Pulau Tioman (30th June – 2th July 2006)
We had only been diving in Tioman twice, when we did our Open Water course and when we visited the further site from live onboard trip with Kaleebso.
It was only eight of us in this trip, including Joshua, the lone operator. We had two Singaporean, two Malaysian, two Indonesian, one Japanese and one Polish, it was a multi-racial weekend and it was fun meeting new friends.
This trip we didn’t stop by Project, the place where divers always gather for toilet break, food break, quick dinner, tidbits shopping because since the end of 2005 monsoon, the favorite Project had been changed into Seven Eleven, and they didn’t have much to offer nor they have the ‘Diver’s Kampung’ ambience. So we stopped at one eatery with row of shop at another end. They had many type of food to offer, since we had our dinner already, we just grabbed few stick of satays. We also bought mangosteen as tidbits.
Because of low tide, we had to take transfer boat, we could see anything at night, only a few flickering lights from afar, which came from a row of boat parked together waiting for passengers brought by transfer boat. We boarded the exact same boat that we took during our last trip to Pulau Dayang, we also slept on the same spot. The sea was very rocky and rough, soon I reached the boat, I needed to lie down to calm my stomach. We waited for the other group and tried to sleep. The night was rocky, we were cramped having to share a bed for three but I slept quite well, although the aircon was uncomfortably blew right to the face, I was quite well hidden.
We reached Tioman island around 5 am, Tioman has this long concrete pier. The water looked clear along the way, we walked to our resort. It was a long, long, long walk. We passed by the place we stayed during open water, and it was only one third of all journey. We needed ten-fifteen minutes walk and finally we reached the resort. It was generous that everyone of us had twin sharing, it could be considered as rare luxury while we usually stayed in bunker for eight or four. The room condition was the best along the history of our weekend trip. We had this comfortable bed and big toilet with a lot of place to hang clothing and towel, another luxury. We dropped our backpack, and slept.
Around seven am, there were noises coming from outside. It was a group of noisy diver, very very noisy, such as aunties from market or hungry birds. Our room was next to the dining area. We only need to gather around nine, so we tried to sleep again. It was quite a great sleep to make over the night on boat. Nine o’clock we had gathered for breakfast and nine thirty we boarded the boat.
We shared the boat with another group consisted of six divers. Another rare occasion, we had spacious space on boat. We did deep dive on Chebeh for the first dive. I did not expect much for weekend trip, but now I realized that Tioman actually still has quite a nice coral life. The coral looked healthy enough and there were many variety of species, much better than Dayang dying life. There were gigantic seafan in Seafan Garden with colorful soft coral. Although the visibility was not really good, the dives were relaxing. It was cold and the surface was very choppy at times, made it difficult for us to board the boat when we surfaced, although our group considered lucky to get in board at the right time while others sometimes had to endure minutes in surface without the possibility to get in.
I liked the coral formations, seafan, colorful alcyonarians, lettuce coral etc. For the fish, we saw black grouper and marbled grouper, pair of humphead parrotfish, jacks, bloody huge titan (lucky it was not in the mood to attack, but of course, me and hubby avoided it like a pest). We saw one oversized weird looking shrimp on the sea whip. It was larger than the diameter of the sea whip, so when it tried to hide, it didn’t help much. We found the nice colorful looking blenny standing on the coral and looking nervously at us. It had a very funny looking face, with monyong lips and eyes moving to us, to its right, to us again, as if thinking, should I run or not, but it had big confidence that we didn’t see it. I missed it already. We found four mating nudibranches crumpled together, it was a black and white, we called it tuxedo nudibranch. We watched them but suddenly the current from Joshua’s fins separated them. We gathered them, they started to crumple again, and again, Joshua’s fins blew them away all over the place. Gee..! We lost our invitation for the wedding ceremony.
After the third dive, we sat around in the restaurant next to the pier to enjoy the scenery and ice cream. Just being away from the city itself was already nicee...this made it even better..
Night dive we went down at the jetty, while on the surface, I had feeling that I had been brushed by something a few times, although I suspected it came from the bubbles inside my wetsuit, I felt weird though as it never happened before. It was sandy bottom below the jetty. I didn’t enjoy the dive at first because it was too crowded and the sand stirred up by fins made the visibility dropped. I also didn’t feel comfortable with the loud boat sound above my head and kept checking my depth to make sure we were far from surface. It was actually quite relaxing if we made it slow to check the tires and things beside the pier structure, but somehow we moved a bit fast. At the end, we saw an octopus sticking on one of the structure. It was rare, very rare thing to find there. So it was quite a lucky dive. We surfaced, gathered our regs and walked, long, long heavy walk to the room. My allergic started to take over, my skin was itchy and uncomfortable, so taking a shower was my first priority, much much important than long awaited dinner.
I heard from everybody, apparently there was a great barracuda around during the night dive, dang, I missed it again, it happened many times before, so I have to live that every time I dived with great barracuda, I didn’t know it was there. Creepy, but I appreciate the gesture of it not to say hi to me at unexpected times, although I can’t help to think about the brush on the surface.
We had a late dinner, so my gastric started to act and left me uncomfortable. After we had dinner, we walked to the restaurant near the pier and had our delicious roasted chickens. It was a very happening night in Tioman, there was a big projector and big big screen for those who enjoyed football. Where is the best place to enjoy football match except beside the beach with friends, beers and giant screen? But for us, who are not really football fans, sleep sounded like a better option, although I liked the ambience. I can’t help but to say that I really enjoyed Tioman this time. Yes, It is commercialized, but it’s a place that at least made me feel like holiday are around me on very short given period. For two years we visited Dayang and Atlantis Bay and it was relaxing, we had nothing to do but eat and sleep. In Tioman, we had ice cream and we saw a lot of people, sun tanning tourists, naturalists, hiking tourists, blur tourists while in the other island all we saw were divers, divers, divers. So I must say I’m really impressed to be here again this time.
We had a long night sleep and boarded the boat around 9 am, to our surprise, there was another big group joining us, and the whole boat was full of equipments. So after we prepared our gear, we had to get out on their way and suntanned at the deck. It was bloody bloody hot. Tioman pier has a nice concentration of small fish swimming around the pier, many many of them, so we just enjoyed the view while our skin started to grow reddish. After all the chaotic preparations, the boat started the engine and we went down for briefing.
For this trip we had few tasks in our hand. We managed to reduce the number of weight we needed to carry down and finally, we could use our high volume mask, after it failed and kept fogging times and again in the past, so we can consider this as a fruitful trip.
On the way back to Mersing, it was a torture. To avoid the aircon blowing to our face, we slept upside down, and our head was lower than our body. After half an hour, I felt worse. The boat was rocking like crazy from right to left. Finally I had enough and went out, just in time, to empty my stomach. I had to sit on the boat side during the journey to keep myself from getting sick again. There were times when it was so bad that everything on the floor just moved to another side and the tip of the starboard touched the surface of the ocean, there were quiet times also, not much, but enough to enjoy the hunting birds on the surface. Overall, what a rough sea!
We boarded the van in Mersing jetty and straight away went to the restaurant. We visited the restaurant last year and the food was good, but this time, the chef was not available, so we had to buy some tidbits to stuff the tummy first and off we went for a long journey to our next stop. I had a great sleep during two hours, and we had great, cheap, good and delicious seafood dinner.
The was a long jam through the Malaysian checkout point, but funny the immigration counters were empty, so we had a fast past. The weather was annoyingly humid, both of us were dropped at Kranji MRT and we took our ride home. Reached home at almost midnight, washed up the gears and emptied the backpack, we went to bed at one.
We had never feel as tired as this before, not even after our long trip, starting from yesterday, we also had muscle cramp and sore joints, but,
it was a good weekend.
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We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.
- Robert J. McCracken
