Hello all,

Right, after leaving Singapore, we got a bus up to Mersing, a little town by the sea. We stayed there overnight, Ben got a haircut which was quite funny. He has a chinese man haircut lol. Rather than actually cutting the length, the lady just attacked it with thinning scissors... so although the bushyness was gone, there were still long bits everywhere. After a bit of persuasion, Nina finished the job, very well I might add! She also gave me a free book which was nice!

The next morning we caught a ferry to Tioman Island. As we got closer we could tell it would be absolute paradise! The island itself is practically untouched due to the volcanic (dormant) peaks which stretch the entire length.. it was an island of rainforest, surrounded by the clearest blue water imaginable. Truely breathtaking!!!! We stayed at Salang village in a little A-frame hut 2 mins from the beach. There was a little river with monitor lizards the size of crocodiles, some over 2m long! (Ben was obsessed with them!) There were also monkeys in the trees all around our hostel and a little cat we named Lillian who came and sat with us every evening on our porch. The owner of the guesthouse, Eddy, was really friendly, and told us to treat the place like our home, which we did. Amazing surroundings, literally surrounded by palm tree, with rainforested hills in the background... we even had a dart board, where Nina beat me most days, which was a bit embarrassing... the owner seemed to think that the English are great at darts, I guess we proved him wrong!

Salang itself, was a tiny kampung (village) with a few restaurants, and guest houses.. and even a bar that did take-away cocktails (we took advantage of this most night, sipping Pina Colada's at sunset..ahhh)! While in Salang, we suprisingly spent very little time sunbathing on the beach as the islands beaches had a bit of a sandfly problem, and they seemed to like the taste of Nina. Instead, we spent quite a lot of time floating about in the clear water, so clear that when looking from above.. it looked like the fish were flying not swimming!

On the 5th, the day before Bens birthday, we spent the day snorkeling. It was absolutely amazing. Just wish we had a waterproof camera. There were so many fish, all different sizes and the most incredible colours. Some of them even seemed to glow blue and pink and orange, and some were almost as big as Nin. The coral was also amazing. So much of it. Massive boulder like ones and brain coral and all sorts. It just went on forever, I actually cannot describe it. Some were florescent yellow or blue and literally glowed, others were big white round things bigger than both of us. There was a big floating raft right in the middle of the sea that you could climb onto for a rest which was cool. After we'd spent literally the whole day snorkeling we went back and realised we were majorly sunburnt! Our entire backs and legs (even Nina's bum!) were lobster red and so so painful! Totally worth it to see all those fish though lol.

The next day, on Ben's birthday, we rented a kayak for half a day, and went out on the ocean around to 'Monkey Beach'. The journey around there was soo cool, but quite hard work in the sun, battling big waves and watching out for ferries and reef sharks! Ahhhh! We were hoping to see a few turtles, but unfortunately didn't. On the way, we stopped of at a tiny beach, which was inaccessible other than taking a kayak, after a rest and a sit in the sun, we set back out, and headed around a very rocky headland to monkey beach. When we arrived it was absolutely STUNNING! We literally had a 1/2km stretch of beach completely to ourselves. We had a bit of stroll, and saw a tiny settlement of a few houses (looked pretty deserted) nestled in the jungle. There were loads of hermit crabs to, and Ben was brave enough to pick one up, being scared of crabs and all! They quite annoyingly seemed to have found the prettiest shells to live in, but popped out to say hello every time we picked one up! After our stroll, we decided to cool of in the sea, and floated around on our life jackets, which was cool as you didn't even have to try to stay afloat, just lied back and relaxed... simply put, it was paradise. After a while of floating around, we noticed that there were some monkey's in a tree that hung over the beach, we floated watching them, and they sat looking back at us. Amazing to get so close to an animal that you would normally only ever see behind bars in a zoo! It didn't take long for one of the males to pluck up a bit of courage to clamber down to the beach and check out our newly arrived kayak and belongings. We both got out of the sea to grab our bag before it got to it, and it was definately trying it on. It sat about two metre's away from us just watching and eventually scampered off, so cool to get so close!!! After some more floating around, we headed back to Salang, dropped the kayak back, and then discovered (when back at our room) that we had broken both of our phone =(, despite being in a 'waterproof' bag, they ended up taking on a fair bit of water, and that along with the sun frazzled them! It a was pretty gutting as it was my (Ben) birthday, and I couldn't call home.

That evening we had a wicked, and MASSIVE meal, of huge prawns, half a chicken (both BBQ'd), and some noodles. Also had quite a few cocktails, all of which were very nice... Think the best was a 'Pink Flamingo', can't remember what was in it, but it tasted amazing! Couldn't think of a better way to spend a birthday!! The next, and final day it rained quite a lot so we read and watched a coupla films in the common area. Quite nice really. Even had a bat fly in over our heads and scare us half to death!

On Tuesday we made our way over to the Berjaya resort (wahoo!). On the way we saw like 4 trees covered in bats hanging upside down! Hundreds of them! It was wicked, definately the nicest place we've stayed together so far! We got there and had a complimentary drink and lunch at one of the restaurants. Was great spending money on gorgeous food without worrying. We got straight onto the cocktails (they made the best pina colada's!) and chilled in our beautiful room, literally on the beach with a stream running by it. Was total heaven. The next day we sat by the pool, sunbathing and swimming and cocktailing it up! Ate a burger made with real beef which was incredible! Breakfast was brilliant. We had a buffet option and had cooked breakfast (chicken sausages and beef bacon!) and french pastries and an omelette chef and fruit and cereal and waffles and pancakes! Ben had about 4 plates of everything lol. There was even a live band in the evening (quite cheesy) and we sang along to Abba and all the classics whilst sipping on more cocktails! That evening however we discovered our toilet had stopped working (not great timing as Nin had a slight stomach bug!). The next day we made an official complaint as they claimed to have fixed it but it still didn't work. After some haggling the manager offered us 20% off our room rate! Worked in our favour as we over did it on the cocktails slightly lol. Unfortunately we had to leave the beautiful Berjaya and head back to the mainland, although we seriously considered blowing all our money on 2 weeks there instead!

We caught the ferry back to the mainland, Mersing, where we stayed for one night before heading for our next destination, Cherating, which is about 150km's to the north up the coast. We're here now it's a very peaceful little village by the beach with a few restaurants and shops and a beautiful beach. Very chilled out which is exactly what we are after having spent a week at Tioman totally relaxed... Loving it!!!!!

Anyway we will tell you all about our time here in a few days, and look forward to hearing from you all.

TTFN.

Lots of love to all

x x x x x x x x x