8 days Tioman Island (Malaysia) on the way to Sydney

After a few wonderful days in Singapore, we leave on 19.10.2016 for the Malaysian island of Tioman. This was the recommendation of our friend Laura, whom we (with her family) could finally visit in her new home in Singapore through our travels. On this day, Torben's visa application is also confirmed, but Torben decides to go with us to the dream island in the South China Sea! ;-)

This time we don't use the airplane but the bus and ferry. The bus takes us from the Singapore Flyer to Mersing at 6:15 am, where we switch to the ferry. Due to heavy traffic and the lengthy border procedure (including traffic jams), we only catch the 12 o'clock ferry to Genting, where the hotel boat picks us up for the last tour. The bus driver drove like a madman on open roads, so I was exhausted in Mersing. Fortunately, the boys were asleep...

The island is a dream! Except for a short stretch of road in the island's capital Tekek, where there is also a tiny airport (for flights to/from Kuala Lumpur), the island is car-free! In the few towns you might find scooters. There are no 'hotel complexes', but there are great beaches with and without palm trees, where we swim and snorkel in wonderfully warm water. The center of the island is completely covered with rainforest, which we explore a bit along the power lines. It is very mountainous, you could even climb. In the waterfall, which is probably crowded during the season, we bathed quite secludedly and built a dam.

We had a certain risk of rain. There was beautiful lightning in the evenings, as well as the occasional heavy thunderstorm and downpour, but luckily only temporarily. Due to the off-season, there wasn't much going on on the island anymore. Our bungalow complex had about 55 houses. Maybe 3 or 4 of them were occupied, a bit more on weekends.

We were particularly impressed by the underwater world. While snorkeling from our beach, we observed beautiful coral sections with lots of colorful fish, a stingray, and baby sharks (how exciting!). But we also saw trumpetfish and blacktip reef sharks! Of course, the trumpetfish were a bit intimidating, as they grow quite large, swim close to the water surface, and look dangerous with their long mouth. Well, we didn't want to get hit by the stingray's tail either. Or pique the interest of the shark, or the 2-meter-long moray eel (brrr)...
We took a day trip by boat around the island with a few great snorkeling stops, a short hike, and a visit to the turtle station with a geocache (!). The turtles are also endangered here. The station collects the eggs to wait for the hatching period in a protected area. After that, the hatched turtles are released into the water.

Ole enjoyed snorkeling, Mika had some trouble with the saltwater and the snorkel, and I think he was quite impressed by the amount of fish swimming by. He preferred to observe this colorful world from the boat.

Saying goodbye to this paradise was hard for us!
And the journey home was extremely long, as the bridge to and from the Malaysian-Singaporean border crossing was extremely congested and the queues for immigration were very long. We arrived in Singapore much later than expected, feeling quite tired.

No further visa is ready, so where to now? To New Zealand!!