Tioman Island - tally ho for Bali Hai - the perfect desert island (Tioman Islands)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Tioman Islands
Date:	29/09/06 (497 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, relaxed, great sea-food

Disadvantages: If the weather's bad you're a bit scuppered

Note - the info in this review is targeted to those thinking of a budget trip to Tioman rather than a luxury all-inclusive resort.
Despite it being quite a long time since I visited, I see that nobody has yet reviewed this lovely little Island so I hope you’ll forgive me for a rather ‘old’ experience that I’ve written up in the interests of filling a dooyoo gap.

When and Why was I there?
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About 10 years ago I went to Kuala Lumpur for a trade show just before Easter. Never one to let the chance of an extra holiday to slip through my fingers, I realised I could extend my trip by about a week and only need to take a couple of days annual leave. So I started to browse the guidebooks for somewhere to visit. As I was on my own, I didn’t want anything too complicated and I decided to try to find somewhere for a relaxed diving break. I'd learned to dive about 6 months earlier and I wanted to get my fins wet again.

I did my research on good dive destinations and found Tioman Island. It's perhaps not the best of the Malaysian dive destinations - the Perhentian Islands have a better reputation - but the good thing is you can get there by air and when time is short, that’s an important consideration. If you are back-packing on a really tight budget you can also go by bus and ferry but if you are going to all that trouble, you might as well go for the Perhentians.

Where is it and why might I have heard of it?
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Tioman lies off the North East coast of the Malaysian peninsula and is famous (if you could really say famous) for being used as the set for Bali Hai Island in the film of the musical South Pacific. It's promoted as a paradise island and there are a number of good expensive resorts which are popular with honeymooners. The presence of the resorts means that you can fly there. The centre of the island is mountainous jungle and the beaches are clean with stunning white sands.

Getting there?
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You'll need to take up to date advice on the current situation as it's a long time since I went. I took a taxi to the old KL airport which has now closed down. I guess today you'd take the train out to the new airport. I flew with an airline called Pelangi Air - I don't know if they still exist - in a tiny little plane with about 16 seats. Cabin service consisted of a sealed cup of juice in the back of the seat in front and the co-pilot turning round, giving a big grin and a thumbs-up sign. The plane flies low and isn't pressurised so as you hit the clouds, they stream into the plane - this is a bit freaky the first time but you get some great views. The flight took about 40 minutes and cost me about £60 to £80 which I thought wasn’t bad for an Easter weekend.

These days you can go with an airline called Berjaya Air and in addition to flying from KL you can also fly to Tioman from Penang, Kuching, Langkawi, and Kota Kinabalu. You may struggle to get any European travel agents to confirm flights for you with the local airlines - I had to sort out the confirmation when I got to Malaysia.

On arrival
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The plane landed in a tiny aerodrome near to one of the fancy resorts. I got off the plane and stood around whilst the bags were unloaded and then wondered what on earth to do next – I’ve never been that big on the practicalities of how I’m going to get to the next place. However, I knew that most of the diving operations were located in Teluk Salang (Salang Town) and after hanging around for a while I was offered a boat rid up to the top of the island for just a few pounds. Luckily I'd met a girl on the plane who also wanted to dive so we went hunting for accommodation together.

Accommodation
*************
Looking back I really can't believe I just turned up on Good Friday without any kind of booking and stumbled around looking for something. In Salang you can find a wide variety of accommodation - at the far end of the village North from the jetty there are beautiful water bungalows with nice facilities but I headed south with my bags, unwilling to lug them too far. Locals hang around the jetty and attempt to lure you to their properties – if you don’t really know what you are doing, you might as well ask them what they’ve got, how much it costs and how far it will be.

The first guy we found took us off to look at some cabins half way up a hill. He was too lazy to go up (some of the locals say that the country should be called ‘more-lazier’ instead of Malaysia) and just told us which one was on offer for a price of about $5. We left our luggage at the bottom of the steep incline and sweated up the hill to a grotty little place with an unhealthy population of bugs. No way were we going for that one.

By the time we got down again, he'd given up on us, but someone else had given us a tip off. We found a cabin with aircon and a bathroom and paid about $20 a night between two of us. The landlord was sleazy and leery but he was a big lad and we both figured if he gave us any trouble, we'd be able to run faster than he could. After my room mate headed home to France, I moved to a smaller fan-cooled cabin with a tiny bathroom for $10 a night. There were a number of other women there on their own and none of us had any unwanted attention.

Diving
*****
There were 4 or 5 different dive operators in Salang. I was new to the game and I really didn't have a clue how to assess which would be best. The operator we went with was very laid back and showed no interest in how much diving we'd done before. The allocation of kit was a bit hit and miss - he didn't have a wetsuit in my size so I had to go without - and the whole operation was disturbingly disorganised. I wouldn't stand for that sort of attitude now but at the time I was new and inexperienced and I didn't know better. I had trained with a Swiss instructor who was almost militaristic in his approach so anyone else would have seemed relaxed by comparison. We booked to do two dives the following day.

The boat took us out towards a neighbouring island for two dives with lunch in between. I can't comment on the quality of the diving because these were my first post-qualification dives and I was so scared silly that I doubt I even had my eyes open. The boat was crowded and the water rough and I spent the afternoon puking over the back – assisted by a friendly Swedish policeman who helped hold my hair out of the way. I’m not going to say it was a bad dive operation (other than the disorganisation) because I was too inexperienced to really assess it.

That night a storm blew up and knocked out the diving for the next 3 days. It also removed the top foot or so of sand from the beach leaving rough exposed old coral. If that happened to me now on a holiday I would be livid but instead I took it as a chance for some serious chilling.

What else can you do?
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In Tioman hammocking is considered a competitive sport. I did a lot that. The place I was staying rented books so I lay around and read a few, wrote postcards, took long meal breaks and ate the obligatory backpacker-banana-pancakes. Dinners were spent on the beach drinking beer and eating fish barbeques with fish so fresh it was almost still flapping.

There's a marked path over the hillsides that takes you to Monkey Bay - a beautiful secluded beach. The walk goes through jungle with plate sized butterflies and howler monkeys - definitely worth a trek but it would be lovely if there was an ice-cream van at the other end – well, I can dream.

There are a lot of other water activities available - windsurfing, fishing etc - in Salang but the storm put paid to many of them.

One important warning - watch out for sand flies if you lie on the beach - they ate me alive.

Pros
*****
A beautiful jungle desert island
Great for a short relaxing break in a place without too much activity to tempt you.
A good wind-down destination to balance the frenzy of Kuala Lumpur
A fun cheap backpacker destination

Cons
******
I wouldn’t recommend it for families with small kids - I have no idea what you'd do with them.
It’s not ideal for serious divers - if you got a storm like we did you'd be gutted.
Not ideal for anyone who likes everything to run smoothly and to a timetable or wants things really clean and nice and 'just so'

Would I go again?
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Yes, if I was in the area but I wouldn't fly all that way just to see Tioman.

Summary: Well worth a visit if you are in the area.