Mabul Backpackers — Hotel in Sabah

I had several bad experiences at the Mabul Backpackers Hostel and its diving school. ||||I stayed there for 5 nights. When I arrived I told the woman who probably owns the hostel that I'd like to go diving on Sipadan, so she suggested two possible dates to me. I chose a day two days before I leave and told the woman that I can't dive on the day after cause I'll have a flight after I leave and it is deadly to fly less than 24 hours after several dives. I asked her if it's really safe that I can go to Sipadan on my chosen date and she confirmed. Two days later she came to me and told me that my dive will be one day later. I told her that this is impossible and that she had already confirmed the other date. She replied that there are no permits anymore for that date and tried to convince me that my last dive would be at 2pm and that there would still be 22 hours in between the dive and the flight. I'm glad that I'm a diver already and I'm informed about this topic. Told her that I'm not gonna risk my life because of her fault and that Sipadan is the reason why I came here. She even talked to an instructor im malay and then he also told me that 22 hours are OK, but he said my last dive would be at 3pm. I couldn't believe that the owner of a diving school tried to convince me to risk my life. This is a absolute no go and I have big concerns about what could happen to someone who's not a diver and doesn't know about this topic. Cause this diving school obviously doesn't care about safety at all. In the end the woman said she'd call someone and try to ask if I can get a permit for my chosen date, cause she didn't want me to blame her if something happened to me. I replied: and I don't want anything to happen to me! ||She doesn't care about other people at all, just about her reputation. ||After I had also talked to her husband he arranged that I'd dive at Sipadan the day before my flight but with a very early boat so that there really are 24 hours in between. Afterwards he told me: it's your lucky day today.||I don't really know what made this be my lucky day...was it the fact that they almost screwed my dive at Sipadan, didn't even apologise and tried to convince me of risking my life?!||||In my first days at Mabul Backpackers I did my PADI advanced open water diver and they engaged a dive instructor for me. My last dive should have been a drift dive but there was no current so it was just a fun dive. Idk what to think about this since I have nothing to compare and idk how the courses are at other diving school. The instructor already behaved inappropriately during the course and wanted me to drink with him the evening before my three dives and called me 'baby' on the boat. But I ignored it. After I finished the course he asked me for my number so that I can send some required informations for my license to him. Unfortunately he took advantage of that and started to text me in a extremely inappropriate and unprofessional way. (I added screenshots of the conversation). I showed the chat to the woman and the man who run the hostel and diving school and told them that I feel really unsafe now and that it's the most important thing to feel safe - especially when diving alone as a female with a male. The woman didn't react at all, the man told me that the instructor probably got crazy cause I'm beautiful. (Victim blaming at its best...) After I had told him that this is not about the way I look like but about the instructors misbehaviour and that the diving school is responsible for this he said he'd talk to the instructor. I think he really did this cause I got a message from the instructor (his name is Mang) ||afterwards and he told me that he had been drunk when he texted me (bad excuse) and I should forget about it. ||||The owner of the diving school also tried to make my roommate go diving (and got loud) even though she said she'll cancel her dive due to problems with her ears. ||||Ah, and on my first diving day the woman told me my dive would be in the morning (she couldn't tell me when exactly though). So I waited and waited and after some hours I asked her again and then she said my dive will be in the afternoon. Everything was a bit chaotic and I always had to come to the woman to get to know what's going on. She usually never came to me to tell me "the news". My boat on my last day should go at 8am. Before 7am the woman woke me up and just said 'Your boat goes now!", so I really hurried up, but in the end the boat left at 7:30- without me. Cause I've been told this is not my boat. Then it turned out it WAS my boat and luckily it wasn't far away from the hostel and it came back immediately to pick me up. ||||I can confirm that the dirty water from the bathrooms goes directly into the ocean - so consider if you want to go snorkeling around the hostel - and the window in my dorm was just a hole in the wall which can't be closed. Also the mattresses are very saggy and not good for the back.||||My resume: as long as everything goes well when you're at the Mabul Backpackers hostel you might have the feeling this is a really nice place with friendly owners. But when there's a problem they just show you their ignorance. I think they know that a lot of things go wrong there and they just try to keep up the appearance of being nice people and having everything under control. It's okay to make mistakes, but it's the worst if people don't want to admit them and don't even seem to feel sorry about it. The food was good, though. 😂||||Next time I'm on Mabul I'll chose another hostel and diving school. If you are a diving beginner or a female solo traveler better chose another place or make sure you don't go diving...

Before going here you need to accept there is a reason it’s one of the most valuable dive / course packages on the island.

We did the 4D3N open water course with a boat included from Semporna.

Rooms - we had a sea view room with A/C which was very basic but we slept fine and everything worked when the power was on. See photo for questionable plumbing.

Diving course - our instructor Dendi wasn’t the most friendly or reassuring. We were quite shocked when we arrived that we just watched a video to learn the content of the PADI sections 1 and 2. Then after a briefing on equipment and how to set it up off we went on our first shallow dive. We felt like there was a rush to complete the course and corners were cut. I was done by the end of day two! So ended up paying for more dives to fill the rest of the four days (which were actually with a different group of people staying there). I also had to pester him for my logbook which is an essential part of the course.

Diving experience - for a novice, I enjoyed 90% of the dive sites and saw a lot of marine life including turtles, many types of fish, eels and even a rare frog fish on one of my fun dives at the end. We did one dive by Kapalai otherwise they were all around Mabul. We didn’t visit Sipidan but most said it wasn’t really worth the money. My friend ended up only snorkelling and saw lots of turtles and different fish. She paid for the PADI but left without because the teaching style on day 1 was too rushed and she didn’t feel safe to continue (after doing the first two skills incorrectly and feeling panicked under water). A slower instruction and reassurance/learning the skills at the surface of the water would have been better. She was offered to try again but due to the scary experience didn’t feel okay to try again.

Food - the food was basic, normally rice, some sort of chicken stew/curry, battered fish, cabbage / beans and fruit for dessert. We didn’t mind it at all to be honest. The female serving staff were all friendly and attentive :)

Location - Mabul has some beauty but there is a lot of rubbish and the plumbing just pumps straight into the sea, so you can’t swim from the shore unless you want to see some floaters not in the toilet bowl. The whole island is small and it’s easy to walk to the bigger resorts the other side if you wish to go to their bars / shops.

In summary we did enjoy our time here, mostly due to the community feel, we met some lovely people also staying there. It was just a shame that the attitude of our diving instructor didn’t facilitate a fun learning...

Mabul Backpackers has been the worst diving place we’ve been to. It already started once me and my boyfriend arrived. We had booked a 3 day 2 nights package and had asked for a double room but what we got was a room with two separate beds. I asked one of the staff and he said he’d see what he could do. Never heard from him again.

Then the food. We had told them that we’re vegetarian and they said sure, no problem, we can make you something with tofu. However, the food was not good at all and they never even tried to make something with tofu or specially for vegetarians. It was the same every single day: rice, fried cabbage and egg. Breakfast was only eggs, toast, and plain noodles. I was really tired of it at the end of our stay.

The shower is just a stream from a faucet and there’s a hole in the floor so everything disappears directly into the ocean, which is really bad. You’ll notice that there’s also lots of trash floating in the sea so better avoid swimming close to the shore.

The worst thing was the noise. The people that work at the hostel continued to play music and sing karaoke very late into the night, past midnight. If you’ve dived all day and you’re diving again the next day, you just want to sleep and not have terrible noise keeping you awake. They perfectly well knew that they were keeping us awake and when we finally said something about it, they were like sure sure we’ll stop. We never had a good nights rest during our stay.

Our last day really was the last straw. We were supposed to go back to the mainland around 3 pm, but before that we still had 3 dives. This was doable because we would start at 10. However, they took forever for the first dive, going back and fort with the boat, picking up things from different places until we finally could go. All the dives went like this (and the sites we went to weren’t that great). In the end, we took the boat back when it was already 6:30 pm! Many people had been waiting for us to go back. Luckily no one had a flight to catch but the whole thing was just really annoying and tiring.

The only good thing was the diving at Sipadan. The day was well organized and diving there is just amazing. Also the other travelers we met at the hostel were super nice. However, if you want to have an enjoyable stay I really recommend you to look elsewhere because here they just don’t...