Tioman Island Malaysia

I knew this was going to happen. I'm already almost a week behind the action on my blogging. Lots of busy and long days trying to cover both ends of the time zone overlaps with the folks back home at work. But it's the weekend again and so I better catch up and tell you all what we did LAST weekend!!!

On Sunday we hopped on a prop plane out of the small airport (Seletar) in Singapore. We flew to Tioman Island Malaysia on what was probably the oldest plane and the craziest landing I've ever experienced. But we all survived and were taken to our hotel on this open air bus from the 1950's. Our "5 Star Hotel" (apparently that is NOT an international rating system for hotels world wide) was again probably built in the 50's with not many upgrades since then. We (ok, I admit it....I) couldn't stay in the room they assigned us, so I got hooked in for another 1000 richots (the Malaysian currency; 1000 richots ~ $333 USD) for the upgrade. Which in my opinion was WELL worth it!!! The new room was nice and comfortable so all was good.

We played at the beach and the pool the next day until our snorkeling trip that afternoon. Again, the Malaysians are not so much for service and convienence for their tourism guests so we had a few challenges finding the right size snorkeling gear for Erik and Adam and then hauling all our stuff down to the boat (I think it was from WWII) using a crumbling, cracking cement staircase down to the boat launch. Not so good with the creature comforts by any stretch of the imagination.

But the snorkeling was great. The water is crystal clear and we saw lots of colorful fish and tons of coral and on the last site Dave & Kevin and Lisa saw sharks and turtles. I hung out at the boat that time with Erik & Adam because they were snorkeled out (although they did great for most of the time and really enjoyed it). Another boat went by and threw over a big chunk of bread nearby us. So me and the boys got to watch the fish feeding frenzy. It was really neat!!!

So all in all, I would say it was a good trip. The "resort" was a disappointment, but the beach and the water and the scenery were definitely AWESOME. But let's just say we were all happy to be back in Singapore on the 3rd day. It's amazing how much it felt like "home" when we got back. I guess we're not quite that adventurous when it comes to traveling.

Keep the notes and comments coming we LOVE to hear from everyone back home. Enjoy the Corvallis HEAT!!!