I meant Google Groups, not websites.  Sorry I wasn't more clear. :^)

Too bad, it sounded like fun.  Borneo Divers took excellent care of me and
made the journey an adventure.  They met me at the airport when I arrived
and took me to my hotel in KK.  Picked me up at 5 am and took me back to the
airport to catch my flight to Tawau, met me at the Tawau airport,
transported me all the way to Semporna by van, met all kinds of great
people, took us by boat to the island and showed us a great time during the
stay on Sipadan.  Then took me by boat over to Mabul, where I had another
great stay, though it was different, both in very good ways and some not so
good. Sipadan is a beautiful, beautiful island, unfortunately, the
government has closed the resorts on the island.  The dive boats out of
Mabul will still go there.  It's only a short trip and the acco at Mabul is
much better, but the island not as pretty.  Still it has some real cool
character.   Borneo Divers resort on Mabul, backs right onto the locals
village. You can see it while eating in the great room. The food and dive
set up was a bit better too.

I've also heard that SMART is a good but older resort, but I didn't get over
there to check it out.  I think it is probably prettier over there because
Borneo Divers resort being new, still didn't have nice grounds or any palms
trees.  They were trying to grow some but it looked like they'd bulldozed
too much down to build the resort.  Everything that they were trying to grow
was parched, even the grass.

Maybe you already know, but the diving off of Mabul is distinctly different
from the diving off of Sipadan too.  I loved them both. Viva la difference!

Check out AirAsia, SilkAir and um, there's more, but you get the idea.
Actually, I flew Australian Airlines (Qantas) from Singapore direct to Kota
Kinabalu.  It only cost around $200 Cdn.  It wasn't as inexpensive as flying
AirAsia out of Johor Bahru, but I didn't have to screw around trying to get
to Johor and on the return trip through Johor, I would have had to stay
overnight before returning to Sing.  So, to my mind, I actually saved money
. . .not to mention, to me when travelling, even when a certain route to a
specific destination is far less expensive than a more direct route, in some
instances, "the juice is not worth the squeeze".  That said, it sounds like
you have more time than I've had, so why not fly out of Johor and save
yourself the bucks.  For you, the journey is the destination.

Make no mistake.  I'm not recommending diving out of Samui.  The dive sites
are generally the same ones but again, it takes longer to get to them out of
Samui.

There are a number of ferries that leave from Samui to Koh Tao.  There's the
speedboat and expressboat and obviously, I can't even remember what all they
are called.  Some of them take hours, but at the time, the Lomprayha
Catamaran was the same price as the other fastboat, took the same amount of
time, and was 10 times more comfortable, airline/bus-like seats (two heads),
an upper deck and video, not that I watched it.  I know this for a fact,
because I had to take the speedboat back to Samui.  Hot, uncomfortable
seating, cramped with bodies, sitting on each other, on the floor, standing
up, no head . . .suitcases packed in there.   Things were pretty tense for
me when we finally docked at Nathan.  Of course, before we even left port at
Koh Tao, I had to go . . .you know, as soon as I realized there was no head
available.

Makes me want to be there.

Google Groups and other forums, TravelAdvisor, etc.  :^)