A water wonderland

Shame on me. My mobile phone has already buzzed with a text from Dean Alston (my phone often buzzes in the night, when I am away, with dire and humorous warnings from our cartoonist of the fates that may befall me in foreign climes).

I wasn't asleep this time. I was lying in a room big enough to host a table-tennis tournament, on stilts over the ocean off the north-east coast of Sabah. With all the windows open, rejoicing in the lack of insects out here, I was listening to the fans whir in the warm night, and the water lap around the piles, the cries of the heron, and a more distant one of a baby in another room, and outbreak of singsong Asian voices and the odd explosion of fish-frenzy in the water. One of the staff passed quietly along the jetty on a bicycle - like running a finger along a note-less piano keyboard.

It is a languid, still night, with barely a breath of movement in the air, and I have dined on rice and salad and supped a Tiger beer at the Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort's big restaurant. Out here, 100m along a wooden boardwalk, sort-of at sea, surrounded by reef and dive sites. Happy and relaxed.

But, shame on me, I reply to Alston (trust me, one should never reply to Alston's texts - it's asking for trouble), and with my brain now ticking over, I start to list all the things I need to do in the morning. And my brain starts composing emails. Shame on me. I give up, get up, get the laptop out and sit outside on the back deck, in the night, tapping those emails up and into the drafts box, wearing the head torch so I can see the keys to type.

But the night takes over. The deck is about 4m above the gently lapping water, and big - 7mx4m. It is slatted and there are lights underneath, so I can see the water between each slat, and the floor of the ocean under the shallow water.

A pipefish the size of my leg cruises past, with three more, slightly smaller, in tow behind. I look over the rail and the floor is dotted with starfish.

A parrot fish. A small stingray. Myriad clouds of tiny but colourful reef fish.

It is the sort of night you want to relish. You don't want to go to sleep.

All around me, the other over-water suites are quiet, and I just lie out here on the deck, watching the fish, feeling the night, letting the stillness soak into me.

Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort is a 45-minute boat trip from Semporna, which is 70-odd kilometres, or an hour and a half in a minibus, from Tawau, on the east coast of the Malaysian State of Sabah, on the northern end of Borneo. Tawau is an 80-minute flight from Kota Kinabalu, which is five hours and 45 minutes direct with Malaysia Airlines from Perth.

Well, we are in one of the world's most respected dive areas, and that is what most people on Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort are here for. The area is widely considered one of the world's top five dive destinations, with myriad fish, turtles, shallow corals and a 700m drop into the Celebes Sea.