Scuba Diving Holidays to Borneo

You would be pleasantly surprised at the warmth of Yalaysians. For deeply entrenched within each of the different races is the engaging charm and traditional hospitality for which Malaysia is renowned. It would be difficult to overstate the attraction of Malaysia for anyone who appreciates the natural world. Its primal forests, ranging from shoreline mangrove to mountaintop oak, are of the sort that most of the world now knows only in myth. Although Malaysia's size is similar to that of Norway, natural trees and forests cover almost three quarters of the land, an area equivalent to almost the entire United Kingdom. One can walk for hundreds of miles in Malaysia under a continuous canopy of green, marveling at an abundance of plant and animal species equaled by no other location in the entire world. A single half-kilometer plot of land in Borneo's lowland dipterocarp forest, for example, may well contain more than eight hundred different species of trees alone, a stunning degree of variety that pales, however, in comparison to the profusion and diversity of flowers, birds, ferns, and insects. Sabah ( Malaysian Borneo ) sits north on the island of Borneo, which is the third largest island in the world. This is the home to thousands of species of trees, flowers and plants, wild animals, some of which are rare and others found only in Sabah. Most diving areas are in the northeastern state of Sabah, a largely mountainous state with lush tropical rainforests, a long coastline dotted with powdery white beaches and some of the most spectacular coral reefs and marine life in the world. It was named 'The Land Below the Wind' by the maritme traders of old as it lies below the typhoon belt, making diving possible all year round. The people of Sabah is a melting pot of not less than 32 ethnic communities, making up a culturally diverse population of about 2.3 million. The multi-racial Sabahans who speak their many dialects and still maintain their ethnic traditions, give the place a most enchanting character.