Tioman : Much better than the f*@king Philippines

Tioman Islands, South East coast of Malaysia

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer"
- Mark Twain

Our ferry from the mainland dropped us at Air Batang (ABC) beach just as the sun was setting. At least, I assume the sun was setting. The sky was a roiling mass of murderous black cloud, and the sun was relegated to a dull smear on the distant horizon. We shouldered our bags and set off along the narrow strip of concrete to the northern end of the beach. We were looking for ABC Chalets, which had been recommended by friends and occupied our favourite end of the price bracket. After what felt like three hours trudge through unforgiving jungle (but was actually just eight minutes stroll along a pleasant path. We really need to lose some cargo from these backpacks!) we found the place. The owner offered us the choice of a lovely, spacious, air-conditioned bungalow with sea views for 150 ringit, or a bamboo shoe-box with termites and a dubious odour for just 35. For once, I'm proud to say we took the cheap option, and booked ourselves into Casa Del Shithole for the next two weeks. It wasn't so bad. The plumbing worked, although the toilet cistern needed to be filled by hand(!), and the well constructed walls kept out everything bigger than a goat. Home, sweet home. A place like this would fly off the market in some parts of Burnley.


We dined that night in the attached restaurant, which had been cleverly constructed to resemble a large, drab, lump of concrete. We made our choice from the wide selection of fried rice, fried noodles or mashed potato with fried egg, then sat back to let the cool inshore breeze blow away our cares and usher us once more back into island life. The food was unremarkable to the degree that I can't remember if I had fried noodles or the mashed potato with fried egg, but they made every effort to take your mind off what you were eating by showing live Premiership football. Cara was in seventh heaven.

We were up and out of bed bright and early the next afternoon, and set off to explore the village. ABC is approximately two miles long and thirteen feet wide, and the beach stretches all the way to the sea along its entire length. There are no roads of any description, although it is still possible to get run over by a moped on the single concrete path that runs the length of the beach. Every few hundred yards or so, there would be a few tourist bungalows squatting along the edge of the dense jungle, which covers 99.999999993 percent of the island. The village also has a couple of modestly stocked stores, or 'mini-markets' as they were ambitiously called. All these shops seemed to carry the same selection of necessities, such as roll-on deodorant and T-shirts depicting people being chased by sharks, but luxury western goods such as mosquito repellent and food were noticeable by their absence. Their pricing policy was a little dubious, too. It was necessary to buy bottled mineral water, on account of the fact that the local tap water had the colour of George Hamilton and the health risks of George Bush, but all the shops on the beach charged three or four times what you would pay for the same bottle on the mainland. Nothing too surprising there, as a captive audience of western tourists can work miracles on your gross margin. But inexplicably, items such as cigarettes and beer (hmmm, tasty beer) were much cheaper than on the mainland. I offer no explanation, just a heartfelt thank you to the people of Tioman for their lifestyle enhancing approach to free market economics. The situation was made all the more confusing when we spotted a large sign by the jetty informing us that any Muslim caught buying, selling or consuming alcohol would be shot, or sent to prison, or shot and then sent to prison, or worse. I still remember the difficulties I experienced acquiring a hangover in the Perhentian Islands last year, so I was more than pleasantly surprised to see every establishment on the beach happily selling beer, wine and bathtub gin at, for Malaysia, bargain prices.

The actual sand part of the beach wasn't too impressive at first glance. It was quite rocky for much of its length, and it didn't have the bright hue and sweeping expanse of some of the places we have been to. Without wanting to sound like a pompous dick, we have been fortunate enough to visit some pretty spectacular beaches on our travels, so we can afford to be snooty in our assessments. But I am happy to say that after a few days of lazing on the beach and snorkelling around the small coral pinnacles that fringed the shore, I was as happy here as I could have hoped for. The only down side was the food.

We had entered Malaysia soon after the start of Ramadan, and with the exception of the restaurant at ABC Chalets, every other eating establishment was closed during the day. Perhaps thinking they had hit upon a good thing, most of the restaurants stayed closed in the evenings aswell. Subsequently, our day's culinary adventures went thus; skip breakfast (as it is for sissies and people with a 'balanced diet', whatever that is), lunch at ABC choosing from their tasty offerings, finishing off with dinner at Nazri's restaurant a few yards walk down the path. This restaurant was always busy in the evenings, although being the only open restaurant offering more than three dishes might have helped.

Nazri's Place was great. It was organised, the staff were friendly, the food was good, cheap and plentiful, and best of all, everybody's dishes arrived at the same time, almost. They also had a menu the size of Afghanistan written up on a huge whiteboard, including everything from mutton vindaloo to roti canai to chicken cordon bleu (whatever the hell that is). I'm not ashamed to say we ate there every night except for our first.

Eventually, we stirred ourselves from our lazy beach slumber and organised some diving with a company called B.J. Dive Centre. This was quite an ironic title, because the owner was one of the biggest wankers I have met on my travels, and he's had some stiff competition, no pun intended. I won't go into the details of why he was the biggest wanker we have thus far met, but if you put me in front of an infinitely long line of wankers, I could pick him out in about a second. That is how big a wanker he was. Enough said.

Our first few days were spent doing some very enjoyable dives, prior to meeting the wanker. Our dive guide was a Belgian guy called Chris. He didn't have a lot of experience, but he made up for it in enthusiasm, although Cara thought he spent a bit too much time trying to chat me up. On our dives we saw lots of fish and water and rocks and eventually we started to get the hang of using the underwater camera. From this point forward, the only photos you will see of our trip will be underwater shots of brightly coloured frilly things and crinkly critters with shells.

While we were in Kuala Lumpur, we had received an email from Kori and Chad, the Texan couple we met in Borneo, telling us they were heading back to the Tioman Islands for a bit of quality beach time after utterly hating the Philippines. They arrived after we had spent our first week there and they moved into one of the fancy bungalows at ABC Chalets. We had since moved from Casa Del Shithole into a different room closer to the beach. It was the same price, but it had eighteen cubic inches of space more, and the holes in the eaves wouldn't let in anything larger than a dachshund. Needless to say, we spent evenings supping beer on their balcony. They had air-conditioning and a fridge, and the longtail macaques didn't jump up and down on their roof for fun, as they did at our room. This is probably because they were frightened away by the loud "Fucking Philippines!" that could regularly be heard above the sound of the jungle. This also seemed to work effectively on the mosquitoes, as Kori and Chad were bitten far less frequently than us. Any budding inventor should note that all you would need to construct an effective new repellent device is a sound recorder, a small speaker and a disenchanted Texan.

We had a fantastic week. It was great to meet up with them again and Chad made me laugh so hard that beer came out of my nose. They were even polite enough to smile at all the one-liners I plagiarised from Blackadder, which is a lot to ask from someone you don't know that well. One distinct advantage for Kori and Chad of having only one restaurant to choose from was that I didn't make them walk for miles every night looking for a restaurant that no longer, or never, existed, like we had done in Kota Kinabalu. Saying that, we were sitting in the bar opposite Nazri's one evening when the chef, already pickled drunk, came and sat down with us. We had only finished eating a few minutes earlier, so he clearly had the skills to turn out a good calamari and chips even with a bottle of rum inside him. He had one of the most infectious laughs I've ever heard and he was happy to share with us his valuable nuggets of wisdom, such as women turn you around and life isn't worth a shit. At that point he started flipping between crazy funny and crazy delusional so we bid him good evening and retired to Kori and Chad's balcony to annoy their neighbours with loud banter until the late hours.

After a few more dives with BJ, the four of us decided to do a shore dive on the house reef in front of the dive centre. It was only in a few metres of water, so we could make the air last forever and enjoy a leisurely dive around the bay for an hour and a half. A few minutes into the dive, I saw a large dark shape move in front of us, but too far to see what it was. Rather carelessly, I finned after it to see what it was. I couldn't find anything, so turned back to join the others, intending to fin back in the direction from where I had come. It didn't work and I was soon lost. At pretty much the same time as I disappeared, Kori was viciously attacked by an enormous deep sea leviathan called a 'sea urchin'. With her hand pissing blood like a garden hose, she headed back to shore at top speed to get it looked at, and Chad, seeing her predicament, chased after her to make sure she was okay. This left Cara, who prior to looking at an interesting piece of coral was surrounded by three other people, and when she looked up was all alone. Wondering what the hell was going on, she spent a minute or so searching around to find out where we could all have disappeared to, before she wisely surfaced to try and find us. At almost the same time, I surfaced thirty metres away and Chad, who had caught up with Kori and decided she would live to dive another day, surfaced on the other side of Cara. Under the current UK obscenity laws, I am not permitted to print the words uttered to me by Cara when she saw me on the surface. We soon regrouped and continued the dive, where we eventually found a turtle who didn't mind us watching him eat for fifteen minutes.

Soon after it was time for Cara and me to leave. I have to say, I wasn't overly impressed with the island on first inspection, but with every day that passed it grew on me and I admit I had a great two weeks there. It certainly helped that we were there with friends. After listening to my incessant bollocks for the last eighteen months, Cara appreciated too.

So all you need to remember is this; bring your own mozzie repellent (or a Texan), avoid the BJ's and the wankers, don't let those women spin you around and most importantly, keep your eyes open for any fast moving sea urchins. Even on land.

Mik