Diving and snorkelling in Borneo

I I am planning a trip to Borneo with my husband and our 2 sons aged 3 and 5 for October. We are travelling with my parents (one of which has limited mobility requiring a wheelchair at times). What a mixed bunch eh!?

My parents want us to spend a week at a dive/snorkelling resort (one of them dives and the other snorkels and my husband and I dive). My parents then plan to head down to Australia.

We would then like to spend a week exploring more of Borneo (forest/rivers/Orangatangs/Mt Kinabalu). Although only little, the boys are good travelers and have down travelling holidays through Italy, Alaska and Canada so far.

So I guess my questions for this thread are:
1) where would be a good place to spend the first week? I've heard Sibadan, Mabul and Kapalai are good - any recommendations on resorts/places to stay.

2) Does anyone know of travel companies that will cater for children of their age? If not, how easy is it organise your own travel with limited time?

Thanks for your help!

Emma Monk.

Hi Emma,
What I would do in your case is to book your dive trip at Kapalai and link that on to their sister resort at the orang-utan sanctuary at Sepilok. That way you wouldn't have to worry too much about logistics and transfers since you'd be using just one company for both parts of these trips. Getting around Kapalai resort shouldn't be too hard for your mobility impaired parent since it's all on one level with wooden walkways between the buildings. The worst part would be getting in and out of the boat to reach the resort and descending stairs to the water.

I sure would recommend Kapalai (http://sipadan-kapalai.com/). I was in Borneo last August for a month. I spent 5 days diving the Kapalai area and was lucky enough to get 5 dives at Sipidan in that period. The authorities are pretty restrictve now about how many actual visits you will be allowed to Sipidan itself.

Hi Emma,

To get an idea of what the resort is like have a look at our video of the Sipadan Kapalai Resort. They are child friendly and have very helpful staff.

You could then have a night or two at Sepilok Nature Resort - sounds like a great holiday for all the generations.

I've been looking at the Kapalai resort and wasn't sure how suitable it was for little ones. So far neither can swim (they are 4 and 2) and there doesn't seem to be any beach - Am I right about that?

Thanks for your help and suggestions!

BTW how do we go about applying for Sipadan dive permits?

Emma

Have a look at Lankayan, its a great resort and in my opinion perfect for small kids, great beaches etc

there is review here as well as on Sipidan - kapalai

http://www.destination-scuba.com/Lankayan.html

This advice is wonderful as we are planning something very similar with 4 kids. From what Ive read though it seems very pricey. Can anyone give an approximate costing at staying at these places.

thanks for all your thoughts. Having spoken to a couple of Borneo travel experts they also seem to suggest that Lankyan might be better for snorkelling.
xx