Tommy Lam Wai-yin, his employee Armella Ali Hassan, 23, and Spanish couple David Hernandez Gasulla, 29, and his wife Martha Miguel, 30, were rescued by Vietnamese fishermen drifting in waters off Borneo on Thursday.
CHRISTY LEUNG AND AP
UPDATED : Sunday, 15 May, 2016, 9:00am
The group spent 10 days drifting before being picked up by Vietnamese fishing trawlers and transported back by the Malaysian authorities. Photos: Xinhua
Flying fish and a movie helped save a Hong Kong man who spent 10 days adrift at sea along with three others, after the boat they were travelling on disappeared off the northern coast of Borneo.
The 45-year-old Hongkonger Tommy Lam Wai-yin, his employee Armella Ali Hassan, 23, and Spanish couple David Hernandez Gasulla, 29, and his wife Martha Miguel, 30, were rescued by Vietnamese fishermen drifting in waters off Borneo on Thursday.
Miguel spoke to Spanish local media on Friday and said that the group survived by eating flying fish that landed in their boat and distilling seawater using a technique that they saw in a movie.
“We never gave up hope. At no point did we think it was all over,” said Miguel. “But up to the sixth or seventh day, we didn’t have anything else to eat.”
Feeling fear and frustration, one of them came up with an idea of eating clams that stuck to the bottom of the boat and mussels clinging on to flotsam that passed by, which provided the group more nutrition.
They got drinking water by partially filtering the sea water through the remains of a plastic bag.
“I recalled seeing something [from a movie] about a castaway who had to do this thing to drink water. I wasn’t certain whether it was from evaporation or the water, but seeing as we had so much time on our hands we made it up as we went along,” Miguel said.
The survivors used a cellphone screen and a plastic bag to catch evaporating water every 15 minutes, so that they were each able to drink once an hour.
A similar trick was shown in the film “Life of Pi” directed by Taiwanese Ang Lee. The movie was based on a Canadian fantasy adventure novel, describing how an Indian boy survived 227 days in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger.
Hernandez also told the Spanish media that many vessels and an airplane passed close by without seeing them or realising they were in trouble.
Lam is a Hong Kong identity card holder but resides in the country with his Malaysian wife. They operated a resort, Tommy’s Place, at Tanjung Simpang Mengayau.
The Spanish pair was working as volunteers at a Malaysian resort and was travelling with its owner when they became stranded.
The boat went missing when travelling between Sabah’s Balambangan Island and the Tip of Borneo. The four left Balambangan Island at about 6pm on May 2, and were scheduled to arrive two hours later. Authorities believed engine failure may have caused the boat, driven by Lam, to go adrift.
They arrived back in Malaysia by plane on Friday and were all in good condition.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1945110/hongkonger-shares-survival-secrets-after-10-days-adrift-near-borneo
