Advertisement
Published: February 15th 2009
Edit Blog Post
(Day 314 on the road)Picture a tropical island with lush palm trees, a beach front bungalow about three metres away from the sea, an underwater world with abundant fish and great visibility, and you pretty much get the idea of how Jawad and I have spent the last week. It was pure heaven.
If you get the picture, you can stop reading now. If you want a few more details, read on. Tioman was once voted among the ten most beautiful islands of the world, and it really is gorgeous. It is pretty big, but only the small coastal strip can be inhabited, as mountains rise steep from the coast. The the inland is thick mountainous jungle, mostly left to itself. All the life thus resolves around a very narrow strip of land right by the sea; where we stayed, there was barely enough space for a small pedestrian walk, bungalows, restaurants and a few mini marts. Life here was extremely laid back.
People come to Pulau Tioman for two thing: Relaxing or diving. We did both, but the diving was really the highlight of our stay. I had learned to dive in Port Elizabeth, South Africa about nine
years ago, with ice-cold water and very low visibility, so compared to that the tropical waters here were near perfect. Jawad and I both finished our Advanced Open Water courses (we now qualified to dive to 30 metres), and we saw some amazing things.
Most memorable were the three dives we took one day on a boat towards the end of our stay. Visibility underwater was amazing (20 metres), and the first two dives we saw some beautiful and huge corals. There was even a small underwater dive-through, a cave open on both sides and maybe 30 metres long that I swam through.
The best dive however was the third one on that day. Jawad had been wanting to see turtles, and sure enough we saw three giant ones and one baby turtle. They are fascination creatures; the big ones were not afraid of us at all, and we just hovered in the water watching these massive turtles eat the coral. The young one seemed more nervous, and frantically tried to swim away from us, which somehow looked very cute. Sorry my young friend, we didn't mean to startle you.
After that experience we rented an underwater
camera twice in the hope to capture some turtles on camera, but never saw them again. What a shame. Jawad left the next day, and I left shortly after that. I spent a few days in the port city or Mersing back on the mainland, mainly glued to the fast and cheap Internet, pondering my next move...
Next stop: Melaka (Malaysia).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0557s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Silke
non-member comment
Grüsse aus dem Norden in den Osten
Hallo Ben, nun bin ich doch tatsächlich auf deinen Blog gestossen. Und ich werde schon ein bisschen neidisch, wenn ich deine Berichte lese und das schoene Wetter sehe. Seit fast einem Jahr bin ich nicht mehr im Marktbereich, sondern wohne in Kopenhagen. übrigens auch eine schöne Stadt. Wenn ich auf deine Weltkarte sehe, dann warst du wohl noch nie in Dänemark. Du bist hier herzlich willkommen. Bis nächstes Jahr im Februar sind wir auf jeden Fall noch hier. ;-) Gruss aus Kopenhagen Silke