Tioman Island

Tioman Island is located on the north east of Batu Pahat, the city where we live. It's not the most beautiful island in Malaysia, but its boat ride is very short, ie. around 2 hours, so we thought it's a good place for us to introduce an island to our 4-year old boy without too much stress as we do not know if he would have any seasick.





We started out early in the morning and stopped by at Kluang Rail Coffee to have breakfast. Than we continue our journey on the windy and hilly road to reach Mersing port after 3 hours.

We were very lucky as the boat was on time, sometimes it can be late by an hour !! We were also lucky as the beach we are heading to was the first stop with the majority of passengers, otherwise we could have spent more time on the boat ride by dropping other passengers to other beaches first.




It was a sunny day and the water looks very clear and beautiful.





Checking in to our room, in Salang Sayang Beach Resort. The room with double beds is better than the room with single bed as its bathroom is much bigger.



The beach is small but it's not crowded in early August.




I had fun going snorkeling although it was cloudy and the wave was bigger on the second day.



There was a monkey who kept plugging fresh coconut from the trees and looking for food at the beach.



I was glad that Tristan enjoyed himself very much at the beach although he was too timid to try and float in the water.



The evening was serene and relaxing, we had a fun trip ....



Until the bad experience in the boat ride back to Mersing port - the boat was late and the crowd waited anxiously for mre than half an hour, than it finally arrived and we thought wow, this is a new and big boat ! But than it started to pick up other passengers from other beaches, one by one, and at the last beach, it waited for passengers to arrived for another half an hour, than we realized that it was overloaded, many passengers had to stand in the aisle, and when it almost reaching the port, it started to rain and the boat was stuck due to low tide which in fact was due to overloading, than some passengers at the back were told to move to the middle of the boat to elevate the weight at the rear and the captain kept trying desperately to move the boat forward, which it finally gave up after 45 minutes !!! Than 2 smaller boats were called to unload some passengers and the boat than started to crawl like a tortoise back to the port, where the boat ride has become almost 5 hours ....... and there's still a minor thing, someone has stolen my husband's toiletry ...

It was really a bad ending and experience to this trip, but our friend who visited Tioman twice a year in the past few years had never experience this type of delay before, the common incidence is a transfer from smaller to bigger boat during low tide when departs from Mersing port or vice versa, but not in such a long delay.