Kapalai Dive Resort - Kapalai Island, Sabah
Kapalai Dive Resort is a luxury water village built on a sandbanks, 10 minutes boat ride from Mabul Water Bungalow Resort. The resort started reopening on 1st July 2020 after the Covid-19 thrust the country into lock down starting 18th March 2020 till 9th June 2020. They have a special promotion for Sabahan only - RM 450/pax (minimum 2 pax) for 1 night stay. Package includes return boat transfer (Semporna Jetty - Kapalai Dive Resort - Semporna Jetty), 1 night accommodation (twin sharing basis) and full board meals.
We booked a 3 days 2 night stay at Kapalai Dive Resort @ RM 900 per pax (for Sabahan only; travel from 1st July 2020 to 30th Sept 2020). This rate is for vacation rate (non-diver rate) excluding snorkeling or diving and related equipment fee. Non diver will be free at leisure on the island for the whole day. You may go for swimming, snorkeling or ocean kayaking. There's a small artificial island located above the sandbanks whereby you can relax and enjoy the beautiful sunset.
Kapalai Dive Resort chalet comes with a king size bed, in-room safe, mini fridge, drinking water, coffee or tea making facilities, couch, writing table, ceiling fan, self controlled air conditioning, hair dryer, one pair of slippers, mosquito sprays and toiletries. There's a private balcony overlooking the blue sea with low barrier. Our room is very spacious and clean with a good bathroom. All combined with modern designs. The bed and pillows are comfy but the blanket is way too thin. There's no TV or WiFi in the chalet. I'm using U mobile (one of the mobile network in Malaysia) and it's totally out of service in this island. Celcom line is weak too.
Bathroom comes with a bathtub and there's an open air outdoor shower. However, water pressure is low in the bathtub and shower but luckily water is hot enough. It will take ages for your tub to fill up not to mention the tub stopper doesn't fit properly. Apart from that, it's an open concept bathroom that has zero doors! Hence, the room is not cold enough because the air conditioner is too small in comparison to the size of the room. There's an emergency button next to the entrance door. Don't worry because so far there's no kidnapping cases in Kapalai. There's armed force based on the island and a lookout tower with soldiers stationed there. However, one thing I'm uncomfortable with the chalet is the entrance door. There's no safety latch on it. What if the housekeeping staff barged in while I'm taking a shower?
Upon check in, the buggy drove us to our chalet but to our disappointment, there's no electricity when we entered the room. There seems to be a circuit breaker trip. So we called the maintenance people and they came right away to fix it. They took more than half an hour to fix the problem. At the same time, we requested them to change 5 light bulbs which's not working. At night, the circuit breaker tripped again. We found out the reason was due to water leaking from a ceiling light above the bathtub. Instead of calling the maintenance people at night, we decided to turned off that particular switch.
It rained cats and dogs at night and the rain continued to fall in the morning. There's water dripping from the rooftop at 8 different spots. The floor was slippery and I nearly slipped and fell. Besides that, we found out that the toilet flush valve malfunction as well. Guess it's time for us to request a room change. So right after breakfast, the staff helped us with our luggage and we moved to another chalet, just a few doors away from the old one. Glad that everything is good in the new chalet except the pipe water is salty.
Fixed boat schedule:
a) Semporna Jetty to Kapalai Dive Resort - 10.30am
b) Kapalai Dive Resort to Semporna Jetty - 13.30pm
Dining time:
a) Breakfast: 7am to 10.30am
b) Lunch: 12.30pm to 2pm
c) Tea break: 3pm to 5pm
d) Dinner: 7pm to 8.30pm
Check in time: 2pm
Check out time: 12pm
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