Not Waving But Drowning
This weekend we decamped (with Jane, Cat and Jane’s friend Claire) to Sibu Island – which is approximately 3 hours north of Singapore. The place we go is kind enough to send a minibus into Singapore to collect us, which is convenient and means we don’t have to drag our luggage across the causeway weaving in and out of traffic.
As you can see from the photos the island itself is idillic even if the bumpy journey, including seats with poorly padded metal bars designed to damage your spine and bottom, is less so. And when we arrived as the sun set on Friday we raced a massive tropical storm to the beach; which then proceeded to unleash itself upon the island. For the next three hours. Nice moist start to the beach holiday.
Morning came, and Jane marched off to begin her advanced diver PADI course. This greatly pleased the instructor Max who’d done only 8 dives in the last two months. Life on the island, it seems, is typically laid back even for the staff.
Snorkeling
Last time Jo and I visited Sibu we made the mistake of walking through to the other resort to do some snorkeling in a rockier bay. In itself not such a bad idea. The error in judgement however was believing we could snorkel in a foot of water. This resulted in a permanent feeling of panic as thighs, arms and other bits that dangle grazed rock and coral. I cut my toe and moaned about it for a week (I am a good husband).
This time however we were not that stupid; high tide at lunchtime led to my reluctant acquiescence (I wanted to sit on my arse, and was getting phantom toe pain) to Jo’s insistent requests to look at fish. So Claire accompanied us across the island, and off we snorkeled into a glorious 9 feet of water. Tiny fishes, one massive fish, Nemo fishes all greeted us lucky snorkelers. The best coral was further out into the bay, where the sea was less trafficked by boats, so out we swam.
On reaching the, only slightly, deeper water the coral formations were more impressive and so it was I didn’t notice myself and Jo start to drift. Drift is actually a bit of a misnomer, we were literally picked up and dragged round the headland at the edge of the bay, all on a sea that could have been a pond.
I attempted to swim back into the bay, both through and around the current but only managing to get a quick sight of the beach and wave a couple of times before being dragged back to where Jo was swimming just to stay still. This was not an ideal situation. The only solution was for us to try and swim around the headland, across the next bay and to the beach on which we were staying. A not insignificant swim but only about 5 minutes by motorboat.
The first few minutes were quite easy going and we made good progress off the back of the current that dragged us out in the first place. I began to metaphorically pat myself on the back: I should have saved my metaphorical energy. The next forty-five minutes was spent traversing approximately 30 yards, every time looking up to see the tree on the shore not moving, or perhaps being farther away, despite strong and stoic breaststroke.
We even reached a “we’re not going to make it” point, thinking we could tread water and wait for a boat, but as none were forthcoming we continued to plough onto the next headland where some rocks beneath the surface meant we could rest before swimming into the bay on which we were staying. Another half hour later we dragged ourselves onto the beach and staggered along to our resort, arms hanging loosely from our shoulders.
We hadn’t drowned! And we’d worn T-shirts so our backs weren’t totally burnt! Two strokes of genius. However our shoes and room key were a 20 minute jungle walk away. Not so awesome, but thanks to the magic of mobile phones Claire was contacted at the other resort; where her sandy vigil had become one of worry, rather than annoyance, as time had worn on.
After the drama of near watery death the rest of the two days went by mainly with sitting (as had been my preferred option) and some extremely amateurish volleyball. Not always entirely quietly as the previous owner, and founder, of the resort arrived for a birthday party which involved:
- two drinking sessions in one day
- staff and very drunk owners dancing on the bar
- various horrendous shots drunk by under-prepared Malaysian resort staff
- the previous owners bottom
- the sixth play of Dancing-bloody-Queen being greeted with as many whoops as the first (but only by the more than slightly sozzled current lady owner)
- a conga
- and Claire at four in the morning, in her pyjamas, pointing out that perhaps as she’d paid for the bed she might be allowed to use it without loud 70s rock music shaking it!
So all-in-all very uneventful, I recommend Sibu for those looking for a relaxing long weekend (no sarcasm, well maybe a bit – but in all seriousness it actually was mainly very chilled out). There’ll be some more photos, of the boozy party, as soon as I get my hands on Cat’s camera!
Andy 23 May 2007
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