Sipadan, Malaysia

This card arrived a while ago and I've been wanting to post about it ever since. It's taken a while, though, as other stuff has happened and I haven't been able to get online for long enough.


MY-40365

I have to confess when I first saw this card it freaked me out a bit. The place looks gorgeous, like a paradise, but I guess I'm not the only Finnish person who associates the word 'Sipadan' with something else. I had to check the year, and it looks like it happened back in 2000 (is it really that long ago?!), then, 21 people were kidnapped by the Filipino Islamist terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. The armed terrorists arrived by boat and forced 10 tourists (including two Finns) and 11 resort workers at gun point to board the vessels and brought the victims to Mindanao, the Philippines. All victims were eventually released, but it seemed to take ages and the incident was widely covered in the Finnish media.

Anyway. Luckily, Sipadan is also known for much nicer things. Sipadan is the only oceanic island in Malaysia, rising 600 metres (2,000 ft) from the seabed. It is located in the Celebes Sea east of the major town of Tawau and off the coast of Sabah, East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. It was formed by living corals growing on top of an extinct volcanic cone that took thousands of years to develop. Sipadan is located at the heart of the Indo-Pacific basin, the centre of one of the richest marine habitats in the world. More than 3,000 species of fish and hundreds of coral species have been classified in this ecosystem. Sipadan has been rated by many dive journals as one of the top dive destinations in the world.



The bird stamp was probably issued in 2005 and is from a set of 8 stamps, representing birds. This one is the Spotted Dove. I couldn't find any info about the other stamps.