Semporna Sunrise

The giant blinked. Minolta Malaysia had been instructed by Minolta Japan to honor the warranty. I didn't have to pay out RM 430 and worry about how that would affect the rest of my finances. I didn't even need to ensure that the payment was acknowledged. In short, I didn't need to be in Kota Kinabalu anymore.

It was 3:00pm on a Wednesday and, actually, there was one more thing to take care of: I needed to tell Minolta where to send my camera. It probably wasn't going to arrive until Monday or Tuesday. I rushed off to the Internet cafe to prepare a fax. I sent Minolta instructions to ship to Sepilok Rest House, the first place I expected to use the camera.

By 8:00pm darkness was upon the city and I was headed out of town on the overnight bus for Semporna. Long bus rides generally suck but it felt great just to be moving again.

I slept a little, gazed a little more into nothingness.

As the rose slowly into the sky, my tired eyes caught their first glimpses of the outer reaches of .........Tawau.

So much for poetry. So much also for my expectation that I would get to Semporna in a direct fashion. Funny that I should expect that since Semporna is more or less on the way to Tawau and my ticket clearly said Semporna. By 6:30 I was moving again on a minibus taking the mostly backtracking route to Semporna. WE picked up ad dropped off many along the way because that's what minibuses do. At least the long haul bus company paid for the ticket and I did make it to Semporna before 9:00am.

I had no map of Semporna. I had no directions. I did have a list of plausible places to stay and extremely vague descriptions of their locations. With the help of a local woman, I found my way to the waterfront and the Dragon Inn.

As I write this, the sun is setting on my second day at the Dragon Inn. It's a remarkable place. Something of a resort along with a restaurant, dive company, travel agent, and souvenir shop are built on stilts above the shallow water of the bay. Out to sea, there is a very expensive resort built in much the same way on the seamount of Kapali. I pay only RM 15/night for a dorm bed but the waters here are rather less spectacular. A few schools of small, unremarkable fish swim underfoot.

The water village and other parts of the waterfront are built in grand style as if in anticipation of a tourist trade far greater than what I am seeing. There are only a handful of people at the Dragon Inn. I am alone in a dorm built for 22. One of the dive companies I intended to look up seems to have gone out of business. Some have told me that this is because of Bali but I don't entirely buy that. My guess is that the build out dates from the reckless heyday of Sipadan before the government imposed limits to protect the reef from the destructive aspects of overtourism.

Whatever the cause, the slowdown in business is giving me some trouble. One budget dive operator is gone. The other barely has any customers every now and then. If they took me I would be the only one and they can't do that profitably. I/they need more people.

And so I wait. By now, I guess I'm good at that.