Go Back
Pulau Sipadan, Sabah
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pulau_Sipadan#/media/File:Simpadan_Island_Semporna.jpg
AzmanJumat
Pulau Sipadan is a tiny island in the Celebes Sea. It is located to the east of the town of Tawau, and to the south of Semporna. This tiny islet measures a mere 12 hectares in size. Like an emerald in a torquoise sea, it attracts ardent divers from all over the world.
Pulau Sipadan holds the distinction of being Malaysia's only oceanic island. It is the tip of an extinct volcanic that rose from the seabed 600 meters (2000 feet) below. Living corals grew on the volcanic cone to form the island over thousands of years. Sipadan is at the heart of the richest habitat for marine life in the world, counting over three thousand species of fish and hundreds of types of corals within its ecosystem.
Just thirty feet from the shoreline of Sipadan, the bottom drops away two thousand feet to the seabed below. This vertical seawall presents the most enchanting diving experience. It is one of those few places on earth where divers can make rare encounters, such as coming across schools of hawksbill turtles, barracudas, even hammerhead sharks and whale sharks. For that reason, the late Jacques Cousteau, the world-famous oceanographer, called Sipadan "an untouched piece of art".
Getting there
You should use Semporna as your gateway to Sipadan. From Semporna, get in touch with the tour operators at the Semporna Ocean Tourism Centre which is located on stilts over the water at Jalan Kastam.A trip to Pulau Sipadan is not something that money can easily buy. To protect the fragile ecosystem, the Malaysian government removed all resort structures on Sipadan since 31 December 2004. From then onwards, divers can only make day trips to Sipadan from the 12 neighouring resorts in the nearby islands. To protect the ecology, the government has limited the number of visitors to Sipadan to just 120 persons per day, spread among the twelve resorts. Hence there is no guarantee that you can get to visit Sipadan, regardless your length of stay. The chances get slimmer if you are going to be at those resorts for less than a week, and if you are not a diver. Be forewarned that accommodation at the neighbouring resorts are also exorbitantly expensive. Bear this in mind to avoid disappointment.
Having said that, to get to Sipadan, you first go to Semporna. From there, contact a tour operator for a package to Sipadan. Alternatively, you can make arrangement to stay at Mabul, which is a journey of 30 minutes by speed boat and 90 mins by normal boat from Semporna, and try your luck to get to Sipadan from Mabul.
Sipadan Location Map
List of Islands in Sabah and Islands in Malaysia
Latest updates on Penang Travel Tips
Discover with Timothy videos on Sabah
What to see when in Sabah? Here are some suggestions from my videos.Disclaimer
Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.About this website
Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.
While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.
Copyright © 2003-2025 Timothy Tye. All Rights Reserved.