After an epic journey from Penang Island in the North-West of Malaysia to Tioman Island in the South-East involving two ferries, a train, two taxis and a bus (complete with a fellow passenger who threw up on and off for 5 hours), we finally made it to Tioman Island. We had arranged to stay at Bushman Chalets for the first half of our time there and were met by a suitably bearded wild-man, who, when we asked his real name, insisted we call him Bushman. We clambered into his 4×4 and made the crazy journey over the central mountain in the middle of this beautiful, mostly unspoilt island. After a 30 minute drive up and down slopes that at points reached 4545-degreengles, we were at Juara Beach.

Worth it, wouldn’t you say?

We were staying in a delightful little chalet within spitting distance of the a beautiful, white sandy beach that actually squeaked when we walked on it, and was littered with beautiful washed up white coral.

There isn’t really much to say about our activities, or lack thereof, at Juara Beach. We could have gone on a snorkelling trip. We could have gone trekking in the mountainous surroundings. We could have gone rock climbing…

We didn’t.

We did next to nothing.

We swam, ate, drank, read, slept, and played a lot of cards….

And it was wonderful.

The full extent of our movements whilst staying at Juara was walking up the beach to another cafe to drink iced Milo (like iced chocolate milk) and eat more noodles….our feet didn’t touch a road in three days = bliss!

So for the rest of this blog post, here are some jealousy inducing photographs.

Enjoy.

Massive fruit bats came out at dusk and flew from palm tree to palm tree

Now that we were truly relaxed, we thought it was time to decamp and take advantage of the marine conservation park on the North-West side of the island. Cue another wild journey over the centre of the island and we were back at the central port village of Tekek.

As I mentioned before, the island is mostly undeveloped. This means that the only way to get from one beach/village to another on the west side of the island is either by trekking through the jungle or by water taxi. Considering the weight of our backpacks and that we were expected at 9am at the dive centre, we opted for the £12, 20 minute water taxi. This may not sound like much to your decadent Western pockets, but that accounts for 20% of our total daily budget- an expense not undertaken lightly. However, we were very glad we shelled out for taxi- it was a wonderful way to start the day.

More on how we got on at Salang learning to dive in our next post. Watch this space!

-The Backpack Duo x