The fairest of them all is tanned?

My own personal love affair with tanning started after I spent three months in Borneo off the eastern coast of Sabah, in northern Malaysia.

For three weeks, I camped on a diving island called Sipidan and every morning, I would wake up to a glorious sunny sky. The hot weather cleared my skin and turned it a gorgeous brown immediately, I was hooked.

Walking along the beach in sandals and a shell necklace - the absolute stereotype of someone on their gap year - I remember thinking how much better I felt tanned! This feeling was compounded by the fact I had been working for months through the miserable cold, gray British winter, to save money for my trip.