Compare and contrast, and guess which is the tourist accommodation.
Click to enlarge.

Photos from eastern Sabah and the Sulu Sea.

This is a sort of follow on from the previous post – which has some very interesting comments, by the way.

I am in the midst of this fascinating process of getting feedback from first readers, some of them writers themselves, some not. And truly marvellous they are, with an eye for the ridiculous, the grammatical error, the typo, the rough spot, the plot hole, and so on. I can read something twenty times and still not see something under my nose, or I just simply don’t see an illogically in the story at all.
Here’s one that was spotted: there’s one scene in my book where a man, camped on the outskirts of a village, has to clandestinely visit a village child whom he knows is alone in his hut just outside the village. He also has to carry a rather large basket of stuff. I had no problem with that…but a beta reader did.

In effect:
How come he is able – in broad daylight – to walk around the outskirts of the village without a) someone spotting him, especially when he is hampered by the basket, and b) why aren’t there a myriad of village children following him everywhere??

Oh, lord, so true. (Thanks Phill!)

The photographs taken by me are of my husband on Banggi Island, and of Hamid, from the University Malaysia Sabah, on the island of Mabul, Sabah….

Ah, seems I don’t have time to get to the bit of what I wanted to say that refers to the blog title. I will continue tomorrow.

Mabul Island, a speck of coral and sand and palm trees in the Sulawesi Sea, is divided between the holiday dive resorts and the local inhabitants.

Between rich and poor, if you like. I couldn’t afford to stay in those resorts, quite frankly, not without feeling the pinch.

So what do I feel about these photos? Are we looking at a way the local people can share in the luck of their wealthy visitors? (And it is a kind of luck – luck that Mr Diver X was born in Sydney and not Sipadan, or Tokyo and not Tawau, or Madison and not Mabul.)

Or are we looking at a way in which the locals are plundering the natural wealth of their environment and leaving behind a desert that will bring no money to the future generations? And at tourists who buy what ought never be bought?

Is it plunder or produce? Sharing wealth or encouraging stupidity? Good for everyone or good for no one?

What do you think?

P.S. Mabul is not a marine park; it is not protected in the way that Sipadan is.