My favourite get away, Tioman Island

Tioman Island is situated on the east coast of Malaysia, facing the South China Sea. Best time to visit Tioman Island is from March to October, the rest of the year is monsoon season. There are plenty of activities you could do on the island: diving, snorkeling, tracking and more. I still remember the first time I set foot on Tioman Island, more then 10 years ago. I could smell the fresh sea water and the surrounding nature was overwhelming. It was my ideal of a tropical island, with white sandy beaches and crystal clear sea water. There was no vehicle on the island and I thought to myself it's going to be a great holiday, just me and nature. For me the most peaceful time on Tioman Island was in the evening, watching sunset, with a colourful sky, like you only see on postcards. I felt so warm inside me even though I could feel the cool breeze making my skin goose boom like from the chill wind. The sun was slowly descending, I imagined hearing the sun touching the ocean while watching it. The best food you can get on the island is seafood, most of the time it's fresh from the sea and in some restaurant you could even request them how you want it to be cooked. During day time you could hire a boat to go for a day trip or just to visit other beaches and if you don't have any snorkelling items, there’s no need to worry, you can always hire them from most of the shops. I felt in love with the island and have returned for more over the years. Every time I visited the island, I never felt tired of it and always had something to do during my stay. It was really a great place for a get away, especially if you work in a city. Tioman is also well known for diving and snorkelling. In Tioman, I had the experience to see a lot of fish swimming around me while I was snorkelling or swimming, it was magnificent to see lots of colourful and different sizes of coral and fish. The underwater life was amazingly beautiful. I even saw sharks for the first time in my life. It was a group of baby sharks and one of them which was bigger, I guess, had to be the mummy, but I was too afraid to go near them so I swam away. Later I told a friend of mine about the sharks that I saw and she told me that I had just wasted an opportunity which lots of people would love to see.

My favourite place to stay was Salang beach. I only stayed once in Paya beach but I returned to Salang beach because I prefer it more then other beaches. From my view Salang was best choice, it was situated at the end of the island and it was so much quieter there then any other beache. I always stayed in a small hut right at the end of the beach and always enjoyed my stay. My last trip to Tioman island was my seventh visit, which was four years ago. It was a trip with a group of my working colleagues. They wanted me so badly to organise a trip to Tioman Island as that year we had a long weekend due to Chinese New Year and it would be difficult for us to get another chance for a long weekend together. I did mention to them it was not a good time as monsoon was not over yet but they still insisted to go. In the end all six of us continued with the plan and it was the most frightening experience of my life. When we reached Mersing the mainland where we could get a boat to Tioman Island, there was only one boat which agreed to take all of us there. There were about twenty other people just waiting around hoping that a boat would take them to the island too. At first I could not see why it was too dangerous to be on a small boat during the monsoon until we were in the middle of the sea. The sea was so rough that the boat almost capsized twice, the engine stopped several times and people were throwing up everywhere on the boat, it was the most disgusting sight. There was a couple who brought along their baby on the boat, she never stopped crying, I really pitied that kid, and she was only just about a year old. Usually it only took us 45 minutes to get to the island from the mainland but that day it took us 6 hours or more. After a long journey in the boat we finally arrived safely, we checked in to our hut and immediately went to a restaurant without taking a shower because we were all starving. As we were ordering our food the waiter told us that we were very lucky to reach the island safely because there a boat capsized on the way to mainland. We were in shock and I had learned my lesson not to visit the island during the monsoon season. Other then that all of us did have a very good time and managed to do a lot of activities because day after the monsoon was over and the sea was back to normal.