Next stop Malaysia and Tioman island.

After planning our New Zealand leg in meticulous detail for two months before we actually went, I can say with some confidence that we're getting more laid back about logistics. After watching a film, we arrived back to our hostel in Singapore at 12:30am on our last night there and prepared to plan our way to our next destination. On the off-chance, we asked the hostel receptionist if he knew how to get to Tioman. He was a knowledgable godsend, sorted us out in under ten minutes and even recommended the place where he always stays. The next morning we left at 8:30am and followed his instructions to the letter. Crossing the border was really straightforward and we were in Malaysia before you could say "Goodbye Singapore"! Then we totally missed Reading University's brand new international campus in Johur Baru and hopped on the first bus bound for the east coast.

Once we got to the ferry port town of Mersing, we went to book our boat tickets in advance and the guy there recommended exactly the same resort as our Singaporean friend. Well, when you only have three days in a place, it's hardly worth spending days looking for accommodation when everyone recommends the same place. The price was do-able, so we went ahead with it.

And, boy, was I glad we did. Panuba resort is an absolutely lovely place to stay. Not especially backpacker-y but it does have it's own little private clean beach, a lovely restaurant area and we slept in a little hut on stilts on the side of a cliff looking out over the sea.

On the first evening we tested the food (which was pretty good) and began a ritual of buying an ice cream and taking it back up to our cabin veranda to watch the stars and listen to the jungle. That first night there was also a thunderstorm to watch drifting over the sea.

The next day we wandered through the jungle to the backpacker town of Air Batang (normally known as ABC) and then down the coast a bit. There wasn't loads to see, but it was a nice enough walk and involved a little bit of jungle-navigation. That afternoon we braved the choppy waters and had an experimental snorkel south from our beach towards ABC's beach. We didn't make it that far in the end, as we got turned back by some invisible jellyfish. The stings weren't bad really, it was the invisibility that put me on edge - it's very hard to appreciate pretty coral when you never know where the next sting will strike. The coral was lovely though, as well as the fish and the ten million billion black sea urchins.

The next day we were going to walk to the other side of the island and go to see a turtle sanctuary. But that plan got scrapped when we woke up to behold a flat ocean and absolutely glorious blue skies. We raced for the snorkels and dived into the sea; where we spent the next five hours. We went north this time as far as a place called monkey bay and back again. Though we saw no monkeys, we did see a ray, a sea snake and a black-tipped reef shark. The coral was patchy at first, apparently having been badly munched by all the urchins, but it got better and better and prettier and prettier the closer we got to monkey bay. It was a great day of exploration.

There was a small price to pay for this absolutely blissfully lovely day though and that was that I sunburnt. Epically. Despite lathering on the suncream and swimming in jellyfish-resistant shorts and t-shirt. In fact, the next morning I couldn't walk properly. So tight was the skin on the backs of my calves that it hurt unbearably to stretch it and I had to walk to the bathroom on my tiptoes, like a velociraptor (try it, you'll see what I mean).

Thankfully I did regain mobility after about twenty minutes of gentle stretching and so on our last day we went out on a boat with a German dive company called Blue Heaven Divers. Si went diving and I went for some more snorkelling (fully wetsuited up this time). That morning we visited two dive sites each on separate small islands off the main Tioman island where the underwater landscape (is there a word for that? Submarinescape..?) was breathtaking. I saw another ray, millions of clownfish and we both saw squid. Si says his squid was bigger than mine, but then he's a boy, so they were probably about the same size.

After the morning of diving we both had a relaxing afternoon/evening of reading, dining and eating ice cream. The next day we made our way to Malaka - our second stop in Malaysia.