Late island life get up
We were really lazy today, and had a lie in until gone half past 11! When we finally got moving, we headed out for breakfast, or should I say brunch? We found a nearby place where we had a simple meal of noodle soup, on the beach front. Not a terribly bad way to eat brunch I tell you. We were planning on a spot of snorkelling on Tioman Island today, but perhaps a bit later on. We actually asked our hostess, and she told us that now is not a good/popular time of year for snorkelling or diving on the east coast of Malaysia. She also warned us about sand flies on the beach. They’ll nip you and have a similar result as mosquitoes, but they’re in swarms.
As the snorkelling on Tioman Island was not great this time of year, and that’s one of the main attractions of this place, we decided to see if we could leave a day earlier. We popped to the docks where we arrived, but it appeared that no one was home at the moment. For now, we decided to walk to the end of a rocky jetty next to the docks. It was quite a nice day, and we dipped our feet in the cool, refreshing sea water.
Denied
At around half 3, we decided to go back to the docks to see if anyone was there now. They told us to go across the road to the ticket office and ask them instead. So, we nipped across the road, found the ticket office, which was quite obscure, and were firmly told we couldn’t change the date. That was that! With that, we returned to our hostel defeated, and chilled out for an hour or so. After we recovered from our rejection (I’m exaggerating), we headed over the road to the beach. This was our opportunity to try out our snorkels we bought in Thailand.
The snorkels we had were slightly defective to say the least; Mat had more issues than me with his. When all is said and done, we did get to see some pretty awesome corals and fish, right beneath the surface. Some of them were huge, I couldn’t believe they were so big, yet so close to the shore. After we’d had enough of our sub-standard snorkels, we dried off in the sunshine, remaining vigilant of sand flies, then went to the hostel to change.
Check out my boat tour and snorkelling in the Phi Phi Islands.
Once we’d freshened up, we went back to the beach, and ate at a small restaurant shack, overlooking the beach and sea. The food was proper delicious, and I used this opportunity to get rid of loads of shrapnel (spare change). My portion was on the small side, so I decided to have a Mars bar afterwards. Once we had finished eating and chilling here, we returned back to the hostel, and turned in for the night.
