more keen on reef dive than Titanic dive. Unfortunately, look at the boat fare below (for less than 5 pax). It's way too ridiculously expensive!! Even a trip to Kota Kinabalu by ferry, plus cost for island hopping trip to Tunku Abdul Rahman Park (TARP) is cheaper than the boat fare to only 1 island in Labuan!

Since I had not been to Kota Kinabalu (KK) before, and friends had not been to Tunku Abdul Rahman Park (TARP), so we last minute decided to take a 2 hours+ ferry to KK and to TARP.

Look at the ferry, it has 2 classes: Business on upper deck and Economy class at lower deck, nothing much difference though since both also free seating. Business class costs RM39 from Labuan to KK, RM17 return boat fare from KK to TARP's Mamutik Island, the smallest island in TARP. There were RM6 for tax (??) and RM3 for marine park entrance fee. Now make a comparison for boat fare to Labuan Marine Park.

I was the only diver and I could not be so selfish to let my friends waiting me on the beach (apparently they enjoyed much more than me by taking spy photos on sexy bikinis, muscular swimming trunk and commented on A B C D even G cup!), so I took only 1 dive at Pyramid, one of the dive spots. Fortunately, I made the right decision and did not regret with it. Due to typhoon from Taiwan (according to the dive masters), the visibility was really badly impacted, I guess the vis. was only max 3 meters, which made the dive experience wasn't enjoyable as I expected, especially I wanted to polish my underwater photography skill.

However... But... Impressively, with my hidden / undiscovered talent, I managed to take some nice underwater shots with only a dummy camera Cannon A710 IS and stock housing with no professional strobes like the one my Japanese buddy has...

Haha!! Marketing myself again :P

Here are some nice shots...

During the lunch hour, I took few ten minutes snorkeling around the island before we had to rush for the last boat back to the mainland. I found out it's much more difficult to take UW photos when snorkeling, especially with wave and boat passing by and I couldn't get closer to the fishes...

If you are interested to dive in TARP, here's the contact. The Dive Center is located at Mamutik island. Alternatively, you can check out the travel agent at KK (Jesselton) Jetty. If I remember correctly, the name is Inno-Travel, beside the toilet.

Borneo Divers
Head Office: 9th Floor, Menara Jubili, 53, Jalan Gaya, 88000 Kota Kinabalu
Tel: +6088 222 226, +6088 221 340
Fax: +6088 221 550
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.borneodivers.info

You can look directly to both gentlemen below:
1. Rozlan Jhot (or call him Rose, he HATES the nick, haha!) Dive Master #485794, email [email protected] and mobile +6 012 839 3176
2. CJ mobile +6 016 805 7730

Note: one of my friends commented that my photos are very presentable and "publishable" (Haha! another self marketing!!). So over here I shall remind that UW photos in this blog are copyrighted. Contact me at blog[at]jacko.my if you are interested on some of the photos.