Photos

Last year I was marooned on an island. But nothing like Tom Hank's. There was enough food and water to not worry about starvation for a week, and friendly islanders for company. This island is the kind of place, you would just love to be left alone. For a while at least. It was something like James Mitchener's Tales Of The South Pacific. It is that kind of place, doing nothing at all or something mundane like sitting in the shade of a coconut tree for hours, feels so heavenly appealing. Or just the thought of being lulled to sleep by the sight and sound of the sea, is making you drowsy enough. Or even guilty.

The island up yonder, looking like an island from the South Pacific, is Bohey Dulang. It is one of the eight islands making up the Tun Sakaran Island Park in Semporna, together with Maiga the one I'm on, pretending to be Robinson Crusoe. The stilted rickety houses off shore is temporary homes to two families of Sea Bajaus, a maritime nomadic tribe commonly found plying or living off on the southeastern waters of Sabah

The island is relatively "deserted", just like Bohey Dulang. By noon, most of the islanders whose stilted homes are by the beach, are under theirs, playing card games, draughts or mending their nets. It is one of the two cool shady places under the scorching south eastern sun. The other one is under the spindly tall swaying coconut trees with unreachable ripened coconuts just waiting for the right sway to let go.

In the late afternoon, the water a few feet below off shore, is ice cold compared to the surface. It is crystal clear and you can see far enough underwater to understand why this part of Sabah, is submarinely beautiful. Coral reef of varied shapes, sizes and colors carpeted the sea floor like an underwater bushes and as you snorkel above them among the darting and skittering fishes, your wakes create psychedelic patterns on it under the afternoon light. It feels just like, probably as close as you could get to, flying.