Tioman Island

August 16 – 19^th 2010

Getting from Singapore Island to Tioman Island turned out to be a bit of a hassle. We got to the long-distance bus station in Singapore, booked the 10am bus to Mersing (the town where the ferry to Tioman Island was), and killed time by chatting to a couple of middle-aged sisters from England. All was going well until we were told the bus leaving wasn’t the one we were supposed to be in when it fact it was. Subsequently, we missed the only bus leaving for the next 10 hours. To top it all off we were denied a refund as the ticket attendant claimed we "had a miscommunication with the driver and it was our fault we missed the bus" (even through the driver looked at our ticket and told us not to get on the bus, so it really wasn’t our fault at all). After an hour of arguing and a call to bus company’s head office, we finally got our money refunded. We then jumped in a taxi to the local bus station, and caught a city bus to Johor Bahru (the Malaysian city just across the Singapore-Malaysia border). We figured we could catch a long-distance bus to Mersing from Johor Bahru instead. Luckily, we got to Johor Bahru safely, the border crossing was problem-free, and we were able to catch a bus that afternoon to Mersing. We arrived in Mersing around 3:15pm that afternoon and were quickly herded from the bus into a travel agency to book a ferry ticket to Tioman Island. We were in luck, the last ferry was leaving in 15 minutes! We quickly booked tickets and a beach hut, and then literally ran across town in order to catch the ferry in time. Exhausted and sweaty we stumbled onto the ferry and grabbed our seats for the next couple hours.

Tioman Island is a fairly popular tourist destination. The island has several ports for ferries, and we had to decide which jetty we wanted to be let off at. Ali and I decided to get let off at the last port – Salang – as we were told it was the backpackers area and it was where a lot of the cheap accommodations were. We ended up being very glad that we chose that port as we think it was probably the best location on the island. There were nice beaches, good snorkelling and decent restaurants.

By the time the ferry landed at the jetty and found our resort, it was around 7:30pm and dark out. We spent our 4 days on Tioman in a little beach hut. It was kinda sketchy, not too clean and very basic, but we had it to ourselves and we, thankfully, had sleeping bags with us. That night we discovered there was a hole in the bathroom floor and that hole meant that animals, including spiders, often made their way into our bathroom. We discovered the hole when we discovered the spider. Ali went to the washroom that night before bed and came running out telling me there was a huge spider in there and that I had to kill it! It turns out the spider was about 10-15cm in diameter (pretty big in comparison to Canadian spiders). We spent about 5 minutes chasing the spider with a running shoe until I eventually smacked it and killed it. Ali had intended to help me kill it but after about 10 seconds she freaked out and jumped on the toilet and was not helpful at all. haha.

Our 3 days on Tioman Island were spent lounging in the sun, kayaking, snorkelling just off the beach, and eating ice-cream and pancakes. The island was very relaxed and we enjoyed our time there. Unfortunately, there were a couple rainy afternoons which meant less snorkelling and hiking than we had wanted, but it was still enjoyable and we were glad we went. We stayed until August 19^th and then decided to move on. We jumped back on the ferry to Mersing, caught a bus to Kuantan and made our way over to Jerantut and Teman Negara National Park.