Pulau Sipadan looks like the original paradise island - a slash of gleaming white sand topped with verdant palm trees o the horizon, a tiny land oasis in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by the turquoise patches of coral reefs all around and set beneath a vast blue sky. It is an island of only 16 hectares covered by luxuriant and impenetrable rain forest. Rare species of bird inhabit the higher branches of the trees. Enormous coconut crabs live in the trees and giant monitor lizard's stalk in the undergrowth.