Here in Malaysia, we’re coming up to nine months under one of the longest lockdowns in the world.

At the time of writing, some national borders around us are starting to open, but we are still not able to visit our families in the UK because if we did, we would not be able to return to our sailboat and our home.

If you are familiar with our channel you’ll be familiar with the visa situation too.

To be honest, it’s not at all bad, and we have nothing to complaining about. Malaysia has been kind to us and the surrounding Borneo coast line is one of the most beautiful in the world. We’ve been lucky to witness some incredible sights of nature even while stuck at anchor and unable to travel. The sunsets are stunning, the lighting storms and squalls are breathtaking, and it’s not often you get to see rare mammatus clouds forming between the mountains and sea at sunset.

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While wading through the long weeks of lockdown in the waters around Kota Kinabalu, we anchored off the idyllic island of Sepanggar. As usual, the buildings were deserted, there were tourist boats marooned in the sheltered bay and solitary men in beaten up fishing canoes quietly retrieved their small nets.

Life has been hard for everyone in lockdown and nowhere more so than Sabah where tourism is the largest employer. Incomes have dried up over the past 18 months, and people from all layers of society have been hit, some even falling into poverty while living in smart houses. For the many displaced and undocumented communities here who live hand to mouth starvation has been a real threat.

It was almost inevitable, then, that we had an extraordinarily rare brush with crime while at anchor.

Check it out in the video…

Peace and fair winds, friends!
Liz and Jamie xx