Day 1

It’s 4:45 am here as I’m writing this on Tuesday, my sleep schedule is still out of whack a little bit. Yesterday feels like it was days ago at this point.

I landed in Tawau in the morning and was shuttled on to a minivan and driven an hour to Semporna. I sat next to a French girl named Flora on the bus who told me she had been traveling alone for six months and was continuing on until July. She made me feel less crazy and was just one of the many people I met yesterday with a similar story. At Semporna I had a few hours to kill until we would take the ferry to Pom Pom Island. I met a boy from Denmark , Jens, who was also headed to TRACC, so the two of us headed into town together to look around and try to find me a phone (new number is +60 013 359 4635, hit me up on WhatsApp 😉) 

Jens told me about how he has been traveling on his own for five months through Bali and Australia, living out of a van, surfing and working as a waiter. I was surprised when he said he was only 21, but this type of travel is much more common amongst Europeans. We got my phone and headed to grab food, ending up at a hut on the dock that appeared to be part restaurant, part souvenir shop, part nail salon and part massage parlor. If I’m guessing our waitress was maybe nine years old? 

Most of the places along the dock were run down and the area seemed to be extremely poor. There were stray dogs, kids running barefoot and unsupervised through the streets, and at the sight of us two blondes walking down alleys, we had multiple little kids run up to us and tug at our shirts begging for money. Despite this obvious poverty, when walking along the docks we could see these same kids flipping and jumping into the water while singing Adele and Justin Bieber. The kids were swimming in brown, trash filled water but each one couldn’t have looked happier. 

Around 3:30 we were greeted by another girl who has been at TRAC for about two months now, along with the one of the directors and two other newbies. We loaded a boat full of supplies that they had gathered from town and headed off on a 40 minute ferry ride to the island. 

Upon getting to Pom Pom, we were swarmed and greeted by 30 or so people on the beach. I couldn’t help but notice at that point how my fake tanning package did nothing to put me on these people’s level of bronze. We were given a tour and shown to our tents, and I did my best to try to remember everyone’s names.

Pretty quickly I learned that almost everyone here has open ended travel plans, most with no idea how long they are staying or where they are going next. I met multiple people who have been on their own for months or who dropped out of school and ended up here. There are 4-5 other Americans, a bunch from the UK, a few from South Africa, Switzerland, and Italy. Everyone was super nice and welcoming and assured that this beach would be home in no time. 

Dinner was fried rice with either chicken or a vegetarian option and was pretty good. We hung out in the common area for the rest of the night until I headed to my tent and showered around 9. I believe we start dive training today and I can’t wait to get into the water.

Some final notes from yesterday:

– it’s so easy to think you have it bad until you see a place like Semporna and realize how happy those kids are with nothing 

– my lion mane doesn’t stand a chance in this heat

– in public Malaysian restrooms, toilet paper is kept outside of the stalls for communal use to grab before going in. I learned this the hard way as I was squatting over a hole using make up remover wipes