We traveled down to Singapore for a few days, which we
adored. It is a cool place to be in. The views are stunning, the air feels
fresher and cleaner, and people here were really friendly. On a train looking
for somewhere to stay, an Iranian guy started chatting to us, and rang his wife
to ask if we could stay with them and their family for a few days if we
couldn’t find anywhere else. He was so sweet and chatty, but as we had just
arrived in Singapore, and didn’t want to be naïve, we headed to Aljunied to a
hostel. This was where I had my first experience of the giant cockroaches of
Asia. I was on the toilet in the shared bathroom, when one ran under the door
and started some sort of ceremonial war dance aimed at me. Panicked, I
shrieked a lot, and threw toilet paper at the vulgar creature, which
antagonized him further. Realising that nobody was coming to my rescue, I built
a toilet paper wall between us, then did a giant leap over its head, and ran
out the door, still shrieking as I was convinced it had jumped up my skirt as I
leaped over it. Vile! Needless to say, I spent the next thirty minutes on the
internet researching them, whether they could bite, and how I would know if
they were coming for me. I found out, Southeast Asia is one of the only place
where (giant) cockroaches are actually attracted to the light. This freaked me
out greatly. As cool as Singapore was, we were desperate at this time to get to
a beach, and just chill out in the sun for a while. We’d spent over a month
going from city to city since Interraling in Europe, and were massively excited
for tropical paradise. After hours and hours trailing around the bus companies,
we finally found a bus which went to Tioman Island on the East coast. At 5am
the following morning, we were leaving Singapore, and embarking on the long
journey north. It was on this journey we met ‘Backpacking Dave,’ who became a
great friend of ours, and who we bumped into everywhere in Asia. We met him
whilst we were waiting for the ferry, when the three of us had trouble finding
an ATM machine (Dave’s card was actually swallowed by one, leaving him a bit
stuck at the time).
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| Beautiful Tioman |
We got off the two hour ferry at Air Batang, or ABC for
short, and my jaw literally dropped to the ground. Never before had I seen such
a beautiful place. It literally was a tropical paradise. The three of us
quickly found some cheap wooden bungalows to stay in on the beach, dropped off
our stuff, and dove into the tranquil turquoise waters. It was bliss! We spent
a few hours floating about in the sea, lounging on the hot pale sand, and
chatting, before deciding we were famished, and searching for food. To our
dismay, the majority of the island closes between 2pm and 4pm, so it’s
impossible to get food! We were starving! So we decided to get some beers in
while we waited for the kitchens to open. Interestingly, most of the food here
was western food; burgers, pizzas and sandwiches… and it wasn’t all that good.
Snorkeling on Tioman was amazing, it has such beautiful marine life. We spent about three hours bobbing about in the tropical waters, playing with fish, examining the coral, and personally, not realising I had no suncream on my bum, and burning horrifically. That evening, we had an early night, in readiness for another day of idle
sun-worshipping. The following evening, we stayed up late drinking Tiger beer,
and playing card games with some guys we met, and decided that we would do the
14km mountainous jungle trek the next day, to the opposite side of the island.
Supposedly, there was an even better beach other there, and it was an amazing
surf spot. Later that night, after several games of ring of fire and numerous
Tiger beers, we went to bed, to wake up bright and early the next morning for
our little ‘jaunt’ up a mountain rainforest. Well stocked with water, mozzie
repellent, plasters for our blistered feet, snacks and sun-cream, we began our
ascent. Feeling energetic and full of life (maybe still a bit drunk from the
night before), I raced ahead of Josh and Dave, keen to stretch my legs and
encounter some wildlife. Within about two minutes I had to sit down to put
plasters on my bleeding ankles, pull my socks up after developing a sudden
phobia of leeches, and down most of our water supply. Ten minutes later, I was
sweating profusely and cursing the heat. Twenty minutes later, I was sprawled
out on my back, gasping for air, threatening to turn back, and covered in
mosquito bites – the repellent couldn’t handle the continuous rivers of sweat washing
it away. We eventually came to a little stream, where we all dove in, submerged
ourselves into the luke-warm water, thankful for a reprieve from the
unforgiving heat, and wondering if it was safe to drink the water as we had
finished our supplies quickly – clearly we were not prepared enough for a 14km
trek. In fact, who am I kidding – why on earth did I agree to such a nonsense
idea? I could have been tanning on the beach, sipping a cocktail and watching
the sunset, or something equally idyllic, never mind sweating my ass off
clambering around in a rainforest, up a bloody mountain. I must have had
sunstroke or alcohol related confusion when I agreed to this. After leaving the
stream, we spotted a sign saying “Do NOT enter water, it supplies local
drinking water and must not be contaminated.” Erm, again I blame heatstroke for
this confusion….
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| Sweating my way up the mountain |
So about fifteen minutes passed, when the air became cooler,
and the skies darkened. Initially I decided it was due to us being near the
summit of the mountain, but then I felt a tiny drop of rain. “Guys, I think it’s
starting to rain,” I suggested, quite thankful for the coolness of the water on
my skin. However, within precisely 12 seconds, a monsoon has began. Oh. My.
God. I had never seen so much rain appear so rapidly before in my life. Within
a minute, it was ankle-deep, another minute and we were no longer on a safe
path, but wading through a rapid running stream. Dave, who had a rather
expensive camera in his bag, panicked and wrapped it up with plastic bags and
jumpers. Now, up until this time, I had taken my important personal possessions
with me everywhere. My insurance was invalid if something got lost or stolen
whilst not in my possession, and the hut we were staying in could be broken
into by simply breaking through the thin wooden walls. So I had my camera and
our passports in my rucksack. Luckily, the passports were in a water proof wallet,
in a waterproof money-belt, and my camera was wrapped up in a plastic bag. So
we thought we were safe. As we were at the summit already, we decided to carry
on down the mountain; we were halfway there, we might as well carry on. Now, if
I’d thought going up was hard work, going down was nearly impossible. We were
literally paddling down, trying damn hard not to get knocked down and washed
away, I was even more terrified at the prospect of leeches, and snakes, and
anything else that came out in the rain. It was slippery, the newly formed
streams hid sharp rocks and jagged edges, along with vines that could get your
feet wrapped up and pull you over in an instant. It was horrific. About 40
minutes passed before we found a road, and I have never been happier to see
tarmac in my life. Along the road we saw at least 3 dead snakes, all different
colours, that had drowned. Also, it was impossibly slippery, and crazily
vertical. We pretty much slid all the way down, falling over every few metres,
cursing the rain, and laughing at the sight of ourselves. After what seemed
like an eternity, we reached Juara, the village on the eastern side of the
island.
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| Drying off our money |
The first thing we did was find a café and order hot tea – despite the
humid weather, we were chilled to the core. Typically, the monsoon was over,
the skies were blue, and the sun was shining. Then we assessed the water
damage. Our money was drenched, so we set it out on the table to dry, pinned
down by salt and pepper pots, and various pieces of cutlery, much to the
delight of the staff who seemed to have never seen so much money in their
lives. Thankfully, Dave’s camera, and our own, were fine. However, the
passports were wet too. Josh’s photo was a little smudged, and a few of my visa
stamps were smudged, so we laid them out in the sun too, along with most of the
clothes we were wearing. We headed into the sea – we were already soaked, so
there was no reason not to. The sea was flat, not the surfing haven we had
imagined…. Not that I can surf or anything. We decided it would be ridiculous
to walk back over the mountain, so paid a local guy to drive us back in his
Jeep. That night, I slept better than I ever have.
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| Dave and Josh feeling like two drowned rats |
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| Giant monitor lizard |
We moved on to another part of the island after,
Salang, and I’m sure we were the only three people staying there. It was
similar to ABC, but had more giant monitor lizards. Now, the first time I saw
one of these lizards, I thought it was a Komodo dragon and freaked out. They
are HUGE lizards that eat fruit, monkeys, kittens, probably small children if
they could, and scare the hell out of me. The largest one we saw was getting on
to two metres long, and they can move fast. I’m still a little convinced they
are Komodo dragons, so didn’t get too close to them. In Salang, there was a
river. Well, actually, it was a long body of stagnant dirty water where the
locals put their rubbish, and the giant monitor lizards seemed to enjoy
swimming in this, cunningly disguising themselves as crocodiles. Josh became
fascinated with monkeys, and followed them around everywhere much to my dismay –
I was convinced they had rabies and would attack him, resulting in his untimely
death, and possibly infecting me (I imagined a sort of ’28 Days Later’ theme
going on across the island). We probably stayed on Tioman Island for a few
weeks, then finally decided to move on… back to Kuala Lumpur actually, to the
British Embassy to see what they thought about Josh’s damaged passport. We said
goodbye to Dave, who we had firmly adopted during our stay, not realizing we
would see a lot more of him in the future, and got the bus back to good old KL.
