Thirteen years ago, Linda Wills stood on an idyllic Malaysian beach, stared across the South China Sea and made a tough decision. Recently widowed, Wills faced the dilemma of whether to remain at the remote beach resort she had intended to refurbish and run with her diver/photographer husband, Daniel, or return home.
Daniel was killed in a boating accident in 1993 and, alone in a foreign country with two small children, Wills seemed to have little choice but to go back to England - or so most people thought. She didn't. Instead, she employed a team of local staff - some of whom are still working with her - and set about establishing the Sea Gypsy Village Resort and Dive Base.
'Actually, it wasn't so hard a decision to make, now that I look back,' she says. 'Who wouldn't want to live in a beach paradise?'
Sibu Island, home to the resort, forms part of the Seribuat chain and lies 12km off the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. It is shaped like an hourglass, about 6km long and never more than 1km wide. The area around Pulau Sibu is part of a protected marine park.
The island's topography makes it an ideal place for budding divers - especially children and teenagers - to test the waters for the first time. The only way to reach it from the mainland is on a small, motorised longboat from the pier at Tanjong Leman - a journey that'll only begin when there are enough passengers.
Our boat sputters around a short bluff into the resort at about 10pm. We are met by resident dive master, stand-in manager and all-round nice guy Sam Smith - the man you go to when you need to know something, want to organise an activity or just feel like a chat.
There are no cars, telephones or computers at the resort, so if you really must make a call, you have to trudge through the jungle to the other side of the island to get a line of sight to the mainland. The staff encourage guests, who stay in A-frame huts, chalets on stilts or family-sized dormitory chalets with huge en suite bathrooms, to 'leave all that guff at home'.