Paradise Island (Tioman Island)

Now I want to tell you something about another Island. Last weekend we visited with a group of eight exchange students Tioman Island in Malaysia, which is totally incomparable to Sentosa. But lets start at the beginning...

We met Friday in the early morning (7.15h) to get by Bus, MRT and Taxi to the border near Johor Bahru. There is the so called causeway which is a kind of dam that links Singapore and Malaysia. The border controlls are really strict and it took as about an hour to get out of Singapore. Having crossed the border we took a cab to Mersing which is on the east coast of Malaysia. Bargaining about the price was not that easy but in the end we had to pay 55S$ per cab for a 2h ride which is a reasonable price. Road traffic in Malaysia is a bit adventurous - overtaking in bends or animals on the streets seems to be quite common. But nevertheless we reached Mersing without any problems and booked the ferry to Tioman and the accommodation in a local travel agency.

The ferry ride took us about 1.5 hours. You can take the word "ride" literally - although the weather was really nice the trip was rather bumpy. Before taking the ferry we bought something to eat in Mersing (chicken and rice as usual). It was kind of hard to eat this in the ferry without spilling it all over you shirt or getting sea sick. The ferry arrived at the village Kampung Genting. For the last few kilometers we had to change into small water taxis to get to Bersatu Nipah.

The island itself looked really fabulous. There are nice small beaches at the shore and virgin forest on the mountains behind it. But when we came to our chalets it got even better - crystal clear water, few little houses on a very long beach, a small lagoon formed by a river and all the people had a broad smile and were very relaxed. I nearly had to rub my eyes and pinch myself to realize that I am not dreaming. The chalets were rather simple and small - but for us they were just perfect. The first impression of the place really excellent.

We passed two superb days on the island. On the first day went swimming in the sea and lay on the beach. We harvested fresh coconuts, cut them and drank the fresh coconut milk with straws. In the night we hat our dinner on the beach - the meals were excellent as well. Later we sat around a fire at the beach, drank beer and talked to the locals. All of them were so relaxed - they smiled and laughed at all times and their favorite word was: "Allrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!" :-)

On the second day we went snorkeling in the morning. There was a tiny island nearby with a coral reef around it - so we could see many colourful fish. Reportedly there is also a shark around that island, but we couldn't spot him this time. (It is of course a friendly shark which doesn't bite any tourist.) Around noon we did a short jungle trip. We paddled with a boat up the river and then followed a small creek uphill. We climbed from rock to rock and watched out for spider's webs - they told us that they can be really poisonous. I think that we never made it more than 1000 metres from the starting point, but the whole trip took us nearly 3 hours - you are really slow in the jungle. The rest of the day we kept most of the time on the beach and enjoyed ourselves...

The next day we had to leave already. We stayed till noon in Nipah and then we had to take all the different means of transportation back to Singapore. This time we took the public bus in Malaysia - a very interesting experience as well. At about 10pm we arrived on campus - tired but very happy about the outstanding weekend. We definitely want to do this once again!