Tioman

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December 16th 2006

Published: December 16th 2006

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criz

attack of the jellyfish

After arriving in Kuala Lumpur (KL) and realising why I don't like big cities, people only want your money, not being friendly if there isn't anything to gain. Ok, KL is probably one of the better cities, but compared to a small resort on an island I would always chose the island.

Three days we stayed, doing some shopping (I bought the best diving-fins in the world, spending way to much money though) eating and checking out the Batu Caves we decided it was time to move on.

A bus to the eastcoast and the next morning on a ferry to Tioman. It is an island which has been in movies and in the 70ies was on the 10 best islands in the world list. We did arrive in the monsun season so a lot of places were closed. The first five night we stayed in a place called Nipah, only accessable to by boat and it was very relaxing. You could not do anything else than relax, no options. So it was reading, sleeping, eating and a bit of snorkelling. We had a chalet at the beach and during nightime the tide went up under the chalet.

sapi

After five days we wanted to see some other people and went to the bigger ABC, a village on the northwest coast. It was mainly shut but we managed to find a cheap chalet. A nasty cheap chalet we realised during the night. The smell of mould was intense, the toilet leeked and the water from the shower was brown. So we moved the next morning to a new place, becoming neighbours to two German travellers. The next couple of days it was back to beachlife, doing a fair bit of snorkelling (I saw a huge barracuda), eating and sleeping. We also managed two walks south on the only road on the island to the biggest village called Tekek. That's the place they had the internet and tax-free shops.

I had my first encouter with a wild python one evening when we were called by the restaurant owner "you want to see the BIG snake?". On a bridge 20 meters away there was the snake. After seeing all the fuss it made it slided down into the water. The same water that was behind our chalet and the restaurant. They said it was big enough to eat a human.