Today we head for Tioman Island, on the South East coast of Malaysia, to dive. It begins with a 7 hour overnight bus journey to Mersing, and then a early morning speedboat (1hr) to the island itself. The great benefit of overnight travel is arriving first thing in the morning - especially when you've been too lazy to sort out accommodation. I've been spoiled for lodging in SE Asia so far, as there always appears to be an abundance of rooms. Tioman was different, mainly because of the happy coincidence of Singaporean and Malaysian school holidays. Dammit.
We walked from Tekek jetty to meet Jeff and Michelle from Eco Divers, which was the one thing that I had been bothered to organize prior to arrival. They helped sort out accommodation for us, although we had to move chalets after the first day. A mistake not to be made again on my part.
After checking in, and a fantastic banana milkshake breakfast, we headed back to see Jeff for our first lessons. PADI have produced a 4 day course for certification in Open Water Diving, which involves watching what is arguably the most insulting, patronizing, boring yet strangely droll video that modern cinema has produced since the ACME's annual corporate morale booster video. We endured the video over 2 days, and answered theory questions based on it and the text book given. Wow, so air volume gets smaller under water. Now I know.
Lunch, then the first dive. Saddle up with 25 kilos of gear, and walk to the beach. Owww.... rocks on bare feet. A spooky feeling initially, as you sink
beneath the waves and continue to breathe normally. Then some exercises to help acclimatize to the new environment.
After messing around at the beach for an hour, we finished for the day, and went home to assemble Raw's newly procured Sky Warrior radio controlled airplane with much anticipation. It failed to deliver. Not even gliding could be achieved. Disappointment, and a crash landing into the sea. The Sky Warrior was no more.
Raw and I then headed out for a jog to the next town along, Air Batang. Tioman has one road, joining the tiny airport to the posh resort 2 or 3km down the road. The locals get about using boats. This came as a shock to us, there was no point hiring motorbikes, and we had to stay local to the dive shop, as the walk between villages was 30+minutes. Tioman was therefore difficult to capture on film, as it is simply a rainforest with a few village beachhuts on some corners by the half dozen jettys. A surprising lack of tourist development, even given that people have been coming here since the 70's, and it has been made a duty free (hic) island.
- posted by Daniel @ Friday, June 04, 2004