Tioman Day 4

6/20/2011

So, our last full day on Tioman.  Already.  Wow.

Anyway, as briefly mentioned previously, we decided to charter a snorkeling trip for our last day.  The boat would leave at 9:30am, so we were able to have a relatively lazy morning, especially since our boat was about 30 minutes late in leaving.  Since we didn't know that ahead of time, we were ready to go at 9:30am, but that's alright.  Breakfast was banana crepes, which were good, but I could have eaten 5 more.  A few days ago, Bridget and I bought some eggs to supplement our breakfast and the lady at the reception boiled them for us. :)  So we had banana crepes and hard boiled eggs. :)  Anyway, although the boat was late, it picked us up right from the Swiss Cottage, so that was very nice.  Although we didn't ask the itinerary at the beginning, we ended up snorkeling at 5 different places.  I took my camera (of course) and took lots of pictures and shot a little bit of video.  By the end, all of the fish we had seen started blending together, but each place had a little character of its own.

Bridget's excited!

Rockin' the hot orange life jacket!

Underwater shoe shot!

Our first stop was a place called Coral Island.  It is a small island off the northwest coast of Tioman Island.  It was a 25 minute boat ride, but definitely worth it.  Our boat dropped us off at the shore and we swam out about 50 yds and then let the waves bring us back to shore.  The shallow water had more fish, but the deeper water had some bigger ones and alot more coral.  Unfortunately, the deeper water made pictures much more cloudy and basically impossible to take any good ones.  I apologize.  On the way back to shore, I saw a cool blue fish with a pointy nose.  I twisted to get a good shot of him (assuming it was a him...), but quickly realized that he was actually following me!  I started to swim away a little and he came right over and kept circling me!  I took a bunch of pictures, but it was nearly impossible to get a good one.  Here's one of him (he's in the lower left corner of the picture)

My little friend

Lots of fish everywhere!

Then I heard Bridget yell for me to come over.  When I got there, she said that the fish were trying to eat her hair!  And, sure enough, when she held it out, the fish came up to get a chomp.  I got some video of it here.


After finishing up at that beach, our boat drive went over to a different beach on Coral island and we got off there.  We saw a bunch of the same fish and alot more coral.  We also saw a rock-looking fish that was quite a bit bigger than the others.  It was probably 2' long, as opposed to a few inches. :)

Big rock-like fish with everything else swarming

After wrapping up there, we went and got some lunch at the local village (Salang).  This village just so happened to be the northernmost village on the island, which was at the end of the trail Bridget and I hiked on our first day.  And there would have been no way we could have hiked all the way here without wter, so its a good thing we turned around when we did.  Anyway, I was feeling a little seasick by the last stop and had to try really hard to keep my breakfast down through the waves to get to Salang.  So, my lunch was a milkshake and a mound of white rice.  But it was good (kind of like all of the food we have eaten so far).  Bridget got some noodles again. :)

After lunch, we went and swam around a little island off of Salang for awhile.  We were able to swim almost all of the way around it, which was cool too.  It was pretty deep in most places, so it was hard to get any good pictures.  But some of the coral you can make out, although the colors are kind of dull in the picture.

Cool coral

Our next place was a marine park.  There are only fish here, no coral.  But people feed the fish and boats aren't allowed in the park, so its a safe haven for the fish.  And lots of them take advantage of it!  We were swarmed by them almost the whole time we were in the water.  There were even some people that were feeding them and were tossing food near us so the fish would come over.  I think they were using bread because one fish mistook my finger for food and tried to take a bite! :)  Which also means the fish were really close to us!  Normally I extend my arm to take a closer picture of something, but here I had to pull the camera back to my chest in order to be able to get a shot that wasn't too close!

Lots of fish everywhere

A colorful Parrot Fish (who is, unfortunately, swimming away from me)

"Hey. What's up?"

Our last spot was an island not too far from the Swiss Cottage called Renggis Island.  Our boat driver said this was his favorite spot to snorkel, so we were pretty excited.  The first fish I saw in the water was this guy.

It is bigger than it looks...

He was at least 3' long and had a pointy mouth that looked like it had teeth in it!  But it wasn't a barracuda or anything dangerous, so we just kept on swimming... :)  And there were tons of fish here too!

The fish liked to hide under boats

"Hey Nemo!"

Another Parrot Fish picking on the choral

By the end of the trip, we were pretty tired.  And sunburnt.  Even though we wore lifejackets for most of the stops and I lathered Bridget, we were in pretty bad shape.  Since I just wear a shirt now, just the backs of my arms got burnt, but Bridget's whole back and arms and legs got roasted.  We started the lotion treatment right away, but the damage had been done.  And it seemed to get worse in the 6 hours after we got out of the water... weird.  Anyway, we picked up some aloe lotion on our way back from dinner and have been laying it on thick ever since.

But before dinner, I started working on catching up on the blogs.  It's quite a bit of work and its annoying having to wait for the pictures to upload.  But I figured a way to speed things up, so that was nice.  I wrote up two days' worth while Bridget was in the room re-packing the backpacks and bags (I helped too, but not the whole time).

Okay, and now on to dinner (one of my favorite parts of the day).  For our last night, we went to the place we went two nights prior.  The place where I got the spicy prawns dish.  Anyway, I noticed the sign that said they had cashew chicken, so I knew that was a given.  I also like sweet and sour sauce.  So, just got both.  I got a plate of cashew chicken and a plate of sweet and sour squid.  And two plates of rice.  And a milkshake and a coke (coke is almost as cheap as water...).  And it was delicious!  The weirdest part was that I didn't even feel like I had overeaten.  It was just that good!  Bridget got a noodle dish and then watched me devour plate after plate of Chinese goodness! :)  And to finish it off, we got a banana split.  Oh yeah - it was a good choice. :)

The only evidence that remained...

After dinner, we packed up the last few things and started the aloe treatments (as mentioned above).  Bridget then collapsed into bed and fell asleep while I blogged about another day.  It takes me about an hour to blog about one day - it's kinda crazy.  But the lights eventually went out on our last full day.  Ready to be awoken to get the early boat ferry back to the mainland.