Spitful Semporna

Day 4 – 7 August 2011 / 1 Night

From Mabul Island, we reached Semporna at about 4.30pm.

According to Wikipedia, Semporna has a population of around 135,000 and is the land of the Sea Bajaus.

There is not much to see and do in Semporna itself. The first thing I noticed was the spit on the streets, pavements and roadkerbs. The locals here seem to be spitting all the time. Just walk down any street in Semporna and you will know what I mean.

As two of us had bags with rollers, I had to make sure we didn’t have any direct contact with the spit. I had to be the extra eyes for the boys telling them to look out and avoid it at all times. One local I spoke to actually paused to spit in between sentences, wow, it has become a habit that they are hardly aware of what they are doing. How disgusting!

Since it was already late in the afternoon, we decided to stay in Semporna. So, while the boys sat down for a drink in the only visible Mamak Restaurant, I scouted around for a decent hotel to spend the night. There are more lodges and inn in Semporna than proper hotels. Everything fortunately is just a walk away.

The town is dirty, messy, full of immigrants and crowded around markets (tamu). And these markets just mushrooms everywhere, along streets, alleys, etc etc.

After enquiring at 3 lodges/inn, I chose the one nearest to the bus terminal so that we could leave the first thing in the morning. I stopped at the terminal to find out bus schedule to Tawau. They have A/C express buses plying the route of Semporna-Tawau everyday at 7.30am, 8.30am, 11.50am, 2pm and 4pm. Just nice for us to leave at 8.30am in the next morning to Tawau.

The room came with a window and two Single Beds for RM70. It had the best shower ever. It was soothing hot and had adjustable water speed. The boys experimented with high speed snow-like shower. That day, we all took turns on refreshing long showers/bath to make up for the lack of it in Mabul Island.

Later, I dreaded walking out for dinner as I couldn’t stand the sight of spits.

But leave we did, the boys wanted seafood so we went looking for one. We found one but surprisingly we were told that there were many customers waiting and that we had to wait close to 2 hours for food. We really couldn’t see that many seafood restaurants; considering that this is a coastal town with so many fishing villages. So, we walked back to the only Mamak Restaurant we knew. Ordered chicken and seafood tomyam, roti telor, onion tosai and roti canai – the all familiar Malaysian food.

The next morning, I packed some sausage rolls, egg tart, butter sandwich and kaya puff from a bakery (thank god there was one) and Milo and Nescafe at a Chinese Coffee Shop. Funny thing was I found out that if you ask for a 'Tarik' drink (pulled drink) you have to pay RM1 extra. How ridiculous! So I opted not to ‘tarik’ my drinks.

We left Semporna via the 8.30am Express Bus and enjoyed our breakfast in the bus.

Some Tips :

1. Stay in Semporna only if you absolutely have to

2. Get your stock (snacks, packet drinks) from the supermarkets here if you are visiting the islands. Prices are reasonable.

3. As I had already mentioned, look out for the spits, they are everywhere

4. You may encounter barefoot beggars on the streets; I saw a whole family begging

5. Be prepared to come into contact with many many Indonesian and Philippino immigrants


I can be reached at sivakay2009@gmail.com