The Perfect Storm

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We are staying at Bamboo Hill which is perched on the rocks at the north of Air Batang Beach. A first for this trip, we only have a cold shower (should I moan about this when some of you have probably been without water altogether?) and there is no bed, just a mattress on the floor. The area has a lovely laid back feel similar to Koh Tao in Thailand, but the beach itself isn’t up to much. The jungle interior is attractive and we have seen the largest variety of flowers and wildlife so far on this trip, not that I am particularly enjoying the wildlife elements. The Mosquitoes have taken a liking to me and I now have a funny resemblance to the elephant man! We also have a resident Gecko in our hut (which at one point fell on James!) and the Monkeys come to visit at 4pm.

We took a walk to Tekek the island’s main town which hosts a number of duty free outlets and stocked up on some necessities (beer and wine), which we have enjoyed on our balcony every afternoon. Also splashed out £5 on a bottle of export strength vodka. The plan was to take it with us to Oz, but on leaving the shop we remembered the new airport regulations regards liquids. Not too much of an issue, we managed to polish it off with the help of some diet coke.

On our final day in Tioman we took a speedboat trip around the island. This involved lots of snorkelling, a trek up to a waterfall and a lunch stop on the beautiful Juara beach (on the opposite side of the island to us). Juara is the best beach on the island according to our guidebook and it was certainly the nicest that we saw in Tioman, if not Malaysia. The sand was deep and the sea was calm and full of fish. It was very cut off though and I think staying here would have been difficult. The snorkelling was excellent and we saw lots of colourful coral and fish. The reason that we have called this blog ‘A Perfect Storm’ is due to the storm that we encountered as we were getting back into the boat from our last snorkelling stop. The sky went black and the waves started splashing over our little boat. The skipper didn’t seem too alarmed and decided to head back to base. The journey was quite scary with the rain pouring in from every angle, at one point we were almost reaching for the lifejackets!!

Last Stop KL!

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Photos

Our Room
Bamboo Hill, ABC Beach

Pulau Rengis
We Snorkelled around this!