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Beautiful Juara beach
This was the even quieter part of the beach around the headlandI never thought the words "too many school holidays" would come out of my mouth and in that precise order. Indeed, being a teacher, I LOVE school holidays back home. When I am travelling, though, I can appreciate how everyone else in the world apart from teachers and students really HATE school holidays - everything is booked out from transport to accommodation, and when you finally do arrive in a place, it is packed to the rafters with families toting along dozens of crying kids!
As you have probably guessed by now, it is currently the school holidays in Malaysia. Since leaving the Perhentians, we managed to get back to Kuala Lumpur to pick up my new British passport. I went for a bumper 48 page one this time to avoid running out of pages yet again This is my third brand new passport in just 8 months thanks to the stamp-happy border officials in Africa! It's getting expensive!
Our next port of call was Pulau Tioman. The last time I was here was at the very beginning of my trip with my parents. We stayed at a different beach but did a snorkel trip which went to Juara
Juara Beach
Again, the quieter part. Beach. It was gorgeous, so I decided that this was where we should be. It was easy getting to the island. The bus left without having to pre-book it, and the boat worked out OK too. The only problem we had was, ironically, once we arrived on the island. Most of the beaches are strung out on the western side of Tioman and the ferry drops you off wherever you like. The only exception to this is Juara Beach. Being on the remote eastern side of the island, the reguar boat doesn't make a stop here. The only real way to get to this beach is to take a 4WD over the steep mountainous interior. Seems simple until you hear the cost - $40 for the half-hour trip. Being totally outrageous, we decided to wait it out until another boat arrived to see if we could find people to share with. Two more boats arrived and still no-one wanted to go to Juara. Another complication was that we were told they were doing roadworks, meaning we'd have to get a ride half way up and then take our bags and walk a short distance past the works and get picked
up by a waiting driver on the other side. Sounded a bit dodgy - what if there was no other driver waiting? We'd be stranded in the middle of the jungle with no way of getting out apart from walking with our backpacks - not an attractive option!
In the end, our taxi-driver "friend" zoomed back by us on his motorbike to give us an update on our predicament. "I have good news! They are not doing road works today so one car will do! No exchanges needed!" he exclaimed. He found a friend of his who was going anyway and offered to take us, but still for an outrageous 120RM. We managed to get him down to 90RM, still way overpriced but we just wanted to get going. We'd been sitting in a hot ugly cafe for almost 2 hours, nursing a cup of now-cold coffee and a can of now-warm coke.
The trip over the interior was an event in itself. The roads were impossibly steep and the abandoned road works didn't help matters as they left big steps which were difficult even for a 4WD. At one point, he had to stop the car and
This is the less quiet beach of Juara, but it's still pretty quiet!
We later realized why the beaches here were so quiet - sandflies, lots of them, and they bite like crazy! get out to ram a stone under the wheels to stop us from rolling backwards. He then proceeded to arrange some wooden planks on the step to make it easier to proceed. Finally we bumped down to the beach and he dropped us off at Rainbow Chalets. I guess it is all good training for us for the Indian Himalayas next month - I am sure they will make crossing Tioman look like childsplay!
I instantly fell in love with the first green, yellow and pink painted hut we were shown right on the beach. We checked in and instantly fell asleep for several hours. Waking up at 3:30pm, we decided to drag ourselves up and do something. We went down to the beach and sat reading for a while. It was very apparent that, despite the holidays, there was virtually no-one staying on this beach. Or, if there were, they didn't seem to want to lay out on the beach as it was completely deserted - very odd for a beach resort with little else to do! Within minutes, we realized what was going on - sandflies! The little black and white things were everywhere and they had
ferocious bites. It was like one of those B-rate movies where the main character has had itch powder thrown over them. We couldn't sit still for swatting them off us and in the end decided to give up and go snorkelling instead. This turned out to be fun as we spotted several blue-spotted sting rays and four cuttlefish.
That night we decided to grab a sunset beer. We set off down the gorgeous beach (gorgeous apart from the dirty great concrete pier that the government of Malaysia insists all beaches need!) to find an atmospheric bar. It was like a ghost town! In the end, we ended up in the restaurant next to our hut with a total of three other people. But at least Tioman has duty-free beer - hooray!
The next morning we set out across the rocky headland to check out the other (even quieter) part of Juara Beach. I have to say it was gorgeous and I took way too many photos. There was no pier (hooray!) and the long sandy beach was backed with lush vegetation rising up into the mountains. It also had a pink-flowered ivy plant growing on it, making it
even more photogenic. There was virtually no development, just a few local homes and a handful of tourist huts which were deserted. We walked the whole beach and went for a couple of cool-down swims and saw no-one the whole time. Later, we went for a long swim (1 1/2 hours) along this beach and again saw no-one for most of the time. If you are looking for seclusion, this is your place!
That night our beach seemed to experience a bit of an influx - three other huts in our complex got taken and the restaurant had at least 16 people in it, possibly some kind of record! We actually preferred it with a few more people as complete seclusion with no access to internet makes you worry that there has been a world-wide apocalypse or something and you are the only two people left - a scary thought, no offence Scott!
Still, the sandflies were a complete pain. What's the point in being on a gorgeous beach when you can't, well, go on the beach?!! We decided to leave the next morning and make our way up the coast to Pulau Kapas. Here's where the school
holiday problems started.
We arrived on the mainland at 10am having nearly killed ourselves to get up for the first boat, and saw on the bus schedule that the next bus was at 11am - hooray! Plenty of time to get breakfast but without too much waiting around time..or so we hoped. We tried to buy a ticket and were told that all buses were booked out until noon the next day! The long and short of it is that we are stuck in a boring one-horse town for the next 26 hours just killing time, hence the long blog! The second blow came when we decided that, given the bus situation, we had better call ahead to book some accommodation, something that is usually not really a consideration for us - just turning up is sooo much easier! We called everywhere in Lonely Planet and most were either full or didn't answer. The place we really wanted to stay, KBC, was completely booked up, but they made us a reservation for two nights in their sister resort. However, they couldn't even get us in there on our first night so we have ended up reserving a room for
Sunrise from our balcony on Juara beach
No, it's not a typo, it really was sunrise. I just happened to wake up at 6am and there it was - just had to grab the camera and run out! one night in a resort on a "remote castaway beach" which could either be great or terrible (we can't decide!) and then we'll move. Crazy! Whatever happened to being able to travel carefree, making decisions on the spur of the moment as you go along? I guess I can see now why the rest of the world (teachers and students aside) really hate school holidays!!!
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