This foto was taken in 1996 or 1997 during my 1 year stay on Sipadan, Malaysia.
The original is a print from which I created this picture with my mobile.
I had a wonderful time there, working as a diving instructor,
diving three times a day in worldclass dive spots and meeting lots of interesting people.
And always so much fun with my Malaysian and Japanese colleagues.
Cousteau ranked Sipadan among the 10 best diving spots in the world.
Being an oceanic island, rising up 600m from the seafloor to the surface,
there is loads of big marine life, beautiful coral and even a cave with some skeletons
(no dead pirates, or divers though, just marine animals).
But in 2000 terror came to paradise and the unthinkable happened.
Suddenly Sipadan made it into the German news because the Abu Sayyaf group
kidnapped a bunch of people, among them the Wallert family from Germany,
at gunpoint and brought them to their base in Jolo, Phillipines.
During my stay I had heard a few stories about pirates from the Philippines
coming over at night to steal the big outboard engines of the dive boats,
but kidnapping people was a first there.
In 2005 the Malaysian government closed all dive ressorts on Sipadan to protect the environment. Nowadays you have to come by dive boat from Mabul, Kapalai etc.
The ressorts have daily quotas to limit the number of divers, which I think is a good thing having witnessed first hand the damage, hordes of divers with bad buoancy control inflicted on the reefs.
Whenever I look at this picture sweet memories from a wonderful, adventurous life
as a traveling diving instructor come back to me.
So the best advice I can give young people is:
Waste your youth! Travel, travel,travel!
