Day 146 – Tioman Island, Malaysia

July 2nd, 2019

Today we slept in before going out to explore.  I had a bad headache when I woke up because I hadn’t had any caffeine in a couple days.  There was an electric kettle in the room. I asked Brendan to boil some water for coffee as we had some instant coffee packs.  Unfortunately, the only power outlet in the room was above the headboard of my bed.  The kettle had a really short cord and I had to hold the kettle above my head (while sitting on the bed) waiting for it to boil. 

They don’t have hostels on this island, but they have a lot of ‘Chalets”.  To me a chalet sounds really nice and cozy. That’s not exactly the vibe these chalets have.  Brendan called it a shit-lay.  It really wasn’t that bad especially for $24 a night and it’s always great when we have a private room and bathroom.  The bathroom had a regular toilet which I was happy about but no toilet paper…  there was a hose, however.  I was really wishing I had scoped out the situation before I sat down.  I do keep a roll of TP in my backpack for these types of situations, but I guess, we live and learn.  I realized later the room did come stocked with toilet paper; it was just OUTSIDE of the bathroom on a little desk, next to the electric kettle and the coffee packs…interesting spot for it. 

Once my headache mellowed, we set out to explore and plan our time on Tioman. We stayed the first night in the main part of town close to the ferry terminal.  There were several booths that offered snorkel excursion and water taxis to the different areas on the island.  There were also several dive shops which we went to and found the best deal to scuba dive tomorrow.  We found a place for $23 per dive which included everything and a guide who was going to dive with us.  We also found a good deal on a scooter that we were going to rent for two days after our dives, and drive to the other side of the island.  The 2-day scooter rental was cheaper than a taxi to get to the other side ($24 total).  The only concern was the road to get there was supposedly ‘steep and hairy’ according to some blog posts I read.  The guy at our chalet’s reception desk said it was too dangerous to take the scooter on that road.  Another local said you need to be ‘a very experienced driver’.   More scooter rental places said they don’t have ones powerful enough to do that road.  We found a guy who would rent us one, and said “oh it’s no problem, you will be fine”.  We told him we would think about it and come back a little later if we wanted to rent it tomorrow. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking to the end of town and seeing the beaches.  When we got to the end of the road and were going to turn around, a local told us we could keep going through the jungle and get to the next beach.  He pointed us in the direction and our trail became this:

I was totally unprepared for a jungle trek as I was in my flip flops and left without putting on sunscreen or bug repellent.  We really weren’t prepared for the day in general, but we had already walked so far from our chalet we didn’t want to turn back.  We did come to a nice area with some finer looking chalets on the beach. 

The next local told us if we wanted to keep hiking, the next place was another two hours.  We knew we were totally unprepared for that, so we turned around and went back to the main part of town for some lunch. 

Although this is considered a tourist island, it still feels pretty underdeveloped to me.  We supposedly walked to the tourist area with the nice beaches, but I barely saw anyone out and about.  We mostly just saw locals zipping around on scooters.  I don’t really know if I would want it any less tourist-like because as it is dining options in the main part of town are places that look like this:

We filled a water bottle at a place and the lady asked where we were from. She was like, “Oh!  We don’t get many Americans here, but the ones we do are always from Oregon”.  She said: “People from Oregon must have a good nose to come to the best places,” which I thought was cute. 

We stopped back by the scooter rental place and told the guy we would like to rent it for two days, starting tomorrow, when we get back from our dives.  He said, “you can just take the scooter now for the same price”.  We thought his generosity to give us an extra day for free was great and said we would be right back. We needed to get more money from our room.  He gave us the key and said just take it now!  Just like that, he gave us the bike without so much as getting our name.  We rode it to the chalet, got the money and drove back to give it to him.  He took it, and still didn’t have us fill out anything or give him any info.  No helmets, and he said we will be fine on that road as he gave us the ‘more powerful’ scooter.  When I asked him where a gas station was for when we needed gas.  He said, “oh you can just buy petrol anywhere”.  I thought in my head ‘ok, note to self – ask next person where gas station is because I don’t remember seeing one’.  Later on, I realized it was because they sell their fuel like this:

You really can buy it anywhere!

Inadvertently, we had spent the whole day walking around without any sunscreen!  Brendan was fried!  It only takes about 6-minutes on the scooter to get from one end of the road to the other in town.  We rode that strip a few times and then stopped at a beach for the sunset.  Looking forward to diving a new place tomorrow and heading to the island’s east side for a couple of nights.  So far, we both really like the laid-back vibe on this island!  No one is pushy with sales and all the locals seem exceedingly friendly.