After three jam packed days in KL, a four and a half hour bus journey with a crazy driver and a late ferry, we arrived on Tioman. I loved it immediately. The small island chilled out way of life hits you as soon as you arrive.
Our long house rooms sit about 20m off of the shore with great views of the horizon, surrounding islands and amazing sunsets.
We were given the next day to chill out then it was straight in to the diving and a big task of making a reef clean up video, which was entertaining to say the least, as many of the group hadn’t dived for a while. The purpose of the video is to instruct volunteer divers on the removal of Crown of Thorns, these are big starfish which destroy the coral and have no natural predators here so need to be removed. Luckily one of the other volunteers is a video editor so we have a pretty good final copy. The reef clean up weekend, is happening in May and should be fun.
We’ve been here for just over a week now and we’ve dived two to three dives a day, the dive sites are some of the best sites I’ve dived. I’ve seen so much already from sharks to turtles to massive moray eels, right down to the tiniest crabs and nudibranchs.
I’ve also learnt so much about corals and fish species in the lectures from Katie the expedition manager, she really knows her stuff.
The food here at Swiss Cottage is lovely, traditional Malaysian dishes, made with fresh ingredients. We have eaten out a couple of times, once at a chinese restaurant in the village and once at a beach front pizzeria both amazing.
We are planning a four day trek to Juara next weekend, which is over the other side of the island through the rain forest. We are going over there to check out some reefs for monitoring and to visit a turtle santuary. I’m really looking forward to it.
