My husband and I recently spent nearly a week with friends at the Mabul Water Bungalows. The spacious wooden bungalows stretch out from the island of Mabul into gorgeous blue-green waters. The rooms were generous with all the expected amenities. The food was quite good and something was always available for ravenous divers. The staff was gracious and accommodating. We especially appreciated that they prepared something special for my vegetarian husband at each meal.

We were there for the diving and it was amazing. We dove the house reef and other sites around Mabul, a couple near Kapilai, and the best ones around Sipidan. The Sipidan dives were comparable to our wonderful experiences in the Maldives. There were sea turtles everywhere and all sorts of corals and other creatures! (The only challenge was the way the authorities issues diving permits for Sipidan. Hopefully, they'll allow the resorts to sort the permits out themselves in a more equitable way in the future.)

We plan to come back to this beautiful and romantic resort!

We enjoyed our stay here in April and with only a few problems.

The Good:

The room is very large, and the air conditioning was very nice to have. The food in the restaurant was always good, and the service was fantastic. We did not use the spa but heard good things from other guests. The dives always went on time and were very well organized. We didn't do the cave dive but watched the briefing given to other guests that were about to do it - sounded pretty cool. if you need to get to their other lodge or to the dive shop they will take you there and back in a golf cart so you don't have to walk it.

The diving - well, if you are going here you already know how good it is. Simply fabulous. Even when doing the dives at Mabul there was still so much to see it was amazing. But Sipidan was out of this world.

The Bad:

We had a small bug problem in our room but we took care of it ourself and it was only a minor inconvenience. The only real problem we had related to the dive shop and not to the hotel - my regulator was letting some water seep into it. It was OK for diving but I don't like my scuba gear to have any problems whatsoever. On my 2nd dive, I tested my backup regulator and it didn't work, AT ALL. So I had only one more dive that day, which was my last day, and I decided to go ahead and use it, but stay close to my partner. I also stayed relatively shallow just in case I had a problem and wasn't able to do a decompression stop. I was OK, but I was disappointed that they would hand out faulty gear. The moral of this story is to ALWAYS TEST YOUR GEAR.

We have been in this resort for already the 3rd time, so you see it was our favourite diving spot/resort to go.
The good things: Outstanding service, nice accomodation and food, good diving facilities, muck-diving with a lot of macro-life around Mabul & Kapalai, and of course the option to go to Sipadan.

BUT: Recently the licences for diving in Sipadan have been heavily restricted, so that the whole resort (incl. the one on the island) gets approx. 10 licences per day. So you can calculate how often you are lucky and can go to Sipadan with approx. 10 licences per day for approx. 90 guests in total for Smart Divers...
It's a challenging situation for the management, but unfortunately the "crisis-management" is not working well. Short-stayers are prefered to long-stayers, and it can even happen that you are scheduled to go to Sipadan in the morning, get up at 5 a.m., and return at around 8 a.m. without having done any dive in Sipadan because you got rejected at the island (as sometimes more people are sent to Sipadan by the management than licences are available). This has a huge potential for unhappiness.

So before you decide to go to the Resort because of 'Sipadan Diving' you should request the latest status about the diving operations!

Had 4 days here, which really is nowhere near long enough to get the most out of this superb dive experience.

We flew in to Tawau from KK, and had a 1 1/4 hour minibus transfer to Semporna, which could easily have taken longer. The speed boat ride to mabul took about 40-mins and was very smooth. We arrived at the Mabul SMART resort, where we had a nice lunch and a somewhat sketchy introduction to the resort and dive timetables. We were then transferred across to the Water Bungalows resort (also managed by SMART) where we had no introduction or anything. I had rented all my equipment from the resort, and it was in OK condition, my fins were a little too big and the booties were a bit ripped but beggars cant be choosers.

My orientation dive took place an hour later on the man-made house reef, which considering its only a few years old was really very good. Planty to see and good visibility. Our DM - Rahman - was a nice bloke and took things at a good pace, pointing things out with his superb eyesight.

Our room was lovely, spacious, clean, great satellite channels, and a fabulous PRIVATE balcony area with panoramic views across the Celebes Sea toward Sipidan. The Cleaners were efficient, though the Air-con was less so! The Food is very nice, but I can easily see how people could get bored of it if they stayed longer than we did. The staff are really nice and polite, always smiling and welcoming.

The Diving really is excellent overall and I will do a proper Dive Review on a Dive Site - Big Blue Planet - , however there are a couple of negatives which I will think will be useful to mention here. The 0545 dive to Sipidan (at Barracuda Point) is a complete waste of time as everyone else seems to dive there too, both from the three Mabul based resorts, Kapalai, and from Semporna. There were literally more Divers than fish, and a real let down. Wherever we looked there were packs of divers, so I would recommend not diving but snorkelling on this dive (non-divers and snorkellers take the dive boat to the dive sites but snorkel off the nearby beaches). The second dive at Sipidan, at about 0800 was much much better as the different dive boats went their seperate ways - you have a break between dives which you spend on the beach at Sipidan, next to a small Navy/Army outpost. You also dont have any control over your dive boat/group (you are assigned a DM and group on day-1). This can be bad if the group is large - up to 12 in some cases, or if you get new arrivals on subsequent days as they will have an orientation dive at the house reef which then limits your own dives. The Boats arent great - some other groups encountered some reliability issues - but they sufficed.

There is quite a bit to do for non-divers and snorkellers. I met alot of people who just came to snorkel, they would go out with the dive boats and snorkel whilst we dived, and they all said it was easily the best they had ever experienced. There is also a Spa, with very reasonable prices, a swimming pool (small) and its pretty safe to walk the island too. Also, due to the varying dive times there is always someone around to chat to (though not at the Water Bungalows site)

The Water Bungalows are also really quite at night, with no atmosphere and no social scene which was a huge disappointment as half the fun is sharing your experiences. We had to cycle (on the courtesy bikes provided) to the SMART resort to get a younger crowd who did socialise a bit (all the DM's also stayed there too and were a good source of info) The Dive shop is also pathetic so plan as best you can as they dont even have any first aid stuff of note. The shop at the Sipidan Water Village next door was much better. You can rent underwater digital cameras and download too, but book your camera in advance as they are limited, and very popular.

There are alot of books available to borrow, DVD's are also available, and there are a couple of board games to help pass the time, but we never needed any of them in our short stay.

The Water Bungalows are definitely the best accomodation in terms of the room and the settings - it had a wow factor and was truly beautiful. Plenty to see off your private terraces and no mosquitos!

The resort Management were however not very nice at all, not willing to help or answer any questions. Their attitude toward some people was just atrocious and a far cry from the friendliness of their staff. I would highly recommend checking your bill at the end as too many people were complaining that they had been mis-charged or double charged.

One point that needs stating is that the DM's are doing 3 dives a day, every day and get only 4 days off per month which I certainly would not advocate over a medium to long term.

If you're considering staying here, then you know that the Diving will be fantastic, but I would recommend staying here above the other resorts, as you can wander over to them to get the social scene, or choose the peace and tranquility of the Water Bungalows