Tawau/Semporna - Day 3 (Mabul Water Bungalow Resort - Kapalai Dive Resort)
It rained cats and dogs with strong winds, so strong it woke me up at 6am on our final day in Mabul Water Bungalow Resort. Luckily I managed to sleep back until 8am. Hot shower is the first thing I do right after waking up. While taking my shower, I heard someone knocking on our chalet door mentioning housekeeping. Then few minutes later I heard someone open our chalet door! Luckily there's a door latch that prevent the door from opening. I guess the housekeeping staff simply wants to clean their assigned rooms without knowing that we will check out today. So that basically woke my partner up. Look on the bright side, I get to eat early breakfast with him. :)
The resort served simple breakfast - fried vermicelli with fried egg and two sausages. Besides coffee, tea and milk, there's orange cordial drink that had a slightly bitter taste. Their bread looks very unappetizing because there's fruit flies everywhere! The resort staff wasn't aware of it and we have to inform them to get rid of the fruit flies. After breakfast, we decided to explore Mabul Island by foot. It's a small island and it takes about 30 minutes to walk around the entire island. There's school, police station, grocery and souvenir shop. We saw some of the villagers living on a sampan. That's where they sleep, eat, cook and live there for a life time.
We walked back to our chalet and to our surprise the door was opened. We saw two ladies cleaning up our room. We told them that we're checking out in less than two hours time. They seemed very apologetic and told us that they're unaware of it. I don't blame them for their mistakes. I guess the management screwed up badly by not informing their housekeeping staff regarding the duration of our stay. Lucky we were there just before they started cleaning the room. Else they will have to do it again after our check out.
We packed our things and checked out around 11.35am at the souvenir shop. This is because they don't have a proper reception area for check in or check out. We waited for our lunch and they served us rice with soy sauce chicken, fried prawns and vegetables. As usual, the rice is too hard for my liking. Frankly speaking, even after a discount of 50% on marked price I still find it expensive. On average, we paid almost RM 1k per night per person and we are quite disappointed with the food quality and choice. My partner loves fish a lot but throughout our 3 days 2 night stays, they didn't serve any fish.
Instead of fetching us back to Semporna Jetty, we requested them to fetch us to Kapalai Dive Resort. Glad that they are quite flexible and we are the only guests going to Kapalai Dive Resort from Mabul Water Bungalow Resort. We departed from Mabul Island at 12.20pm and 10 minutes later we arrived at Kapalai Dive Resort. Slightly bumpy ride and halfway through the journey only I realized that they didn't provide any life jacket to us. Well, glad that we arrived safely at Kapalai Dive Resort.
Since both side of the resort's jetty were occupied with a boat, our captain has no other option but to park his boat next to the vacant boat. We have to climb over to the vacant boat in order for us to get to the jetty. Slightly challenging but I did it. There's no temperature screening upon arrival instead the resort staff escorted us to the dining area. Their lunch time starts from 12.30pm to 2pm. Compared to Mabul Water Bungalow Resort, the food was heavenly. So we had second round of lunch happily.
After lunch, one of the resort staff gave us a short briefing and brought us to the registration counter. There, we waited for the buggy service for almost 30 minutes. Seems that their buggy staff went for a break and we have to wait for them as there's no other staff that can drive the buggy. Anyway, finally we can check into our room at 2.20pm. Unfortunately there's no electricity when we entered our room. You may click here to read more about what happened after that.
Tea break starts from 3pm to 5pm. My partner decided to skip tea break but I went ahead because I'm curious what they will serve for tea break. Slightly disappointed because it's the same dessert that they served during lunch time. Anyway, it's much better compared to Mabul Water Bungalow Resort. I walked around the resort and explored the artificial island as well. I waited for the sunset at 6pm but too bad the weather was too cloudy.
We had our dinner at 7pm. My partner was so happy because they served fish and guess what? The fish is humongous! The chicken soup is good but curry chicken tasted so so only. Same goes to the "yong tau foo" (Hakka cuisine consisting of tofu or other vegetables stuffed with ground meat mixture or fish paste). Most importantly rice is soft and fluffy. After dinner we walked to the artificial island and chill. I saw a faint meteor while lying on the lazy chair. We walked back to our chalet and I continued with my star gazing activity at the balcony. Too bad the Milky Way's direction is on the opposite side and by 10pm the sky was invaded by clouds.
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