Malaysia East Coast: Tioman Island + Cherating . . . Jess saw a Shark and I drank lots of sea water!! :)

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After leaving the jungle we headed for the East Coast of Malaysia to Cherating. Cherating is a beautiful quiet fishing village most notable for serving up fantastic Seafood and attracting surfers during monsoon season. As I had done something to my knee and . . . OOOhhh . . . had a . . bit . . of a bad . . .shoulder!!! (honest) I decided to miss out on doing loop da loops on a surf board and head straight for the seafood! for less than 20 squids! we were served a plate full of crabs in a homemade spicy sauce, a plate full of Tiger Prawns in another homemade spicy sauce and a plate full of deep fried Calamari, washed down with 6 cans of Tiger Beer! not bad (burp)

After Cherating we took a 5 hour bus journey down south to Mersing and a 2 hour ferry journey over to Tioman Island. We were told that the right hand side of Salang Bay was the busiest, so we did one down the left hand side, right to the end of the bay. We stayed at Ella's place and had a sea front beach shack with sunset views for less than 10 quid a night! we had the beach to ourselves most of the time and there was a coral reef just a 100 metres from our door where did some snorkling. . .oh yes, snorkling!! huh hmmmm . . .

My first attempt at snorkling: trying to balance on one foot, whilst trying to put a flipper on, whilst holding onto my other flipper and my goggles, whilst trying to not get knocked over by waves and drink salt water, was the start of my snorlking career! After I finally made it out to any kind of reef I was staring through steamed up goggles whilst snorting and drinking salt water! I thought to myself . . . "Is this s**t supposed to be fun!?" . . . the sea was alive with F'ing and Blinding as I made my way back up to the shore and launced my flippers up the beach! it was only after this I realised my beard was letting the water in . . . I became beardless the next day!! from there it got gradually better and we finished off by going out for the day on a snorkelling trip around a few small islands away from where we were . . . we saw Mr Sea Turtle, a sting wray and Jess saw a . . . SHARK!!!!!! (Jaws theme plays in background)

Jess had swam up to me and said she had grazed her knee on some coral before heading back out into the water, drops of blood drifted off into the darkness . . . alone in the deep blue and queitness of the sea Jess caught glimpse of something but couldn't see it clearly . . . as she went closer to the greyish object, the side of some sort of creature pervailed . . . whilst squinting to gain a closer inspection it slowly turned and Jess was face to face with the beast!!! . . . she looked at it! . . . it looked at her!!! SHARK!!!!! . . . time stopped . . . The only sound was that of an ever increasing heart beat, and maybe a little wind from both parties, before survival instinct took over and Jess sped off . . . I'm not sure which one swam away quicker but Jess was skimming the water by the time she got back to me . . . the size of the beast increased throughout the day as Jess recalled the day she came face to face with a shark 😊

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