Lankayan is a small island off the coast of the Malaysian part of Borneo, about one and a half hour per speed boat from Sandakan. Nobody lives there, it is only inhabited by tourists, dive masters, staff members from the one resort available and turtles. During daytime, when all divers are under water, Anna and me are the sole owners of the beach.
Lankayan is situated in the Sulu sea, between Malaysia and the Philippines. The surroundings of the island are called a "macro world paradise", meaning in divers-language that there are many small creatures to be seen while diving. Furthermore, you can find whale sharks, turtles and crocodile fish. From October 2003, government declared the island and the waters around it Marine Conservation area. Therefore, all of us, including Anna, have to sign an agreement upon arrival, that we will not take anything from the island, not even a sea shell! I don't really mind, because normally we come home with mountains of shells, which surface only years later, forgotten by everybody.
The divers are a interesting species themselves. They have to fill in logbooks all the time and adhere to books full of rules. They wear special clothes; Teb is a very rare examplee, as you can see on the picture underneath, as he thinks he needs to wear a hat while diving, probably to scare the fish away.

The island is very small. The dive master tells us, that you can round the island on foot in about half an hour, depending on your condition. I do it in 14 minutes, does that mean I have a top condition? Or is the island shrinking perhaps?
The resort exists of about sixteen bungalows, most of them practically on the beach, as you can see from the picture above. They are so close to the sea, that you lie awake at night from the roaring sound of the waves beating the beach, especially when there is a little wind.

On the island, there is a turtle hatchery. Behind a fence, many nests are waiting to be left by the young turtles. Two kinds of turtles live around the island, the green and the hawksbill turtle, but the eggs in this season belong mainly to the green turtles. We saw already a big one swimming under the jetty, but were also lucky enough to witness the birth of turtles of one nest on Christmas Day. Each turtle lays between 80 and 120 eggs, and they take around 60 days to hatch. The turtles have many enemies: birds, lizards and crabs, whilst still on the beach, and the small ones get eaten by fish in the water.
They are released to the sea immediately, as that increases their chance for survival, but still only 1% makes it to adulthood. While we are watching their heave journey to the sea, already we witness some of them being eaten by a black tip shark. Nature can be cruel sometimes!