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Published: September 7th 2009
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View from the Water
Our little house is behind the big rock in the center of the picture. Tioman Island by May Our 5 days on Tioman consisted of basically the same routine.
• We’d wake up fix tea, toast and cornflakes in our little beach house’s kitchenette.
• Then we’d swim and snorkel for a couple of hours.
• Time to shower and go 2 minutes to the next door beach front, open air restaurant and get a drink (Coke, for me) and a little snack (usually French fries for Ella) and play cards or read.
• We’d sit there about an hour and then miraculously it was lunchtime and we were hungry, so we’d order more food. (omelettes, toasted sandwiches, rice and veggies).
• After lunch maybe we’d walk down to the little store to get more cornflakes or maybe we’d go back to the house to read, write, or rest. Sometimes we’d go swimming again in the afternoon, sometimes it would rain and we’d watch it.
• Then around 6-7, our stomachs would rumble again and we’d head out for more food, same kind of meal as lunch- cheap, but good tourist food.
• The restaurant was always very slow, which was fine, but we wouldn’t get back
to our little house until around 9 and then we’d go to sleep.
Tioman was really laid back. The first morning when I went to rent snorkel equipment, the guy at our Bamboo Hill Chalets desk was asleep on a couch. When I tried to pay for the room, he told me to pay later. The next day, I tried to pay again and the woman at the desk told me just to wait, no worries. We needed a life jacket for snorkeling deep and the lady at the restaurant just gave us one to use, no deposit to pay, no fees. It all made me laid back, some days things were open and some days not, the food in restaurants came eventually but hardly ever all together. Paul would get his omelette and then a little bit later his toast would come. We just relaxed and it was good.
Paul’s Thoughts on Tioman Island Tioman. We went from Melacca across the bottom of Malaysia to an island called Tioman. It's where the old musical South Pacific was filmed. It's about 30 miles off the coast of Malaysia. No cars, no roads. It's an extremely
jungly, mountainous island, a big island. There are 10-15 tourist beaches around the island. We stayed at a relatively undeveloped one. It was quite nice.
Our beach chalet. We had booked a long time ago a little cabin right on the beach. It was lovely. It had 2 rooms (2 double beds), a small suite kitchenette type deal (sink, fridge, hot water pot, toaster), and a bathroom. It was all open - mosquito screens for nighttime, but basically the house opened up totally during the day. The porch looked literally right out on the beach, over the sand and the water. The house was set up in the flowery jungle, but we were 10 steps from the beach.
Cooler weather. The weather was perfect, much cooler on the island than in Melacca or Singapore, which were as hot as Raleigh in August. Here it was much cooler. A couple of times our cold-water shower made us chilly - unheard of in Melacca or Singapore, where you wouldn’t think of not taking a cold water shower (because it was so hot). It pretty much always felt just perfect. We never got too hot, or if we did we just
went swimming. And most of the time there was a cool breeze, or a rain storm coming that cooled things off. The evenings too were just perfect.
Snorkeling. We spent a lot of time swimming. The most incredible thing was the snorkeling. We rented snorkel gear and snorkeled around a point on the island. It was like an underwater video.
The water was so incredibly clear. We'd snorkel over these coral reefs, and they'd be 30 feet down, and it would like it was right under your nose. We saw coral of every color and shape you could imagine, more tropical multicolored fish than you could process, huge long sea cucumbers, long spiny sea anemonae (sp?), and these things that sat on the coral and sort of looked like wiggly mouths (I think they may be called nudibranches, but I’m not sure) - they were unbelievably colorful.
It's hard to believe all the colors. I don't understand how it all (coral, fish, those wormy things) shines so brightly. It's like they're neon, like they're lit from within, like they’re florescent. Some of the fish and some of the wormy things attached to the coral looked like they
were lit up from within, and they shone brilliantly bright purple or bright blue or bright pink.
I would snorkel across it all and think, "Good Lord" and then see something else and think, "Good Lord" and then see something else and think "Good Lord." It was just fascinating.
Relaxing. We also got really, really relaxed. We all liked it. We read, watched the ocean, swam and floated for hours, ate at little tourist beach shacks right on the beach.... One night we had the most incredible sunset I've ever seen.
It really was something. I foresee us spending more time on beaches than we'd planned, especially snorkeling beaches.
Jordan’s 18th birthday. Jordan loved spending her birthday on Tioman. She particularly liked the tropical paradise lifestyle. She said she was as relaxed as she's ever been. She was very happy there. It was a fabulous 18th birthday. We didn't really do anything special, but then we didn't really need to since we were there....
A note about Ella’s school, by May I really like “home schooling” Ella on our trip so far. We’ll see something and talk about it. The most obvious thing is
religion. We heard the Muslim call to prayer at 5:30 in the morning on our first morning in Melacca. It woke us up and so we had a conversation about Islam and the USA and 9-11. The conversation continued as we saw many women with headscarves walking around. The conversation expanded as we visited Chinese and Hindu temples.
As we sat reading on our little couch on Tioman island, looking at the clouds approaching, we talked about weather. Tioman is very mountainous and the darkest clouds couldn’t seem to get over the mountain, their little cloud fingers made it over the top ridge but not until they had dropped their rain on the other side did the clouds lighten enough to drift over to our side. Rain shadow effect, right before us.
We were swimming and we said we wanted a Big Gulp, a big fountain drink at 7-11 (which are everywhere). Paul said, “Gulp is kind of like one of those words that sounds like it is.” I said, “Yeah, onomatopoeia.” Ella didn’t know what onomatopoeia was so we had a fun little lesson. We splashed and honked and buzzed our way through a whole list of
them.
One morning, the electricity went off but our fan kept turning for a while- a little lesson on momentum was born.
I did buy a math workbook and a little calculator just to keep her up on math. It’s a good workbook and actually has most of what we need for 5th grade. She seems to like it.
Sometimes she has questions that I can’t answer, so we keep a list of things that we’re interested in learning more about. So far the list has monitor lizards, coral reefs, the history of clothes and why folks wear what they wear and the science of sunsets.
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Ruland
non-member comment
May, in "homeschooling" Ella, you're doing what I try to do everyday in the classroom - follow the children's interests. How great that you have such a rich environment to surround you all. I can't think of a more perfect "school"! Love hearing of your journeys!