So where've you been? 6 Borneo

We believe that terrorists and criminal elements are continuing with plans to kidnap foreign tourists from the islands and coastal areas of Eastern Sabah. Boats travelling to and from offshore islands and dive sites are possible targets.
If you wish to visit resorts on, and islands off, Eastern Sabah, you should exercise extreme caution.

FCO article

I wasn't that nervous; better to go somewhere dangerous but informed of the risks than to wander off into the back of beyond without a bloody clue of what could happen (as most of the borneo junglist backpackers I met in Eastern Sabah were). To quote an ex, from many many exes ago, I threw money at the problem. I stayed on the biggest bloody boat.

The live-aboard diving boat was relentlessly obsessively fish-fuelled. Me and 28 half-dressed blokes: dutch, italian, malaysian. Inbetween dives we looked at encyclopedias of fish. Using half remembered childhood references and undersea signing as a language, we looked at each others' photos of fish. We recounted what we had or hadn't seen ("cinquo manta!" "pinocchio!") We watched home videos we'd made of each other diving, jeered at anyone caught in the act doing all those things divers bullshit each other they never ever do: touching a turtle, distressing the fish, touching or hacking at the reef.

Divers like to maintain a fantasy that it's those bloody dynamiting fishermen who destroy reefs. Bollocks. Move back a little when you see other divers. Hover and watch the mammals scaling the horizon with their expensive toys like the dambusters swooping in for a spot of blanket bombing. Divers destroy reefs. Not the handful of subsistence fishermen in the longboat. Divers.

I cried off the night dives each day, and spent that time asking the crew to teach me a bit of bahasa malay. My facility with the language is zero - it took me a full week to learn to even mispronounce 'thankyou' consistently. Chatting with one of the crew beneath the Big Dipper on the top deck one night, he reminds me I'm leaving alone the next day - not as rich as the EuroDivers, I cut costs by cutting the trip shorter. He repeats several times that it's him who's taking me. "You and me. Alone in the boat, yes. Just us two. No one else."
And the FCO warnings jingle in a memory recess.
Suddenly, my malay expressions are worth looking up; did he know my dad's CID? And my brothers. My two brothers, you know, the interpol officers who box?

No dangers, no surprises, no aby sayyaf interludes on the boat back to Semporna; biggest worry turned out to be racing to the airport via the wrong direction at 130k/ph ,in a van with no seat belts (I lay down; easier not to be scared), to check in ten minutes before the only plane back to Kuala Lumpur left.

So for those of you who were nervous, cheers. I got the voicemails.