Tioman Island - Mon 8/02 - Wed 17/02

Tioman Island...Now this is the kind of place I had been waiting for. A paradyllic island in the South China Sea about 2 hours from the mainland. This place had basic chalets, nice beaches (although a little rocky in some places), huge monitor lizards wandering freely and gangs of mischievous monkeys (more about these buggers later).

We stayed for 8 days on the Island and spent most of this time reading, swimming, going for some walks and doing a bit of snorkelling. On about the second or third day we decided to walk over to Monkey Bay which was supposedly a short walk over the hill. It turned out to be a bit longer than this, around an hour and a half through a steep forest track where we had to negotiate through gaps in giant vines and between enormous rocks and the like. This was all well and good and we made it to the deserted beach known as Monkey Bay. We were led to believe that this beach had places to stay and somewhere to get something to eat. Not so. We were dismayed to find nowhere to buy food and we were running very low on water, great. Not to be deterred we decided to stay a while and have a swim before heading back. The beach was totally calm, had crystal clear water and we had the place to ourselves. We decided to stay and read our books and chill out on the beach for a bit before going for a walk to the other end of the bay. This is where we encountered our bit of excitement for the trip. As we were walking back towards our bags we noticed a gang of monkeys heading directly towards our things. Seeing that they were about to start stealing our stuff we started to run towards them and as we did one of the monkeys reached into our bag and pulled out Kate's wallet, the wallet with all the money for our stay on the Island in it, about $300 AUD in all. As there are no ATM's on the Island this monkey had the capacity to make our lives extremely difficult! I gave chase and of course they bolted into the trees so I stopped and this furry little thief sat up in the tree and started to eat the wallet! Now I didn't care much for the wallet but all our cards and cash were in there so if he started to eat those then we were in trouble. Fortunately he began throwing out the money onto the ground note by note. I was under the tree not sure whether I should try and throw something at him to scare him into dropping the wallet or whether this would cause him to retreat into the forest where I couldn't follow. So we waited. After about 15 minutes he dropped the wallet and when I was sure they were far enough away so that he couldn't retrieve it I crept in and picked up all the cash and cards and high tailed it out of there. After this we were off Monkey Bay and resigned ourselves to leaving it to it's rightful inhabitants. Unfortunately this wasn't to be as in all the fuss with the monkeys I inadvertently left my boardies in a tree after changing out of them and had to walk all the way back again to retrieve them the next day. Damn you monkeys!

Another unsuspecting tourist I saw also incurred the wrath of a monkey that had come to where we were staying to steal rubbish/food. We were both taking photos of this particularly large male and the other guy got just that little bit too close and the monkey charged him teeth bared and screaming. The bloke tried to get out of the way but the monkey went for him again and he turned tail and ran. I was doing my best not to laugh but it was pretty damn funny.

So anyway as our time was divided between eating, swimming and reading the rest of our time passed relatively uneventfully. We did go out to one of the bars on one night with a couple we had met where we were staying and they introduced us to a bloke they had met called 'Tony'. Tony was what you'd probably call a 'pompous ass' from England who now spent his time sailing around in his yacht and informing everyone he meets about his favourite subject, himself. I guess you're always going to come across people like this but sweet Jesus. This bloke was drinking almost straight Vodka and prattling on and on at me about his 'adventures'. Pure torture. This bloke would speak to you about 2cm's from your face and just wouldn't shut up. His only even slightly interesting comment came when he spoke about having to remove his boat's two cats on the open sea, to the horror of his female travelling companion, because they 'shat too much'. Top stuff Tony.

So after 8 days we moved on to a place called Cherating where I sit now. We took a boat back to the mainland and a bus up to this place which is the home of Malaysia's only surfing community. But more about this place next time.
'Til then.


Our lovely little chalet - it had an attached shower and toilet (something we haven't had yet!) and a mosquito net over the bed. It was $AU10 per night! From our chalet we could see all the animals that inhabited the island - huge lizards, squirrels, monkeys, tiny frogs, birds, butterflies....


The view of the ocean from our chalet! The water was only a few metres away and was crystal clear and with no waves - my kind of beach!


This is what the beach and water looked liked every day!


One of the many paradllyic sunsets! These are just a few of them. The sun rises at 7.30am and sets at 7.30pm


Another sunset


The jungle walk to Monkey Bay. The walk was long and hot. The only thing that kept us walking was the swim at a beautiful and isolated beach!


There was a lot of rubbish (like drink bottles, cans etc) scattered around the town and along the tracks in the jungle. It has either been dropped by tourists or left by the monkeys (after stealing it from a tourist). Rubbish on the island is burnt daily so you see little fires all the time. Here you can see a plant in the jungle which has grown through a can (it is likely that a monkey has taken this from a tourist - i think - as it looks like it has been ripped apart by the monkeys teeth!).


Tioman island has heaps of these enormous rocks scattered around in the jungle.