Island Hopping

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Tioman
After our first visit three years ago we were pretty keen to head back to the Perhentians, but not before visiting Tioman Island for a week beforehand. Tioman is situated off the South East coast of Malaysia and we have talked about going there for a while so after flying into KL and staying one night in the city, we woke early to catch a plane straight there. Having read that Tioman airport is in the top 10 of dangerous airports to land in, I (not so much Sam) was a wee little bit nervous during our journey. Before landing the plane is pointing directly at mountains and the pilot needs to do a ninety degree turn to come in line with the air strip. The cherry on top is that the run way has a mountain at its end. So once again, the pilot cannot possibly take it short or deep, instead the plane has to hit the dot on the first attempt. If they don’t get it exactly right they have to take off and try again – fortunately we got it first go, though I don’t think there have been many accidents in the past, still unnerving to say the least.

We stayed in the busiest part of the island Tekek, which of course in island terms was not really all that busy, and as we walked from the airport down the one road toward our accommodation on the beach we were pleased to find a duty free bottle-o just across the road. Loving the cheap beer and would you believe a great range of Aussie wines including my fave Jacobs Creek at the same price it is back home…..go figure, they even stocked Bundy Rum. We rented a room at Babura Sea Resort which was right on the beach but to our disappointment, most of the restaurants were on the main road and not on the beach. We did frequent one funky place on the beach in Tekek called Tioman Cabana, a couple of nights were spent here as it was right on the beach, run by relaxed and friendly lads and at 10pm each night, the bongos and guitar come out for jam time!

We spent the first day getting acquainted with where we were staying and set about lining up our first dive for the holiday with the neighboring dive centre to where we were staying. It was a long weekend so there was no chance of us getting out over the weekend for a dive but on our first full day we booked an island hopping snorkeling trip which took us to Renggis Island, Monkey Bay, Shark Point (no sharkies seen though) and then finally to Saleng Beach for lunch before heading back to our own beach. The vis was good and the marine life a plenty so we were pumped to get in for a scuba. Our first dive was at Renggis Island on the Friday afternoon, the dive was easy and relaxing with a max depth of about 12-13m – nothing really new that we hadn’t seen before but it’s always good to be back under the water.

For the weekend we got around the island, walked over to Ayar Batang Beach which was only a couple of kms away but the heat was killer. Sam looked at us staying there and there seemed to be a lot more going on and one of the quirky beach bars quickly became one of our fave places to hang and eat at – offering relaxed eating/drinking and baking right on the beach, we shared many a pizza here! It was a little more of a backpacker scene on this side of the island so the vibe was good, we even hitched a ride on the back of a locals bike (yes all three of us on one bike – classic) over to this side of the island one night for dinner and drinks and old mate met us at the same place a few hours later to take us home again, we gave him a great tip of course and a drunkin hug from me as well – what a legend.

We set off on a walk one morning to explore the South side of the island and head over to Mukut Beach and have lunch. What should have taken us about half an hour turned into way longer due to a wrong turn and we ended up going Bear Grylls style (wearing thongs I might add) over this rocky, hilly path and lucky for us the tide was out on the other side and I was able to swim across to our destined beach and Sam had to throw our backpack over to me. Im sure if any locals caught sight of where we were we would have provided them with a bit of a laugh. Only afterwards did Sam remind me that the bush we just walked through was home to some of the deadliest snakes in Asia – a good thing to know afterwards. We had a lovely cheap feed of burgers (about $4 for two from memory) laid on the beach and did more snorkeling before catching a boat back to our beach at Tekek.

We only went on one more dive while staying at Tioman, we actually went out for a double dive one morning and we were gutted to find out that the second dive was another drift dive in pretty much the same place so we flagged it. Dissapointed in the dive company we chose as their was no briefing beforehand until we got out on the boat (which is why we didn’t know the second dive was in pretty much the same place) they put together all of our gear which is also not ideal. Regardless that everyone else we dived with including the instructor were Asian, we all speak the same underwater and no one pointed anything out to us, Sam I felt like we were pretty much on our own and its not the way we like to dive – it’s better to feel part of a group and everyone looks out for one another. Another thing that broke my heart was the treatment of a male Trigger fish on that particular dive, for those who don’t know, it was Trigger Fish breeding season and it’s wise to give them a wide birth when you see them for obvious reasons as they have been known to shred skin through wetsuits and even metal and cause some pretty hectic damage if they want to. Both instructors that were with us seemed to be antagonizing the poor thing, one of the guys had a two handed massive underwater camera using it as a shield while the other was poking it with a metal rod they use to get divers attention by tapping it on their tank. It didn’t need have to happen and it seemed to us that they were just showing off to their mates who were diving with us. Karma is a bitch and I’m sure one day that fishy will get his own back.

We got unlucky on our last day, we tried another dive company down the beach and just missed them heading out to Coral Island, oh well – another day was spent chilling on the beach and expectations were high for the underwater delights we knew were on the horizon for the Perhentian Islands take two.

Perhentian Besar
Always a mission to get to but always worth the trouble, we began our journey to Perhentian Besar. Catching a ferry from Tioman to Mersing on the main land, we then hung around a couple of hours to board a bus to Terengganu. The bus trip we were told would only take about 6 hours but due to the million and one toilet and food stops we made it took around 10 hours, argh! We stopped here for the night and enjoyed some KFC (how very Malaysian of us - funny how you can get sick of one type of food after a while) and then caught a cab the next morning to the jetty at Kuala Besut where a boat took us over to our little isalnd paradise for the remainder of our holiday. We decided to only stay on Besar, the larger island as we liked this one the best from the last time we stayed 3 years before and instead of staying right on the beach we booked a bungalow at Coco Hut up on the hill for a stellar view of the ocean and sunsets.

The Perhentians - just how we remembered them to be, and as soon as we stepped off our little boat and onto the shore we were greeted by the crew at Seahorse Divers, the same company we dived with two years before and although they were a diferent crew, they were just as friendly and helpful as the last crew we dived with and that can make or break your experience underwater. All up we did six dives on the Perhentians, we only spent four days and nights there so in between diving and eating/drinking we just lay in the sun or snorkelled in the reef just offshore. You will notice the quality of some of our underwater shots are better than others and this is due to our friendly divemaster who had the same camera as us and taught Sam how to use the 'white balance' mode to correct the colour and get maximun quality pics underwater. I found that I go through too much air when trying to use the damn camera so Sam takes the pics and I am always on the lookout for the good stuff to shoot and my big claim was the massive Mooray Eel I found - the pic doesn't do much justice but he was incredibly large and well hidden amongst the rock formations.

We did the usual jungle trek over to the other side of Besar to Flora Bay and spent a day having lunch and lazing around, it's a nice part of the isalnd but I dont think we would ever stay on this side as there is a little bit more going on where we were and we always seem to have a great crew to dive with at Seahorse divers. The fave sight was of course Tokong Laut (Temple of the Sea) and a temple it is! If you went there everyday it would never fail to excite, it's a favourite dive site of Malaysia and they say it is probably the last frontier of coral reef structure among the islands. Our time on Perhentian Besar was short but to date we still class it as the best diving we have had, next year we are off to Borneo though and Sipadan is in the top 10 sites of the world - Im hoping and praying that I will finally get a glimpse of a seahorse....

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