I know I've skipped a few days in these posts, but for two days Kevin and I were in Cherating and there was absolutely nothing there so I'm not going to write about it. Onto Tioman Islands...
The trip from Cherating to Tioman was, as my good Irish friend Kevin describes a "saga." The day before leaving, we purchased our bus tickets from the local tourist shop in Cherating. The guy who sold us the tickets was very helpful and suggested we take the local bus at 6:20am to get to Kuantan for the 10:00am bus to Mersing. From there we would hop on the 4:00pm ferry to Tioman. Despite the early start we figured this was a good plan and prepared ourselves for a long journey the following day.
We got up at 5:45am and walked ten minutes to the local "bus stop" to catch the 6:20 bus. It was still dark at that time, but around 6:30 we saw a bus coming our way which we attempted to get on. Unfortunately, the bus decided not to stop for us. We waited another hour and another until about 8:30 when we were nervous that we wouldn't make the 1.5 hour ride to Kuantan in time for our 10:00am bus. Luckily, two British guys were also waiting for the bus so the four of us were able to split a cab which wound up only being $3/person for what turned out to be a half hour ride. We then jumped on our 10am three hour bus to Mersing. Once there it was a measly 10 minute walk to the jetty.
The boat was supposed to leave at 4:30 but was a bit delayed due to the uncertainty of the tides and level of water (there's no real set times for the ferries as it varies based on season and tidal schedule). While we were waiting for the ferry, we met two Dutch girls who were going to the same place but were on a different ferry (apparently the ferry decided to use two boats instead of one, each with about 75 ppl on it so their wouldn't be a weight issue with the low tide and all...they proved to be wrong). The ferry left at 5pm chugging through very shallow water and about 30 minutes into the ride the inevitable happened and we heard the boat hit the bottom and stopped completely. The captain came running downstairs and yelled for everyone to quickly run to the front of the boat. Amazingly enough this worked and the boat was unstuck, however, we all had to stay at the front of the boat to avoid ruining the engines on the sea floor. In our journey we wound up passing the other ferry that the two Dutch girls were on. It turned out that they also hit bottom and one of the engines broke so they essentially had to zig-zag all the way to Tioman.
We got to Tioman around 7pm in what turned out to be a 13 hour journey, including a taxi ride, bus ride and ferry (certainly a saga).
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Tioman Island is a quiet island regarded as better for what's under the water then above. Since it's high season and we were there over a weekend, it was pretty busy especially with vacationing Malaysians. The first full day there, Kevin and I went for a hike to Monkey Bay. Although only 45 minutes it was a steep hike through dense jungle. We encountered two different species of monkeys and tons of birds and lizards. On the way over one lone monkey was certainly unhappy with us; as we tried to pass he went into an almost pouncing position and howled with his fangs out. We stopped in our tracks and went the other direction with him coming after us. We finally completely stopped and luckily he decided to turn around and walk the other direction. Monkey Bay was a secluded beach with pristine water and as the name suggests full of Monkeys (tame ones though). We spent most of the day there.
On the second day I went diving again since I couldn't resist the craving. It was me and a bunch of Malaysians which turned out to be a lot of fun. The diving was good, not as good as The Perhentians, but a solid B+. The highlight was most definitely seeing a banded snake eel; a poisonous sea snake and the first one I've ever seen.
We found a great restaurant that served delicious prawns in Sambal sauce (local chili type sauce) that also played movies every night. We wound up seeing the Karate Kid (the new one with Jackie Chan) which was bad. On our last full day, Sunday, it rained all afternoon so we watched a bunch of shows on Kevin's laptop. The best was by far "The Inbetweeners" a British show that is absolutely hilarious. On Monday morning we left for Mersing to plan our trip to Borneo on Wednesday!!!!!
Tioman Island
Hike to Monkey Bay
They're good friends...
Our friends at Monkey Bay
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