A Big Adventure

Wednesday 11th February 2009, Tioman Island (Pulau Tioman), Malaysia

‘You get what you pay for’ an oft repeated phrase and one that seems clearer and clearer to me in the case of luggage, with one or two exceptions, but more of that later.

The alarm went of at 8:00am, I was already In the cold and dirty shower that the Hotel Seri Malaysia seems to think is acceptable after an uncomfortable night in our bedroom that’s covered in painted over mould and bedclothes that stink of mildew, it’s a real shit hole and yet one of the more expensive hotels we have stayed in whilst in Malaysia.

The taxi turned up on time at 9:15am but it was just a normal sized one and there is no wayt we can get all the luggage and the three of us in on one journey, so I sent Sofia and Basty and the first lot of luggage on ahead and waited until my turn.

At the Jetty we were  greeted with touts, I ignored then and made my way to the ferry ticket office and purchased three return tickets and we joined the mass of people ready to get aboard the ferry.

The journey in the ferry was at good speed and only spoilt by a music DVD running on a loop of some horrible voiced Malaysian rock singer, the bitch had a real horrible noise going on.

Pulau Tioman (Tioman Island), the first you really recognize of the island are twin peaks moving up into the clouds,  after stopping at a few jetties it was our turn to disembark at the Air Batang (ABC) jetty.

The first thing we see after getting off of the ferry is the pure clear water.

We started off towards Bamboo Hill, our resort, apparently I just turn left and walk for five minutes.

First things first, unlike Pulau Pangkor which is a quarter the size of this island, Pulau Tioman does not appear to have any real roads, certainly in the area we are staying in.

The Island seems to be a few resorts hanging under the jungle and teetering on the edge of the sea.

As with all these things a five minute walk on a nice path without luggage is no problem even in the intense heat of the day, however we have no such luck.

Weighed down with luggage and walking over rough sand covered, concrete and wooden paths.

And this is where we get back to the luggage, Basty and I were pulling our nice new bags, within about 200 yards mine had lost a wheel and before reaching the resort both our bags had become useless scrap, losing wheels and handles, Bastys had a nice hole worn though the bottom.

Dam they saw us coming when they sold us those pieces of shit! and now we are on a island where we will have no chance of buying any luggage of any kind, a real damper for the day, I was fuming.

Next time out we buy decent (i.e. expensive) bags.

The only ‘good value’ bags we have bought that have survived any amount of traveling with us are some soft bags we bought in Las Vegas, with a cool embroidered design of various old Vegas hotels and three large rubber wheels, these bags have stood the test of time.

The trouble is we only brought one of them with us and it’s Sasha’s. The bag which I had bought before leaving on our world tour (which is now Sofias) is standing up well although the drag to the hotel has damaged it on the bottom to some degree, more due to unusual usage, being dragged for ten minutes across rough ground on small wheels is not it’s real strong point. than any fault of the manufacture.

What we really needed was a lightweight wheelbarrow, and voila! A nice chap with a side car on his motorcycle stopped and helped us with the bags sadly after the damage had already been done, but hey, He was the brother of the man that runs Bamboo Hill and he himself run’s the ABC resort below it.

Anyway back to the star of the show Pulau Tioman.

Bamboo Hill is nestled into the hillside above the beach and ours is at the highest point of the resort, not good at this stage as we are hot and bothered after our luggage travails. Our rom was number 6 the highest up the hillside a semi detached chalet with room number 5 as our neighbour.. It was very basic, wooden structure and wonderful rather sans family Robinson, the double doors at the front open onto a balcony and a ladder (or at least very steep staircase) and it overlooks the bay.

The side doors open onto some stone steps, rock and jungle (and best of all hot and cold running macaques).

So we all sat down for a bit to cool down.

The view from our room is quite something, we look down over luscious greenery onto the beach and over the sea.

The island is alive with sounds of various creatures and sitting on the balcony the annoyance with the luggage soon dissipates.

We changed in to our swimming costumes and decided to head straight down to the beach with our snorkels and masks.

The water was not as warm as that at Pangkor but not bad, sadly the reef outside our resort is mostly dead, with many ugly prickly urchins dotting the sea bed.

We are not too worried because the water by the jetty was perfectly clear and full of thousands of fish and there are lots of dive sights, we just need to find the best of them.

I left Sofia and Basty reading on the balcony and went off to explore, within ten yards of our room I almost walked into a nice sized monitor lizard on the path, around five foot long, it slowly moved into the undergrowth. I carried on, the area we are in seems to consist of one main path that goes through all the various resorts.

On my walk I saw much exciting wildlife, and from the jettiy I looked down into super clear water and saw vast shoals of fish being harried and corralled by bigger fish.

The heat was intense and I had to walk on the golden sand down to the sea to cool off.

Upon returning to the room Sasha and Basty were happily reading on the balcony.

I soon joined them after a cooling shower, as we were sitting there a macaque literally came down through the jungle and sat about six foot away eating some red fruit off of some bushes.

Basty went to get the camera and of course the macaque moved away, so Basty set off Steve Irwin like into the jungle hoping to photograph it.

Upon his return Basty and I set off on another walk, there is a signpost pointing into the jungle which I believe leads to the next resort further on around the cove.

The path, if you can call it that, was steep and consisted of mud, tree roots and rocks and after about 15 minutes you walk down into what looks like it is going to be a new resort.

For the evening I had found a nice looking place to eat and we set off as soon as the clock hit seven as none of us had eaten anything all day.

And of course it is still not open, the problem being this is the end of the monsoon season and the island does not re-open fully until March.

On our way there we saw many flying foxes, these huge bats were truly amazing.

So we went and had a beer at the first bar we came across before heading onwards, we stopped at the first decent looking place and all had very good food.

After food Basty headed back to the room while Sofia and I went into a bar by a Dive School, the place was very lively with a few people who were the worse for wear including a few annoying locals who I think might have been on rather more than alcohol as they did seem to be sharing a spliff of sorts.

Sofia and I had a few drinks and played some Kalooki.

We had a chat with Ben who is in charge of the diving place, he had just bought everybody In the bar a beer as it was his birthday.

We asked him if he needed any more instructors as we are trying to get Stefan sorted so that he does not just go back to England after he finishes his training.

Apparently not, but he did say that Stef should send him his CV, so who knows if anything might come of it.

Back at the room, we watched an episode of Wire in the Blood before crawling under our mosquito net and into bed.

A wonderful day.

[mappress]