Island Hoping, Sabah, Malaysia – July 24, 2009

We started off on our island hoping to two destinations Palau Manukan and Palau Sapi. We were picked up a few min before 8:30am and proceeded to the dock at the Magellan Sultera Hotel.

We were given our standard Life Vests, Mask-Fin-Snorkel sets, then we boarded our boat.

As we cast off… here’s a view of the hotel from the boat

We are headed… there! Don’t ask me which, but I am sure we are not headed to the middle island.

Palau Manukan (or… Manukan Island)

 

And we got to the dock

Welcome to Chicken Island. (seriously, I have not researched for a connection)

The island has accommodations. They have a number of facilities on the island. Not exactly a virgin paradise

Another turn off. There are pay phones on the island.

Long white stretches of beach. Looks promising. Let’s take a dip.

The waters had trash floating all over the place. Plastic bags, empty snack bags, plastic bottle caps. etc. (I have more pictures, but I think you get the point) Ok… it was “bearable” so I swam around the trash.

Interesting. Lots of fish. But they are devoid of color. Lots of white fish… of various sizes. I found this particularly strange. But then again, there were lots of them, and this is only around 15 feet from the shore.

After swimming, I went around to investigate the island.

If there is anything odd I noticed about most of the people on the beach, everyone seemed to be so in love with their vests that they didn’t take it off. It made sense for those that ventured into the water, but oddly, even those on land… waaay inland, they seemed to be afraid of drowning and kept their vests on. Were they afraid to drown in sand? Anyway, I was amused.

The most interesting contraption I found were these mini0submarines called Scuba-Doo. The rider sits down on a the device equipped with an air tank. Their head is contained in an air bubble in the helmet. The device also has a motor to propel it around.

At around 11:30am, it was now time to move on…

We had to wait in line at the docks.

Palau Sapi

We are now headed for the next island. Sapi Island.

 

We got to the island around 12nn… Palau Island is where we were to eat our packaged buffet food. And apparently, this is the designated place for that. When we got through the entrance above…

… we were greeted by tables and tables of people and their corresponding buffet tables. It kinda resembled a fiesta with never ending food. Despite the number of people, it was pretty much orderly.

 

Apparently there isn’t much to do on this little island. If note on the map, we were just on a small area on one side of the island. The odd part, if you look close at the map, is that the toilet/changing room was far island.

I didn’t get to take a picture of our food. I was so hungry, I forgot. We had the usual fare of fish, shrimp, chicken, Vienna sausage (weird I know), some noodle thing, and fruit for salad.

 

For a drink, we were served the most generic soda ever. A “carbonated flavored drink”

 

As mentioned, were was not much to do on the island. The beach (above) looks nicer in the picture than in reality. It was a small stretch of sand on one side of the dock. The other areas were rocky, devoid of sand and didn’t look safe to swim in. The area for swimming is cordoned off with you standard floaters. I was fairly decent for kids and the mostly white sun bathers. Again, the water was filled with wrappers and other debris.

I noticed a small commotion in the distance. Some kids were feeding left over food to some

Really big lizards (aka “bayawaks” to Pinoys). They were kinda friendly and didn’t seem menacing. This for me was the main entertainment on the island.

We were so bored, we told our guide that we wanted to leave the island and go back. So around 3pm we proceeded to the dock and once again, wait for a ride back.

This time, the pandemonium was worse. In fairness, they did have a system and it was somewhat orderly. I was just amazed at the number of people that wanted to get off the island.

One thing I could say though is that at least they had these nice, really fast boats with twin Yamaha engines that make the boat skip across the water. It bounced around so I couldn’t take a lot of pics from the boat. Not like the slower bangkas we have in the Philippines with the lawn-motor engines.

Impressions and Review.

From a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being the highest, I would give the island hoping experience a 5.

As beaches go, it wasn’t great. Then again, it depends on what standards one uses. Based on all the beaches I have seen thus far, the beaches around the KK Marine Park were “so-so.” They are “ok” but definitely not great. They strike me as being “Family friendly”… some place to bring the kids and the parents. There are conveniences of civilization like restrooms, changing areas, phone booths, and accommodations. Picnic tables everywhere.

That said, it strikes me more like a park than a nature trip. I guess given my standards, the place is nice to look at, but the experience was blah.

As I mentioned, despite how it appears in the pictures, the water was littered with debris and all sorts of trash.

On the plus side, it is “convenient.” You don’t really have to rough it. Everything was orderly, the people were nice, pleasant, and accommodating. Prices were also fairly low as far as “tourist-style” places go.

Was it worth it? For me… NO. And I would say the same for most Filipino travelers who have seen a lot of other places, especially the stuff we have seen here in the Philippines.

Again, that is me. It does have its good points, and if you want a place where you can bring your kids, I guess this is ok… that is if you don’t mind the trash. It isn’t a bad place. I’d like to re-emphasize that the place is orderly and the people were nice.

So if you want a nature trip, pristine beach, a “roughing it” experience… this is not for you.

If you want a developed beach with a lot to do… go to Boracay.

But if you find yourself in Kota Kinabalu out of options… then the island hoping is an option.

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