Urban Island/Rural Island

July 6, 2011

Lise and I had about 14 hours together in Singapore, mostly because that is all we could afford on our budget. Our $8 dorm beds were some of the most expensive crash pads of the trip. The food was nearing Western prices and the beer? Forget about it. On our one evening in the city, we walked around observing all the bizarre extravagance. The luxurious hotels and bright lights. The big shocker, for us, was the building with a ship on top of it. Three tall buildings, actually, with a long cruise ship draped over the top. Bizarre. I don’t even know what it was, but who cares? Boat on a building!

After walking through the futuristic opulence we eventually came to the Indian neighborhood. It was much more humble and we finally felt comfortable to find a place to get some dinner. It wasn’t memorable (I really don’t remember what I ate) but at least it filled my belly and wasn’t too hard on my wallet.

As many of our days would be on this trip, the next one was a transit day. Our goal was to make it to an island by the end of the day. So it was a slow bus to the border, back through customs and immigration, back on the bus, and then another bus ride to Mersing, the port town. We arrived just in time to make the boat out to the island, but our mood was not right for it. We had rushed all day, and felt like having some moments to breathe, as well as prepare for the island trip. Ya see, this trip was, like most of my trips, was intended to be on an extremely tight budget, which means when you’re on an island, you camp and bring food because it would be that much more expensive on the island. Another budget concern factored into our decision to go to the island in the first place. Malaysia, being a Muslim country, has very high taxes on alcohol, putting beer out of reach of our daily budget. By the grace of God, however, the island, Pulau Tioman, was declared a duty free zone, making the beer quite affordable. What would an island trip be without some brews by the sea? So we stayed in the port town to provision for the camping we hoped to do. Unlike in Africa, we didn’t have cooking equipment, so we were limited to bread, tuna, mayonnaise, and crackers.

The next morning, we boarded our boat to the island. I was surprised to find it enclosed and air conditioned, with TV screens. I have to keep reminding myself that Malaysia is different, more developed and modern than anywhere I have traveled before.

We walked through the backpacker hangout of Air Batang (ABC), past all the little beach bungalows, trendy bars and Western restaurants, filled our water bottles from a spigot and followed the jungle trail north. Supposedly a few km walk would lead to something called Monkey Beach. We figured that would be a good spot. After only a km, though, we found another secluded beach, and we were already dripping with sweat and ready to relax. My bag was at maximum capacity and I was still getting back in shape with it.

It proved to be a pretty perfect spot. Reasonably close to a secluded resort for water needs, but still private enough to bother anyone with our presence. Furthermore, there was snorkeling just offshore that proved to be pretty impressive. Lise said snorkeling was the equivalent of bird-watching under water, that is to say that it is lame, but even she couldn’t resist and spent some time checking out the underwater neon. Oh, and I saw a tiny shark.

Little happened on the beach, but then again, that is the point. Just relaxing, swimming, checking out the six foot monitor lizards and hermit crabs creeping around the beach. I wish I had a picture of it all, but I don’t, it would probably just look like any other white sand beach tucked between turquoise water and emerald jungle.

On our second day, we needed to make a pilgrimage to the duty free store in the island’s main town. It was a long walk, maybe an hour, but at least we didn’t have our bags. We felt fairly safe with them on the beach inside the tent. The only people coming around the beach were the richer tourists from the nearby resort, and they didn’t seem like the thieving type.

I found the island a little bit obnoxious for the fact that it was a touristy place, and therefore foreign people will only be seen as sources of money. In the town, where there was a couple of roads, people constantly asked us if we needed a taxi, or wanted to go on tours or whatever. It’s the kind of atmosphere that makes me not want to even get to know the locals because it will be difficult to find a conversation that does not have an ulterior motive. But then again, this is to be expected, and must be accepted.

The duty free shop did indeed provide us with some good deals. We had to invest in a case of beer for a bigger discount and so as not to make another trip out there too soon. Lise and I took turns carrying the flat of beer on our heads on the way back, making the trip in maybe half the time in the hopes of getting there before all the beers got warm.

Just as we arrived and started preparing our dinner of tuna sandwiches and beer, a sudden gust of wind came to announce the approaching storm. It grabbed my tent and threw it across the beach, toppling it end over end a couple times before landing back upright. I chased it, and by the time I got there, the wind was coming stronger. Lise and I were in problem-mode, and I think we dealt with it well. But as soon as she helped me carry the tent back to our spot, the rains were coming hard. We oriented the tent to be strong against the wind. Then Lise went to save the sandwiches while I threw our bags inside the tent. After a few minutes, it was pouring rain and blowing. The thunder was close, but provided a great show. We were set up for it by now, and had the tent staked down good. So the next couple hours just consisted of lounging in the water, which was more comfortable than being in the wind and rain, and sipping beers. The storm turned the sky black, and encased the island’s mountains in an intimidating mist. Watching it swirl around us was a great way to spend the evening.

When Lise woke up, she peered out of the tent and said, matter of factly, “there’s a monkey”. She wasn’t entirely awake, and wasn’t even sure if she believed herself. Throughout the night we did not sleep very well. There were often noises around our tent. Usually it was hermit crabs crawling around our garbage bag, or curious lizards. But this time it was a monkey. When we got out, we realized there were many of these macaques, and that they were after our food. They weren’t aggressive, yet, and for a while we all just looked at each other. It was clear, though, that the have dozen of them were inching closer and closer to the bread they smelled. Soon after, a French guy with a video camera came up and started filming the monkeys. He said a friend of his had been robbed of his lunch on monkey beach. The monkeys had distracted him, while another one went to get the food. When he realized what was going on, there was another monkey guarding the feasting monkey, screaming aggressively while the monkey ate. They didn’t get anything from us, but that is because we refused to turn our backs on the monkeys.

After two nights on the beach, we decided for a little more comfort by checking into a bungalow. Neither of us had slept well and it had been so hot in the tent. We found the roughest looking establishment and scored a bungalow for $10. This sounds like a lot to me, but we had actually paid more for our room in Mersing, back on the mainland. It was standard Malaysian room prices. The beach wasn’t as nice there, but we had a sweet little porch for lounging on. And we were low on tuna and bread, but to our surprise, our guesthouse was serving food for about the same price as in casual restaurants on the mainland. $1.50 could get us a decent plate of noodles.

For being one of the more memorable few days in Malaysia there is really not much to say about it. It was a calm, relaxing island. What more can one say?

About a month after leaving Tioman, Lise got a news report sent to her from her parents. It was about a French backpacker who had gone missing on the island in May. Apparently they had just found a skeleton buried nine feet deep in the floor of a cave. The skeleton was found under a mattress buried with it. This was a shocking thing to hear, and something that really proves that bad things can happen anywhere. Malaysia always felt very safe, and the island? Jeez, we couldn’t have imagined a less intimidating or calm place. The fact that something so awful would happen there, whatever it was, blew our minds.

After four nights on the island, we had business to get to. We had a flight to Borneo, so we had to get back to Kuala Lumpur and quick. Enough beach relaxing, we had to travel!