After Kinabalu and Kudat Riviera (have anybody heard about that?), Mabul Island will soon be transformed.

She was asked to comment on plans to build the Mabul oceanarium, comprising among others, 214 seaview bungalows and semi-detached villas…

Help me... They want to destroy my place to sleep...

Hmm… Another one project that will benefit few people, but harm the ocean and the poor native Sabahan people. And this issue has also tarnish the good image of Mabul among the diving communities. Try reading some scuba diving forums online. Criticism are everywhere against the plan.

Join the cause with me. Save the environment for the future. Let our kids see what they deserve to see…
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/152265?m=885b3665&recruiter_id=13322243

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After Kinabalu, Mabul will soon be lost…

After doing some research, I managed to find a good climate details of Kota Kinabalu:

Climate for Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

To make your life easy, the higher the precipitation, the higher the amount of rainfall. If you look closely at the table (climate for Kota Kinabalu is for the year 2007), January to April are the driest months where the precipitation are the lowest (i.e. below 150mm per month). This is the best time to come here and climb Mount Kinabalu. However, seasonal variations can occur in any year.

Kota Kinabalu Precipitation

Rain can occur at any time of the year. In Sabah the main rainy seasons are from October to January when the rains come with the north east monsoon, and from May to July, with the south west monsoon.

Mornings are usually clear at any season. Sabah lies below the typhoon (hurricane) belt, though the tail-ends can cause strong winds and rain during the typhoon season.

At Kinabalu Park Headquarters (1,560m a.s.l) the mean monthly temperature is approximately 20 ºC, with a daily fluctuations of 7 - 9 ºC. Mean annual rainfall at this location is 2,380mm.

A common climatic feature to the park are bright early mornings, followed quickly by clouding mid-morning, which obscures the mountains by mid-day. Showers usually occur on the upper slopes in the afternoon.

Although they say ‘the driest time’, a good raincoat is a must. Otherwise, you may get wet when it rains while on the way up to Laban Rata, at the slopes of Kinabalu.

Got raincoat?

Raincoat Adult - 1

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Weather issue: When is the best time to go to Mount Kinabalu?

Since then, the website has been self paid by the donation money, i.e. I don’t have to fork out my own money to pay for its hosting. The webhosting fee is RM254 per year with Exabytes.

Do you want to know how much I earned on average for that 2 years time? Okay, let me just thank these 73 people who have donated their money to the website. I also put their name on the first page of mount-kinabalu-borneo.com, as their name deserve to be there:

1. Robert Nash
2. Maria Szymczyk
3. (Chinese name character which I could not find the translation)
4. Susan Falconer
5. Asmah Yassin
6. John-Paul Cusack
7. BRUNO LE BRIERE
8. GUO DONG
9. William Baird
10. 

    Thank you for your donations!
    Cleve Rynehart
11. Siti Khadijah Jaaffar
12. Julian Bode
13. Luke Falvey
14. Ally Spiers
15. Zoe Gapper
16. Rhys Arkins
17. Becky Sundling
18. Pang Sheue Fong
19. Sarah Bte Aly Shun
20. Mikko Manninen
21. Mae Foon Wong
22. Jan Kristian Rasmussen
23. Jenny Dalrymple
24. Fong Vins
25. Young Catherine
26. Adam Zubairi
27. Matthew Leverett
28. Bill Cohen
29. Norman Brown
30. Emy Castro
31. Christoph Theisinger
32. Scott McKinney
33. Juneta Ideriyan
34. Bob Pressey
35. Norul Maslissa Ahmad
36. Naveen Peter
37. Mazlan Mastan
38. Christoph Garditz
39. Charles Warner
40. Lily Lam
41. Ainul Khalidah Idura
42. Rob de Groot
43. Gillian Anderson
44. Simone Lehmann
45. Francis Seynaeve
46. Ian Vickridge
47. Ismail bin Md Yatim
48. Klaas Bart de Raad
49. Sarah Hucker
50. Adam Helman
51. Bob Packard
52. Robert Woodwall
53. Kevin Christie
54. Ng Alan
55. Magnus Bertilsson
56. Vince Jenkins
57. Pik Kei Yuen
58. John Simpson
59. Anne Piyared Puthikarun
60. Yong Chen Hui
61. David Pieribone
62. Guy Smeets
63. Grant Knisely
64. Jeevan Prasad Chandriah
65. Anh Minh Le
66. Mak Kai Kin
67. Marilou Tan
68. Keith Grunow
69. Tan Suan Bee
70. Gerd Islei
71. Ismail Muaharan
72. Kamolwan Chongsrichan
73. Terence Neo

Lets calculate together:
(a) Minimum donation for the PDF copy of the ebook is USD7. It means; USD7×73=USD511 for 2 years.
(b) For 1 year, the donations would be USD511/2=USD255.50 (around RM860 per year)
(c) On average per month, USD255.50/12=USD21.29, i.e. or about 3 donors per month.

Although on average visitors donate USD7, there are donors who donate USD10 and USD15. In one special occasion, Adam Helman donated USD300!!!

What was the secret that they want to donate their hard earn money?

Provide them ‘value’ for their donation. Putting a donation button with “Please donate for my Nikon D40 fund” is not a good move as it sounds self-centered. That sentence shows that the potential donors will not earn anything by donating. If you look closely, it’s a win-loose situation.

But if you provide value to the donors like for example a PDF copy of the website that I give out without the ads, easy reading and printability, donors will want to donate, as they will get something for their donations. It’s a win-win situation.

Try doing that to your website and blogs. You may be surprise that there are people out there who are looking for something that you have, in which, you may give it with a small donations.

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How much does mount-kinabalu-borneo.com earn from donations?

I don’t think I do justice to the wonderful underwater creatures when I do not share them with you. My last few post about my Open Water course was only about me. No photos of them.

So now I would love to share the things I saw underwater, so that you will know how beautiful life is down there. Oh, have I mentioned that it’s just 20 minutes away from where I live?

Kudos to Roslan, the aspiring underwater photographer who took all the shots. I saw all the creatures in this page.

You may have seen them unedited in my Facebook photo album, but these 15 photos were edited & cropped professionally with GIMP. All photos were taken with Canon Powershot A95 with underwater casing. I auto-leveled all the photos to eliminate the blue-green component of the photo, so that it will shown with it’s original colours.

I learned a lot every time I went down there. And I think you should too. Enjoy!

Barracudas around Pyramid Reef.

Barrel sponge coral eaten by turtles. Can you see the white patch?

Healed part of the sponge (top) and just bitten (below) by turtles.

Coral reef around Sulug Island.

Giant Clam around Sulug Reef.

Hermit crab in Mamutik reef.

Unidentified school of fish around Pyramid Reef.

Is it a grouper?

Tube worm at Pyramid Reef.

Anemone fish (aka Nemo).

Nudibranch @ Sulug Reef.

Full blown puffer fish. Not my hand...

Scorpion fish at Sulug Reef.

Snake eel @ Mamutik Reef.

Barrel sponge - again - badly damaged by turtles.

I must admit that those photos are only less than 5% of what I saw underwater…

Amazing Animals Video: UnderWater Animals

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Underwater creatures around Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, Kota Kinabalu

Scuba Diver Diving Stickers

1. I know Borneo Divers staffs. Some of them are regular patient in my clinic. And yes, we are also a panel clinic for BD.
2. My good friend Roslan is really a Borneo Divers fan. If you talk to him, he can give you 1001 reasons and excuses why you need to be with BD - although he is not BD staff. Well, maybe partially…
3. The course fee for their diving course is one of the lowest in KK (for PADI). And you will be sure that you get a quality teaching from their experienced world class diving instructor.
4. They have their dive center in one of the island in Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, i.e. Mamutik Island. This is a big advantage for BD students and divers as they don’t have to lug their scuba units and tanks from the mainland for each dive.
5. Oh, by having a dive center in Mamutik, all of the main activities are concentrated there, including preparation of meals. While other scuba diver operators have to look for third party meal provider for their students and divers, BD have a regular in-house cook to cook for us.
6. Although their equipments are old - yes, some of it has served for 15 years - their services and hospitality are excellent.
7. Their main office in Wisma Jubilee is just 3 minutes walk from my clinic. Hehehe…

Well, I can give you another 99 reasons why I took BD course, but then, it’s up to you to choose from numbers of scuba diving operators here in KK. You may have a slightly different experiences with different PADI operators, but generally, what they teach are all the same. I must tell you that it’s worth all your money spent.

Don’t take all my words. Go experience it yourself.

Go dive. Your life will not be the same.

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Why I choose PADI OW license with Borneo Divers