Malaysia - Tioman

After leaving the Cameron Highlands, we spent three nights in KL, where we mostly relaxed in our hotel. We’re coming back to KL, so we didn’t see the tourist sites this time around instead we headed off to Tioman Island, after being up in the mountains, naturally we had to go back to the sea!

So the days in KL pasted quickly. We stayed near the shopping district which gave us a chance to buy a few things we needed. Just like Bangkok, there are lots of huge shopping malls right next to each other, impressive as they are, why you need so many we don’t understand, but then again we’re not shopaholics so what do we know..! 

On the plus side there was a big supermarket and we found some cheese, olives and all sorts of lovely things to have with some baguettes we bought, so we had a nice ‘picnic’ back at our hotel room.

A 6hr bus journey on roads which meandered through fields and fields off Palm Trees took us to our overnight stopover in Mersing (an un-impressive place) followed by a 2hr ferry the following morning got us to the Island.

We didn’t really know where we going to stay on the island and it wasn’t until the last minute when we were buying our ferry tickets that the ticket office offered us a deal at a secluded bay. Cheaper than we thought and a nice chalet/bungalow with an amazing view from the balcony. 

Panuba bay really is secluded with no shop or wifi, it’s just a room over looking the sea with great snorkelling on your door step, luckily they do have a restaurant so at least we could eat.

It’s a 10 mins walk up and over through the jungle to get to “civilisation” (well the next bay anyway) called Air Batang or ABC as it’s known here to get to a shop or other eateries. 

We’ve finally found our tropical paradise beach, not that the other beaches we have been too haven’t been great but we really did feel that we were off the beaten track here.

The snorkelling on our beach was great. The corals are plentiful and we saw lots of beautifully coloured fish, many that we didn’t see in Koh Tao, we saw some juvenile Moray Eels, we swam with a Turtle and saw a very cute Friendly Puffer, some Box Fish and there was even a Titan Trigger but he minded his own business luckily (they can be very territorial and aggressive).

We thought that we would dive but having done so much in Koh Tao just recently, we decided to just snorkel instead as it was so good (cheaper too as we already have a mask and bought a cheap snorkel) and wait till we get to Indonesia to dive again.

There are also plenty of birds around,  which we always enjoy watching, some Brahminy Kites and a White Bellied Sea Eagle. One evening, we were lucky to see hundreds of very big migrating sea birds, not sure what they were but it was an impressive site. 

We loved the very impressive 1.5m long Monitor Lizards going about their business on the beach and in between the chalets, they were great to see. 

There was also a big family of Pacific Swallows keeping us company but that’s not the only family roaming around, a big group of Long Tailed Macaques walk around as if they own the place, going through the bins and jumping on roofs, in fact I experienced a Macaque attack when I had a far too close encounter with the Alpha Male. Coming back from the shop through the jungle on my own, the family was minding their own business doing their thing and so was I but the Alpha Male didn’t see it that way. I guess i was too close to them all and he saw me as interfering, so he jumped down from the tree he was in behind me and started to rush towards me bearing his teeth and making guttural sounds. A little panicked i stood my ground and made my own primal sounds back towards him whilst putting my hand out in the fashion of a policeman trying to stop traffic in an effort to protect myself (futile i know..), I walked slowly backwards and it seemed to have appeased him but no sooner had I started to walk off again, he came rushing back at me, i repeated the same trick until i found a spot where i could hold him off before I ran away! Admittedly it was a little bit frightening but the only thing going through my head at the time was, ‘well at least i’ve had my rabies jab’. The incident lasted probably about 15 seconds but felt like an age. So we both won the day, i got away unscathed and he still had the feeling of being the dominant male in the that part of the jungle. Oh, ok, he won the day!

Some of the nature decided it wanted to get closer to us. Now Geckos, we don’t mind, they eat all the insects but there was an unwelcome visitor or two in our room. A wasp was trying to build a nest in the bathroom, we chased her out eventually though she was quite persistent, however the bigger animal to invade was a Rat that decided he would try and steal our food, we chased him out on three occasions one night, but of course we couldn’t go on like that, the handy man got a humane trap (what they would do with him once caught, is anybody’s guess) so we could get rid of him once and for all but he didn’t come back until five days later, that we noticed anyway. One night we heard this little noise and there he was, in the trap. The stale bread that had been there for five days or more must have lured him in... So we went back to sleep only to find he was gone in the morning! He managed to push his way out of it, not the best trap in the world that’s for sure but we didn’t mind, if he was smart enough to get out, good luck to him.

There is a huge amount of cats around and some very cute kittens that love a cuddle, however there are no dogs to be seen which is unusual for us as they’ve been omnipresent on our travels, then again, muslims consider them dirty so I guess that’s why.

As you can see, this is the zoo that we were living in!

The resort itself has many staff idling the day away watching television (nice work if you can get it..) including two cleaning ‘ladies’ who are actually lads in there 20s trying to be girls, i thought we’d left the Ladyboy scene behind in Thailand, guess not!

The time passed quickly and days started to merge into one, the pattern taking a ‘Groundhog Day-esque’ turn.

Those of you familiar with beach holidays will know the drill, usually something like, get up, drink coffee on the balcony, have breakfast, go to the beach, have a snorkel, come back and have showers, have a couple of beers on the balcony, have dinner then play games or read books or watch a movie on the computer. Sounds tough doesn’t it!!

Just to teach us a lesson for having too much of a relaxing time, the ferry to take us back to the mainland didn’t show at the time it was meant to, meaning we had to wait four and a half hours on the pier for another to show which in turn made us miss our bus back to KL. As it was National Holiday day, we couldn’t get another bus until the following morning, so another night in Mersing for us and money lost on buses tickets. Oh well!