Sun, Sea and Snorkelling

  Pulau Tioman, Pahang, Malaysia
Saturday, October 10, 2009

10th October 2009

Lynne......

Wow finally some relaxation.  We got the early ferry over to the island and found a great bungalow with a small balcony and own bathroom.
 We had a mass of washing to do, so spent a few hours hand washing all our grubby city clothes and hanging them up outside in the sun.  We then went for a walk to get our barrings and had some lunch, as we arrived back at our room there was a russelling in the bushes to the right of our bungalow and 5 monkeys came dashing out ..(funny how they always find Gary!!)  when we went over to investigate we realised that this was all jungle as far as we could see and the longer we looked the more monkeys and other wild life we could spot.
We saw a 6ft monitor lizard walk across our path and into the jungle, there was another one round the back of our bungalow but that was only 3ft.  Most countries have wild dogs these guys have wild lizards!!!

We found a great bar that is right on the waters edge where we watched the sun set....very romantic.  It played reggae music into the night

Went to the beach and Gary finally got to have his snorkel.  The water is really warm and very clear, our sunbathing was cut short as a black cloud came over followed by a sand storm which lasted for about half an hour before the sun came out again as if nothing had happened.

Sorry no photos the internet connection is really slow and keeps freezing when the pictures are loaded on. 

19th October 2009

Lynne.....

Hi guys yes we in the land of the living, as I said we wouldn't be updating the blog for a while as the internet connection was really slow and expensive.
We have now left the island which is really sad, we spent 10 days but could have spent another 10 it was so lovely there.
I have some stuff to tell you, like the Magic frog, Gary watching football with our a beer, I was chased by a Monkey and the day the Navy arrived.
But first let me tell you about how wonderful this Island is, we got ourselves in a bit of a route en of a swim and snorkel in the morning, breakfast of fruit salad and sunbath in the afternoon.  The weather is hot during the day and cool at night which is fantastic and gives you lots of time to chill in the evening breeze.

The part of the island we stayed on has mainly backpackers so everyone is chatty, and when you walk down the path everyone says high and you recognise faces.  The locals are great to such nice people, alway helpful never out for what they can get.

Our room was great really spacious and had it's own bathroom complete with a frog.   Now this frog drove us mad as there was no way for it to get in to the bathroom.  The drain was covered there was no windows or gaps for this frog to get in to ....yet....everynight when we came back from dinner there he was.....little sod!  The only way he could have come in would be to crawl under the front door,  across the room, under the bathroom door and sit there waiting for us to just throw him out again!!!  His final magic act was to appear from inside Gary's boot as he was about to put them on this morning.

As I said before we had a family of monkeys that came the same time every evening, one evening one of the monkeys (the big one) got braver and came right in to the garden and up our mango tree.  Fantastic a close up monkey shot.......only to have him run back down the tree and chase me out the garden.....don't like monkeys any more :0(

Saturday we had a slap up meal at the sunset restaurant and then went over to have a chill in the cool night air of the sunset bar....but as luck would have it the Chelsea game was on (which they lost) and then Jackpot the Man U game followed live (which we won!!!) and Gary watched all of this with only a bottle of water......some would say impossible....but it happened (am I not allowed to mention beach balls to the Liverpool supporters).

And finally we had a massive storm, thunder that shook the room ....never heard one like it before anyways we woke up in the morning to 17 Navy ships in our bay, they had been on maneuvers and had come to shelter because of the storm...very unexpected we thought we was at war!!

So we had a few drinks last night with our new best friends (Sparky and Helen) before getting up at 6 am this morning and getting the early ferry to Mersing.  As luck would have it the bus to Kuantan left an hour later.  This is a big but quiet town about three hours away up the east coast.  We will be staying here a night before moving on to Cherating a beach town.

Hope you like the photos.