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Published: September 14th 2007
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Sunset
Pulau Tioman Tues 4th - Crossed the border by bus and then changed buses at the border town of Johor Bharu. Took another bus to Mersing, from where we were to get a boat the next day to a nearby island. Mersing is a quiet town with not much going on, most people don't even stop there the night, so we had the hostel to ourselves.
Wed 5th - Took the boat to Pulau Tioman, a tropical island which was the setting for South Pacific in the 50's and more recently was voted on of the Worlds top 10 islands. On the first evening Neil played football with the locals, 1 Englishman, 1 Dutchman and 2 Aussies against 8 Malaysians, needless to say we beat them thouroughly. The game was cut short so the opposition could man the BBQ for the nights meal.
Thurs 6th - Had a lazy day by the beach and snorkelling amongst the fishes. It was amazing how many we could see so near the shore, pictures of these are on another camera and will be put up when the film gets developed. In the evening we had another BBQ, but the place had run out of
View form our room
Pulau Tioman - not bad for $6 a night beer, so we shared our acquired alcohol, thankfully lightening the load in our bags. Needless to say, after drinking most of the alcohol, we were quite drunk, but we did manage to get ourselves a place to stay in Brisbane. Hopefully the aussies who agreed to this will remember the deal, if not we're just going to show up anyway.
Fri 7th - We returned to Mersing in the afternoon to get our overnight bus up the coast so that we could replace one tropical island with another.
Sat 8th - Arrived at the harbour town early and waited for the boat to take us over to Pulau Perhentian. There are two islands here, one big, the other small, one expensive, the other cheap, one aimed at families, the other aimed at young people. I'm sure you can guess which one we stayed on. Although the problem with cheap accomodation is that it can sometimes be pretty basic. Our room came with a bed and a fan, and thats it. No light or other electricity of any sort. But we got used to it and the only problems came from the frogs hogging the toilet in the night.
The first day there we lazed about on the beach, as you do on tropical islands, and checked out Scuba Diving centres for course prices.
Sun 9th - Booked our Scuba Diving course to start the next day and then had another lazy day on the beach, swimming in water that was so warm it was almost hot. Had BBQ fish for dinner again, which was to become something of a habit here.
Mon 10th - Start of the Scuba Diving course involved the less than exciting prospect of 2 hours of videos and a swimming test. After this the fun started with diving in shallow water at first to practice skills before moving into deeper water and looking at fishes. Including Nemo, who actually does live in an anememoneme, and lots of other colourful sea life.
Tues 11th - Second day of the course started early again with more preactices of skills in shallow water followed by some tests of our theory and another deeper dive in the afternoon. Saw much of the same fish and practiced some more of the skills we'd learnt.
Wed 12th - Last day of the course, we watched 2
Pulau Tioman
Looking back on the area where we stayed more videos, which are great by the way. Then we had our homework checked and afterwards had our final exam. Thankfully we both passed so now all we had to do was 2 final dives before we became certified divers. Our final dives were done on the same afternoon and both went deeper than we'd gone before, but were basically the same, with most of the time spent swimming around looking at fish. All of the skils we'd learnt came quite naturally by the end and we didn't have to think about what we were doing so much. After that was done we had passed and can now dive whenever we like, but only to 18 metres. Celebrated a little with the other member of our group and then Neil played volleyball on the beach.
Thurs 13th - After having a busy few days it was nice to have a rest, our very hectic lives can't seem to cope with more than a few days activity at a time. We had another day lying on the beach as this was our last on the island before heading inland. Final meal of another BBQ on the beach just to stick
to our island based traditions.
Fri 14th - Left Perhentian at midday and got a taxi to Kota Bharu in the Northeast corner of Malaysia, where we're spending one night before venturing off into probably the oldest rainforest in the world.
Next Stop Taman Negara
more soon
Neil and Rosie
xx
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laura
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you buggers, you went diving without me!!!!! so jealous!