Well, that’s a question I wish we’d researched more before we decided to booked 3 nights here 😂 Is Semporna worth visiting? Unfortunately, my short answer would be no. I decided to write a short blog post about our experience in Semporna to help other people planning a trip to Borneo. Hope it’s helpful 🙂
Semporna islands and diving spots
The problem was we had only visited Semporna because we had heard about some beautiful islands and diving spots closeby.
However, just a few days before we arrived, we found out that visiting these islands is actually against UK government advice and would therefore make our insurance invalid if we went. (Lesson learnt – do your research before visiting places, lol).
The reason for this advice is that around a decade ago there were instances of kidnapping of foreign tourists for ransom money from a now disbanded militant group. Whilst there haven’t been any problems in the past 10 years, for some reason the UK government still advises against all but essential travel to these islands.
Even if we had been able to go, we couldn’t find any tours below around £50 each, which was way out of our budget. We spoke to two girls from the UK in our hostel and they had found the same issue. They’d actually booked a whole week in Semporna, but as soon as they arrived they booked the first flight out of there, so it wasn’t just us!
The Bajau Laut
We decided we would still go to Semporna as we read online that you could visit the Bajau Laut ethnic group, also known as “sea gypsies” or “people of the sea.” We were fascinated by what we had read online about this stateless, nomadic ethnic group. The Bajau Laut inhabit the waters of the Southern Phillipines, Indonesia and Borneo. They live their whole lives in the water, often in boats or wooden stilt houses. Being skilled fishermen, they have adapted to be able to see and breathe underwater for over 5 minutes. Their way of life is hundreds of years old and they earn a living by fishing and kelp farming. We were really hoping we would be able to visit one of the villages after reading about it online.
First, we asked our hostel the best way to visit the villages, but they told us that visiting the Bajau Lat was no longer possible, although they didn’t explain why. We couldn’t find much information online, so we decided to walk down to the local docks to see if anyone was offering a boat trip to the villages.
We did see many Bajau Laut in their wooden boats selling fish on the main harbourfront, but we didn’t see anyone offering any kind of trip. Whilst it was interesting to watch their way of life, the area was really dirty, chaotic and overall not very welcoming. We decided to give up as it didn’t really feel right. It’s a shame as we had seen other blog posts about people visiting them, but it’s more difficult that it seems! I think if you want to go, you need to find a local Bajau fisherman who will take you for an agreed price.
Begging children
Across the town, there were Bajau Laut children on the streets with no shoes, begging for food and money. We researched online that many of these children are forced to beg as a means of income for their families, who are stateless and can’t therefore access any government help. It’s a very sad reality and it was quite heartbreaking to witness firsthand. We even saw a lady quite aggressively push her small toddler, who was maybe 3 or 4, towards us to beg for money.
The next day, at the local market, a small girl came over to me, extremely thin with a tiny baby in her arms. She was clearly starving, unwashed and was in rags. She asked me for some food so I bought her a meal from the market, to which the woman running the stall said “It is good to buy the children food, but don’t give them money.” I’m still not sure on the exact reason why, but I believe it is because it encourages families to force children into begging.
As they are stateless and cannot access jobs, healthcare or government aid, I don’t really see what other choice they have. Obviously they shouldn’t be forcing children to do it, but how else can they feed themselves? There are apparently NGO’s working in the area to help this stateless group but the government should really be taking some kind of responsibility in my opinion.
It’s a complex issue and not one we expected to witness so closely. There were so many people, young and old, begging in the town – they’d wait for us outside the ATM machine, outside our hostel and in the market, and of course you can’t help everyone.
Rainy season
Another minor issue was that we visited just at the end of rainy season, but it was still quite bad weather and rained a lot. So, even if we had been able to go to the islands or the Bajau Laut villages, the weather probably would’ve stopped us anyway.
Final thoughts
Overall, our time in Semporna was not a particularly enjoyable one, but we learnt a lot. It’s much harder to visit the Bajau Lau villages and islands than we expected and Semporna has a serious problem with child poverty. Hopefully the Malaysian, Filipino and Indonesian governments can work to find a solution.