Pulau Tioman

Trip Start Apr 20, 2008
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29
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Malaysia  ,
Friday, June 27, 2008

Pulau Tioman is a beatiful island. We are staying in Salang, a Kampung (village) in the north of the island. There are no roads where we are, so walking around is nice and peaceful! The village is built along the edge of a bay with a lovely, white sand beach and palm trees all the way along. There are a few groups of chalets and restaurants and even the occasional bar (Tioman is another duty-free island!) but it is still very much a tropical island and so much less built up than Koh Tao or Langkawi. Although it is fairly touristy this part seems to have managed to maintain some of its pre-tourist self, many of the people visiting are from Singapore or Malaysia anyway, so local food and food stalls are easy to find. Much better than fish and chips and pizza hut everywhere! The island is a designated marine park, so the reefs are protected from boat traffic and fishing etc is controlled. As a result there is some absolutely amazing wildlife!!

We have spent a lot of time snorkelling over a reef not far out from the main beach. The coral is in pretty good condition and fish are everywhere (they seem to have taken a liking to nibbling at my toes...a rather strange feeling!). We have so far seem more black-tip reef sharks, a cuttlefish (that was trying to hide from us and kept changing colour - amazing to see it change so quickly and so dramatically!) and 4 lump-head wrasse (that were HUGE! Probably a meter long and about the same in height and width as well! And in such shallow water that we could stand up where they were swimming!). One of the massive highlights for us was when we were swimmning along and saw something big not far away. It turned out to be a huge and very graceful green turtle! It was amazing, it swam along quite happily eating seaweed and didn't seem to mind us being there.

A couple of days later there was a bit of a storm, so the sea was a biy too murky to snorkle in. We decided to go for a walk through the rainforest to a small beach, which you could only reach by walking to it. We were walking along quite happily (well, as happily as you can be in 32 degrees heat, 80% humidity and up a very, very steep slope!), when we walked past a tree right next to the path and saw a huge (at least 4 metres and thicker than your arm) and very beautiful python (Python cf. reticulatus) coming out of a hole beneath the tree!! It came all the way out and then stopped and stared at us, at which point we took a couple of steps back (just in case - it was newly moulted and looked like it hadn't eaten for a while). After a couple of minutes it had decided we weren't worth the effort (or weren't tasty enough) and so it turned round and went slowly back in its burrow. It took ages for it to get all the way in as it was so long! Luckily we managed to get a couple of pictures before it disappeared, although we didn't want to get too close!

Anyway, after all that excitement we happily continued on our way, talking about what an amazing thing it was to have seen, when we turned round a bend in the path and nearly had a heart attack as there was a six-foot (at least!) monitor lizard stood blocking our path! Eventually we plucked up the courage to inch passed it (while armed with big sticks!) as it stood there completely ignoring us. It was a very nerve-wracking walk!

The other wildlife of note were some huge fruit bats that flew around every evening. They were about the size of seagulls and came really quite close before flying up into the trees.

It was an amazing place and we were sad to leave after a week, but we only have one week to go before we fly to Autralia and there are some other places we want to visit before then. If you get the chance, DEFINITLEY go to Tioman. Just watch out for the python...
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