Sibu, Malaysia
Last weekend, Daniel and I escaped to another tropical island full of palm trees & coconuts and surrounded by soft sands & waves. We were at Sibu island just off of Malaysia's East coast. As we traveled by vans out of Singapore over the causeway and along Malaysia's monkey lined roadways we felt ourselves unwinding from a busy week. The drive was around 3 hours and then we took a small speed boat ride for 20 minutes to the island shores. We waded through the shallow waters off the boat with our backpacks and up onto the torch lit beach.
The cabins were rustic and we were thankful for our mosquito net covering our bed.
We spent much of our time enjoying reading on the beach and floating in the water. Our snorkeling expedition seemed more like an episode of Survivor than a relaxing time shooting the breeze (er...waves) with the fish. After being abandoned on a small island 20 minutes off the coast of Sibu (boat driver unloaded us and took off without so much as a goodbye or hope you can swim) we had only begun to see a few fish when an ominous black sky seemed to appear out of nowhere. None of us being particularly fond of being struck by lightning, we decided to get out of the water. The winds were very chilly! We were hoping this storm would quickly pass but the rains soon followed. These rains pelted down so hard we ended up crawling back into the water to protect our bare shoulders and to try to stay warm. Much to our dismay, our boat never came back for us as the other boats came to collect their clientele. Over two hours later our boat showed up. Later when asked why they left us out there, the answer was "oh, we saw the storm and thought about you guys...but decided you'd be fine." Well, we were fine after a shower, tube of pringles and a couple glasses of red wine.
The food was amazing (do we see a recurring theme here?)! The highlight was Saturday night's BBQ which consisted of chicken/veggie kebabs, lamb, grilled red snapper, corn on the cob, garlic bread, and baked potatoes. After dinner there was plently of dancing...and maybe a few boring games for the quieter folk 
