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Published: September 25th 2008
Greetings all - we're just back in Mersing after nine sun soaked days of snorkelling and swimming on Palau Tiomon. We stayed in an area called Salang which was basically one long strip with about 5 restaurants, 5 dive shops, 2 shops and a bar. We stayed in a wee hut with balcony again and were happy out! By the end of our spell there we felt like locals having eaten in every place several times and hanging out in the one and only bar at night...met a lot of cool people there too including one woman who has been travelling for 14 years....an inspiration to us all although the thoughts of living out of a rucksack for that long does make me shiver.
The beach here was the nicest, if the smallest, we've been on. The water was absolutely crystal clear and there were thousands of tropical fish all about - most days we rented snorkels and the sights of the fish and coral were amazing. We were tempted to go diving as the snorkelling was so good but it's time to start thinking about conserving the cash so we snorkelled instead...amazing. The one down side of the beach
was the sand flies - apparantley, as well as sucking your blood, the little scamps also poo in your pores so when you scratch it spreads and causes scarring. Needless to say my legs were the most popular port-a-loo going.
The island also has a stinky river teeming with monitor lizards - they are prehistoric looking reptiles, pretty ugly but also a thrill to see them. There were also some very cheeky monkeys who would roam the beach stealing people's biscuits and crisps. One day, at the crack of noon, we were woken by a band of such furry creatures who had decided to raid the bin of the hut next door. Hilarious watching them munching away....Monkey may like bananas but he also loves MSG. There was ne'er a dog on the island but hundreds of cats, most of whom appeared to be pregnant. Why were there not thousands of cats? The monitor lizards have a taste for felines (just like Alf!) .....ah the circle of life.
Now we are back in Mersing for one night only. We intended to head to Singapore tomorrow as our flight to Australia is from there on Monday however we forgot all
about the Formula 1 and now prices and availability for hostels are making it difficult to find somewhere. Instead we are heading to Johor Bahru here in Malaysia which is only half an hour by bus from Singapore and we will commute in and out to see the sights. (very excited about the Singapore zoo). We'll stay in Singapore Sunday night then and off early for our flight to OZ. We'll be very sad to leave SE Asia - we have loved it so much and every country offered us something different. Hope we'll be able to get our rice fix in Oz......
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Sinead Burke
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hi chick i sent you an email to smellywagon with the website www.wwoof.com.au. If you finding it difficult to find a place to stay this website is targeted at people who want to work in oz basically you volunteer to work with animals on the farm and in return receive free bord and food... may get you out of a hole. Anyway keep up the bloggs i'm loving them. Miss you millions. Sinead xxx