SAPPHIRE blue stretches endlessly beneath me, broken in parts by
shimmering silver fish suddenly struck by shafts of sunlight. And the
rhythmic sound of my own breath, as I swim alone off the reef’s edge.
A darker shade rises from the depths, mushroom blue. An ominous blob
getting bigger and bigger below my body. Should I panic? It’s probably
too late for that, plus the expedition guide Mick said that there was no
danger of sharks here. But that’s all well and good until you see a dark
shape rising speedily from the ocean floor and fistfuls of Jaws
nightmares flood into focus. Still I stay, weightless on the surface as the
splotch takes shape. Blue turns to green, and the blob’s edges round
and solidify, and I come face to shell with an endangered green sea turtle.
I knew I was in for a once in a lifetime journey when I signed up for
Orion II’s first foray into Borneo, but what I didn’t expect was just how
much of a non-stop luxury adventure I was in for.
Departing roundtrip from Kota Kinabalu, Orion II’s journey took
guests up and around the ‘dog’s head’ of Sabah (so called for its shape)
which makes up the north-eastern (Malaysian) tip of Borneo.
The first port of call was the tax free island of Labuan where $5 bottles
of vodka were snapped up, and the often heartbreaking WWII history of
the island was revealed through a tour which took guests to where the
allied armies landed to retake the island from Japanese forces, the site
of the official Japanese surrender and the hauntingly peaceful Allied
war cemetery, where boys from all over the world rest in the warm earth.
From Labuan Orion II travelled to the Klias Wetlands where zodiacs
took us down salted rivers carved into thick mangrove jungle, and we
watched as bramine kites set against an Indian blue sky circled, and
long tailed macaques studied us from between silvered branches in the
dying afternoon light.
In Palau Tiga (the original Survivor Island), we trekked from a white
sanded beach ringed with palms into dense rainforest to slide into
opaque brown, sloppy and surprisingly buoyant mud pools, warmed
by a volcano; whilst in Kudat we mingled with the Rungas tribe,
exploring their wooden longhouses, watching traditional dances and
enjoying the friendly hospitality of a former headhunting tribe.
Sandakan saw us once again confronted with Australian war history,
as the families of the soldiers who died in the horrific WWII Death
Marches told their story at the official memorial service for the fallen.
Along the dog’s snout we entered the Kinabatangan River for two
nights of slack-jaw gasping wildlife experiences, watching from
misted morning canoes as the buzzing jungle awoke, and crocodiles
slid silently under caramel coloured water, whilst noisy orangutans
swung from tree branches clutching fuzzy red balding babies, moving
further into the pulsating heart of the wild.
The adventure was not however just land bound, and the coral reefs
of Palau Mantanani and Palau Mataking were a feast for snorkeler and
scuba diving eyes, as vistas of bulbous hard coral bloomed from the
ocean floor and ethereal tendrils of soft coral colored in reds, purples,
blues, pinks, whites, browns and greens, played home to literally
thousands of brightly coloured fish.
And it was here, off the edge of this waterworld, in Mantanani’s deep
blue on the last cruise call, that I swam with a wandering green sea turtle
and watched as it casually turned its head to snap up delicate jelly fish.
Walking through the door to Orion II’s reception area from my dive, a
crew member greets me with a cold glass of tropical juice, condensation
runs down my sun-pinkened sweaty hand, and he asks me “how was
your trip?”. I look at him somewhat confounded for the answer, my
salt water sloshed brain floundering like a fish on the shore, my mouth
in mimicry of its gasping for the right words, and I find I don’t have
any. I can’t do justice to what I saw, except to tell him “You should
have been there”.
