Well Tioman Island is a beautiful Malaysian Island where we snorkelled around coral reefs with load of tropical fish and had a marvelous time for two days with accommodation right on the beach and the company of our friends the Murrays - Nick, Andrea, Hannah and Alexander. The highlight was when Matt spotted a a sea turtle whilst snorkelling and was able to alert Alice, Felicity and I. We swam over quickly and were able to swim with the turtle for quite a while. Amazing!
A beautiful beach, great friends and one really shouldn't complain about a tropical island getaway but...it would have been quicker to get to England. We had a fun two day, three nights with the Murray family on Tioman however considering it took 12 hours of travel to get there and 12 hours to get back we won't be heading back there really soon.
How to get to Tioman Island from Singapore without a car
The bus ride to Malaysia leaves at 6.30am meaning you have to get up at 5am in the morning. Getting through customs is a little slow (public holiday weekend) and particularly because there is bound to be one family on your bus that seem to dawdle and everyone has to wait for them. They are, of course, the same family that has the bus stop halfway for a toilet break. Then you arrive at Mersing Port at around 11am for a 2pm ferry which doesn't leave until 3pm and no one tells you when it's leaving and everyone waits in a hot waiting area with seats that are falling apart. When eventually the boat arrives you are all still left waiting while the boatmen seem to hang around doing nothing on the jetty which is quite annoying after you've waited in the heat for 1.5 hours. Eventually they open the gate and everyone just crams onto the boat in an amazing disorganised and unsafe fashion.
There are several jetties on Tioman but there's very little instructions given on which one you get out at and which resorts are located close to that jetty. The man on the ferry yells out the jetty name but they all sound the same. Eventually you get off at one that sounds like its possibly right but there are no signs on the jetty telling you where to go for your hotel. You walk a down the jetty and choose to cross a bridge and just as well you did go that way because there is a bus waiting for you and for everyone else going to the resort. You cram onto the bus with lots of others and feel sorry for the man who couldn't fit on. Hope they went back to get him later that day. But you only feel sorry for him for a little bit because your speeding bus nearly tips over as it goes around the corner - must have even scared the bus driver because after that it slowed down for a little bit.
You arrive at the resort. The holiday is about to begin until you realise the accommodation is booked for 8 people but only has 6 beds. The hotel assures you that you are a party of 6 even though you have the email that says you are a party of 8. Two fold out beds are set up. All is good. The holiday begins..lots of fun, playing in the pool, at the beach, snorkelling day trips (although on the day trip you are told to go down to a jetty and your guide would already be waiting there..but of course he isn't. Matt, ever-so-calm, tells me don't worry we're on Malaysian time, he'll show - which he does but not with promised "boat with a toilet", flippers or bottled water but fortunately we make do.)
During our final night meal Alice and I started feeling unwell and headed back to the cabin to vomit simultaneously into the toilet. We kept meeting up there on the hour for about four hours - which would have been kind of cute if it wasn't so awful. Our friends next door also had vomit incidents throughout the night which continued into their journey home as they left remainders of last nights dinner on the jetty and the ferry.
Your trip home begins..You have to take an early ferry as you have a 3.30pm bus to catch. You have tickets booked on the 10am ferry. The hotel has of course stuffed up your payments, billing everything to your friends. So as you sort that out (because you wish to remain friends) the bus from the hotel heads off to the jetty without you. You eventually get to the jetty but are last in the queue to get a boarding pass so two ferries come and go and there's no room for your family. You catch a ferry at about 12.40pm. Feel lucky to be on the boat as you stop pass another jetty and let 10 people on but leave the other 30 waiting for hopefully another ferry some time in the future. You arrive in time for the 3.30pm bus which actually ends up leaving at 4pm (of course). The rest of the trip goes reasonably smoothly and you get back home by 8pm. Alice only vomits once on the trip and Matt catches most of it in a plastic bag.
The journey could have been worse I suppose. The Murrays, who were on a later ferry, got stranded on a sandbank and endured the most chaotic rescue of all time....
Yep next time we go somewhere else.
Alice turned 10. Yes double figures!! So we celebrated with a sleepover and invited all the girls in the class. One was in Australia so couldn't be there, one could only come for dinner so that left four to sleep over. We had pizzas by the pool, did a big treasure hunt / mystery clue game around the condo, watched a movie and then everyone went to bed. In the morning (which began at 5.45am) it was pancakes and dance central and fashion shows and another swim before they all got picked up. I think it all went very well, they are a nice group of girls and Alice had a great time although looked very tired on Sunday. If she wasn't tired enough , we took her and Felicity out in the afternoon to the HP family day at Chinese Gardens where there were carnival games and contests and inflatable obstacles courses etc..Matt and the girls participated in a team sack race/activities course and although Matt managed to catch up a lot of lost ground by passing two other teams, he was narrowly beaten to the finish line. The girls loved the climbing wall and Alice was very successful not getting bucked off the bucking bull. She earned a cheer from the watching crowd. 
