Diving in Sipadan

The first time we went diving in Sipadan was over Easter in 1996 and as it was Anna's birthday, we scrounged a cake from the dive shop as usual .

Sipadan is voted one of the top 10 diving spots in the world, but not without its share of mishaps.

A few weeks before we were there 2 Taiwanese divers entered the deep waters of Sipadan ( over 2000 feet ) and were never seen again .

In 2000 we revisited Sipadan only to find on arrival that a dozen foreign tourists were abducted from the resort by the Abu Sayyaf from the Phillipines the day before. This is the worst kidnapping of tourists Malaysia has ever experienced .

Consequently for the rest of our stay there we were accompanied everywhere by soldiers with M16s slung over their shoulders !

Every time I'm in Sipadan I'd chase a school of barracuda which is resident to the area .

A guy in our group was getting on my nerves so I decided to feed him to the sharks.

Moral here is : don't ever cross me or you'll die a horrible death in my painting !

Photo by Rocky Chang :The photo won a prize in a competition held by the Royal Edinburgh Underwater Photographic Society and was subsequently used by the Malaysian Tourism Board in the " Dive in East Malaysia Promotion week" as one of the posters