Lessons learned the hard way

Spontaneity should be embraced and acted upon, but with some discretion. It began innocently enough; the near New York City prices of Singapore began burning a hole in our wallets and our initial plan of five nights was quickly abridged to only three. Determined to fill the extra nights with some sort of activity and also somewhat burned out of all the cities we’ve been to, we decided to head to Malaysia, more specifically Tioman Island. We had read that during high season (April to Sept) you should book in advance, especially on weekends. Let’s just say we had our blinders on and our eyes set on the beach.

I’m currently writing this on a bus to KL, less than 36 hours after leaving Singapore. Our three night getaway to Tioman didn’t work out exactly as planned. It began on Thursday night when we realized that the bus company that went directly from Singapore to Mersing (the connection point on the Malay mainland to the Tioman Islands) was right next door. Excited we didn’t have to go far, we quickly rushed out of the hostel in Singapore around 8:40PM to try and buy tickets for the next morning before they closed at 9:00PM. Success! We had two tickets in hand to Mersing where we’d catch a ferry to Tioman.

The next morning we awake with a new sense of excitement; a new country and more importantly the beach lay ahead. We quickly packed up our belongings, ate the free breakfast provided (read: toast) and headed out the door. The only thing we forgot was to find a place to stay at Tioman. I had attempted to make reservations at the Panuba Resort and Chalets the night before, but with no response email and a little less than 24 hour notice I was a little pessimistic about that situation. No worries we thought, we’ll just go with the flow, see what happens when we get there.

The ride there on the bus was mostly uneventful, which can also be a good thing. After about three hours and clearing both Singapore and Malaysian Customs we arrived at the fishing town of Mersing. Stepping off the bus was a memorable experience, arriving during a call to prayer. We purchased our ferry tickets at the bus station and waited for about an hour until we were taken over to the dock.

The first sign things were not going to go as planned was when we arrived at docks. There were about 200 people already waiting in line to board two ferries to the island. Thankfully there was some amount of order to the boarding process and we made it on the ferry.

There are no roads connecting any of the ‘towns’ on Tioman Island just jungle footpaths and if your luck some concrete. I use the term town lightly because they are nothing more than a couple Chalets and a few restaurants with one or two dive shops each; some being even less populated, some a bit more. The ferry stops at four of these towns, not knowing which one to get off at we turned to our LP book (Lonely Planet) and chose Air Batang ABC, hoping LP was right that there would be a lot of budget accommodations.

With our packs on our back and the hot island sun shining on us, we walked from chalet to chalet hoping to find a room. No luck, maybe LP was right. We should have booked in advance. After about an hour of sweating and walking up and down the same half mile stretch of beach we found a chalet and overpaid by about double the price it should have been. With no other options we had to give in.

The only problem was that the chalet was only available for one night, Friday night. Tomorrow morning the search would have to start again. We did manage to enjoy a very nice sunset on the beach with beer (overpriced but what can you do, it’s an Islamic country). The next morning we returned to searching for accommodations. With no luck, we cut our losses and headed to the ferry dock to head back the mainland and on to Kuala Lumpur.