tioman island

A couple of weeks ago, we took a trip to Tioman Island in Malaysia.  It was our first outing as a family in South East Asia, and it was really a great trip.  In fact, Tioman Island is where the 1950’s movie South Pacific was filmed.  I’m not sure why that movie stuck in my head from when I saw it many many years ago, but I can still remember that haunting song “Bali Hai” where they are talking about the mountain behind their heads in this picture.

Well, we’ve been over that mountain now (and on those beaches), albeit in a Toyota 4×4 truck.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me start from the beginning…

Malaysia has many beautiful islands – the lush-jungle and white-sand tropical beaches that this area of the world is famous for.  You can see the red pushpin on the map that marks the location of Tioman (it’s an interactive map – you can click on it and look around).

It’s a short flight from Singapore – about 30 minutes from the local airport called Seletar (you don’t fly out of Changi, the International airport).  We flew on a 35 seat prop engine plane, on Berjaya Air.  You can see the gang walking to the plane here.  And you can also see that big storm coming in the background – we got out just ahead of that one.

Flying into Tioman, we literally swooped down out of the air in a big banking turn, bounced on the runway 3 times, and came to a rest.  I felt like I was in some sort of an Indiana Jones or Romancing the Stone movie.  They rolled our bags off the plane while we checked in through immigration.

While we were sitting in the bus, waiting for the rest of the passengers to get processed, we heard a bunch of shrieking in the trees next to the beach.  At first glance, it looked like leaves on the trees.  On second glance, the leaves were moving too much so they must be birds??  Nope, they were bats.  A crazy amount of bats, right out there in the daylight.  So many that they looked like leaves on the trees.  Click this picture and have a close look at the bigger version.  There are hundreds of bats in that tree.

The ride to the resort was a short one, but it was quite an experience in itself.  There is clearly a lot of poverty in Tioman, and we passed a lot of dilapidated buildings and stores.  The motor scooter is the vehicle of choice, and there was a steady stream of people ranging from the elderly to young children (all without helmets) whipping past us in the bus.  We arrived at the resort, and here are the kids standing at the entrance fountain to the resort while we get checked in. 

According to the adults, the best feature of the pool was the poolside bar.  You can see here Kirsten and I trying a sampling of their wares – me a Tiger beer (the local beer to the area, the equivalent of Budweiser in the US, but in my opinion much tastier) and Kirsten a glass of Chardonnay (the local drink choice of Kirsten, pretty much no matter where in the world she is).  You can also see a picture of the pool at night, with the main resort restaurant lit up in the background.

We ate most of our meals in that restaurant, which was buffet style.  The kids thought they had died and gone to heaven.  It was fun to watch them exercise their independence by taking as many trips to the buffet as they wanted, and picking whatever they wanted to eat (well, we had to put some limits on the dessert table ).

There was a three piece band that would roam around and play every evening, first at the pool bar, and then in the restaurant – two guitars and a girl kind of thing.  I wish I had a picture of them.  They came to our table and I requested “Country Road”.  They played a great rendition of it, complete with harmony.  Their understanding of the English lyrics was, understandably, a little thin in places.  So rather than “Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water” and “Dark and dusty, painted on the sky” as Mr. Denver had originally intended it, we instead had “Mystery lady” and “Dark and nasty”.  A few good chuckles as they made their way through an extensive catalog of American hits from the 70s and 80s.

You’ll notice in the seond picture that Cameron has a little friend under her chair.  There was a massive population of feral cats on Tioman, including Berjaya where we stayed.  It was a little surreal to sit there and eat dinner, while the cats just roamed around like they owned the place.  A couple of times they got in fights.  A few heads turned, then everyone would go back to eating. 

Cats and sea life were not the full extent of the wildlife at Tioman.  We also saw a ton of monitor lizards and monkeys.  This monitor lizard is right next to our house, and he’s probably about 7 feet long from tip to tail.  These things supposedly can really move out when they want to, but apparently this guy was not interested in much more than 1) sunning himself and, 2) staying away from us.  Kirsten had told me she’d seen a few monitor lizards in Singapore (Botanic Gardens and Bukit Timah trails), but I had this picture in my head of some 12-18 inch Chameleon-like thing.  I walked around the corner and saw this and my jaw dropped.  Kirsten was cracking up.

We also had this monkey (long tail macaque) come to our door, and my well intentioned wife and children fed him some Mango.  He was really cute.  He rubbed the sugar coating off the Mango and ate it all up.  He sat there for quite a while, just a few feet in front of us.  He returned later with a whole group of buddies.  They all had a mind to be treated to the same.  One was very insistent, jumping on a plastic chair about 2 feet away from me, and making every indication from his screeching and body language that he was going to throw himself at me.

As I mentioned early in the story, we had a chance to hire a driver with a 4×4 and take us over the jungle bound, mountainous interior of the island, to the other side.  The road was paved all the way, but it was unbelievably steep.  You can see us pictured here with our trusty steed (driver is taking the picture), looking out over the beautiful jungle behind us.  You can also see a picture taken from my vantage point in the passenger seat, looking down a typical steep stretch of the road (notice the stalwart tire wall which I’m sure would prevent disaster in the case where the brakes went out).

We arrived on the other side of the island, at a place called Juara Village.  There is a sea turtle sanctuary located there so we went to go check it out.  It’s inhabited by a few “peace corp.” like characters (one pictured here next to the orange kayak) who are responsible for maintaining the place including building it out, as well as taking care of the turtles.  It’s right on a beach, and the place is stunning.  For a certain type of individual, this must be a pretty cool life.  We did notice a little redness in the eyes of the caretakers – I’m sure it was just sunburn.