Malaysia - Tioman Island

After our time in Singapore we headed over to Tioman Island, Malaysia.  Tioman is a small island that is mostly jungle.  There are no paved roads on the island (except for the one that led from the airport to our resort), most people go from place to place on the island by boat.  We went in December, which is monsoon season, so it was quiet.  Most of the restaurants were shut down for the season and there was just not a lot going on.

To get there we rode a bus for five hours (a bus that had once been for smokers, was torn up and nasty=looong bus ride) followed by a ridiculous ferry ride.  The ferry ride was 1.5 hours long which was about 1.25 hours too long.  The seas were so choppy that several people around us were throwing up for the second half of the trip.  Most of them had sick bags, but not all.  It was lovely...clearly we were quite pleased to get off the boat.
*The bus took us to Mersing, the port town in Malaysia that the ferry left from.  Unfortunately, we were too late for the ferry so we had to spend the night there.

Here are a few pics from Mersing.  I love the little plastic bags/handles that we were given for our drinks!   And, some generic Oreos.  (Not very tasty...)

 This is the canal behind our hotel.  Many locals made their living fishing.

This is the bathroom in our hotel room.  I took the picture to show the all in one room - shower, sink, toilet.  There is not tub or shower bay - you just get everything all wet when you shower.  Our hostel bathroom was the same way.  The nice part is always having a clean floor, but the damp toilet paper kind of stinks.

The pool at the hotel on Tioman Island.

We made it to the island, got to the hotel, and the kids went immediately to the pool.  It was a great pool with a water slide, but not heated.  The water was so cold!

When the kids were not in the pool, they were at the beach.  The water in the ocean (South China Sea) was much warmer!  Here are some pictures of the beach and some of the amazing rocks, shells, and coral we saw there.

The resort had some resident monkeys that would hang around at the restaurant that sat beside the pool.  They would watch for people to leave their plates and then the monkeys would go snatch crumbs and left behind fruit rinds.  If there was no food available they would steal the sugar packets from the tables.

                                         

 There were also lizards.

 

There was a little restaurant outside the  gates of the restort. It was run by local guys and the food was great.  A plate of pepper chicken would cost 7.00 Malaysian Ringits, which is less than $3 US.

There is a very large Islamic population in Southeast Asia.  Because of that there was a sign on the ceiling in each room pointing toward Mecca.  People of Islamic faith pray five times a day and must pray facing Mecca.


It was after one full day on the island that Lily became sick, so we didn't do much.  While she slept in the room we'd take turns hanging out with Jaxon at the pool or the beach.  He was so sweet, very worried about his sister the whole time.  He was even quiet while she slept.  That is an accomplishment for him!

At the end of our time on the island we opted to fly to Kuala Lumpur rather than repeating the awful ferry/bus trip.  The airport on the island was more of a little shack with a landing strip. Good enough for us - we were just happy that flying was an option.  Next stop, KL.