A few minutes by boat from the islands of Sipadan and Mabul but a full world away from it lays the exhilarating Sipadan-Kapalai Dive Resort

Sitting on its sturdy stilts on the shallow sandbanks of the Ligitan Reefs. Planned and built in full style as an airy, comfortable, sunny water village with no land in sight, it boasts a mile-long sandbank of powdery white sand where one can suntan at complete leisure while gazing out to the miles of brilliant turquoise stretching into the horizon offering the purest image of natural serenity.

Dive spots are extremely close and can be reached in just a few minutes by speedboat and some of them, actually, just by swimming from the dive center pier. For those who are ready to venture more and aside from the tiny marvels of the macro life of Kapalai can, in just a few minutes, dive in Sipadan (where big fish and turtles abound) or in Mabul (where silky and muddy bottoms offer different and equally pleasant experience and opportunities to the lovers of "muck diving").

All Kapalai's wooden chalets offer twin and triple sharing accommodation and have cleverly thought-out balconies which offer total privacy for lovers of sunbathing and sun tanning. Chalets are also equipped with bathrooms with shower and bathtub, basic toiletries, coffee and tea making facilities and 220 volts electrical points. From the windows of the elegant and spacious rooms, one can spend endless hours looking at the sea as if it has a life on its own just dancing to its never ending tune just a couple of feet below.

Diving around Kapalai is exceedingly easy and shallow but quite spectacular: the sandy bottom and the spare coral heads host an amazing array of small, often yet-to-be classified, shamelessly colorful subjects, making the diving here an unforgettable experience.

Home to the weird and techno-colored flamboyant cuttlefish rumbling on the bottom like a miniature tank rippling with fluorescent waves of vermilion, purple, chocolate brown, bright yellow and blinding white, all the time waving and flourishing its paddle-shaped front tentacles like some samurai of yore, looking more like a sensuous orchid than a predatory cephalopod ; it is the domain of the invisible frogfish found in Kapalai in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors- which despite sometimes being as large as a melon will often escape even from the most trained of wildlife spotters.