What I’d do on the long weekend had I the means

It’s the long week­end. They charge an extra $30 on all out­bound flights this week­end. The bloodsuckers.

I am stuck in Sil­ly­pore for National Day. I’d like to have been able to go some­where. Like Tioman. For some rea­son, I like this island, even if it’s no longer the idyl­lic trop­i­cal island par­adise it once was. Didja know they shot the movie ‘South Pacific’ on Tioman?

I’ve been there sev­eral times in the past decade and more, and the fol­low­ing is what I wrote on one of these trips there three years ago:

Some­where on Pulau Tioman there is a bunch of kam­pong kids learn­ing to speak rudi­men­tary French. There is a resort chalet com­plex by the beach on Kam­pong Tekek on the west­ern coast of the island which is run by a French­man, although to call it a resort chalet com­plex makes it sound as if it were part of an inter­na­tional hotel chain, which, it most def­i­nitely isn’t. Tekek Inn is Spar­tan by any stan­dard, and my friend and I hap­pened upon it purely by chance and the sad fact that we couldn’t afford to stay at the Ber­jaya Impe­r­ial just one mile south of Kam­pong Tekek.

There isn’t much else to be said of the six days I spent there. I switched off my brain and sat by the beach drink­ing oh say ten beers a day or so. Before I decom­pressed though, I had that height­ened sense of aware­ness of every­thing and shit that one nor­mally gets when the adren­a­lin starts pump­ing because one is super excited about being on holiday.

OK, I admit that this trip wouldn’t have mate­ri­alised into any­thing more than the mere notion of a hol­i­day in my mind if not for the fact that my female trav­el­ling com­pan­ion who had recently sep­a­rated from her part­ner, was also han­ker­ing for a hol­i­day, and had bad­gered me out of my char­ac­ter­is­tic iner­tia to hastily dust off the cob­webs from my back­pack, pack a few t-shirts and shorts, hop in a cab and head towards the causeway.

It was only much later that I had the shrink­ing real­i­sa­tion that a female trav­el­ling com­pan­ion who has recently sep­a­rated from her part­ner has more bag­gage than she appears to carry.

Still, I was happy tag­ging along with Miss Hell-knows-no-fury and soon we were bungling our way through Johor State, first on the SBS No. 170 to Larkin Ter­mi­nus, where we dis­cov­ered that we had missed the last bus to Mers­ing, and on a bone-breaker blue and white 1980s Nis­san Cedric taxi which we shared with a Chi­nese gen­tle­man with permed hair and a pen­cil mous­tache who hap­pened to be wait­ing for other trav­ellers to Mers­ing so he could save by shar­ing the RM120 fare.

Miss Freshly Dumped and I spent the first few min­utes of the trip through grimy Johor Baru gig­gling at the Chi­nese gen­tle­man who had fallen fast asleep the moment the taxi pulled out of Larkin Ter­mi­nus, the diesel engine’s vibra­tions jig­gling his permed crown such that it became a fuzzy blur. Then my friend fell asleep just as we headed out of the city, and I was left to try to doze off in that wake­ful way, only I couldn’t because of the way the death-wish taxi dri­ver, for the next two hours, would fre­quently over­take other vehi­cles he deemed were going slower than we were, and I don’t mean over­tak­ing one vehi­cle at a time, but a whole con­voy of lor­ries, cars, motor­cy­cles, pro­tons and kan­cils on a two lane high­way, with another con­voy of the same occa­sion­ally com­ing down the oppo­site direc­tion at speed, and often sud­denly from beyond a crest in the road.

I made a men­tal note that on such future trips, to fall asleep as soon as the taxi left the ter­mi­nus, or risk hav­ing my tes­ti­cles reside per­ma­nently in my throat.

After tra­vers­ing through a thou­sand oil palm plan­ta­tions, we arrived at Mers­ing on the north­east coast of Johor State, ready for the next leg of our jour­ney. Hell, I was ready for a trip on the space shut­tle, hav­ing spent two hours in astro­naut train­ing in the cab. Only prob­lem was, we didn’t have the fog­gi­est idea where to take the ferry. But of course, we needn’t have wor­ried a smidgin. After rat­tling through the seem­ingly sleepy back­wa­ter town for five min­utes, the taxi pulled into an area of the town where every other shop was a ferry/resort/diving agency. The place was teem­ing with be-backpacked, be-sandaled (except Amer­i­cans, who wear train­ers and socks even when wad­ing through the surf) and bewil­dered tourists tum­bling out of buses and taxis and into the lairs of the ferry/resort/diving agen­cies where the mer­ce­nary tour oper­a­tors squeezed every freshly con­verted ring­git out of them. We forked out RM185 for a speed­boat trans­fer and one night’s stay at Salang Beach Resort. Exor­bi­tant, yes, but before my friend could protest, I was sold by the tour oper­a­tor telling us how nice the air-conditioned hut we were to stay in was. I think I was just in a very agree­able mood because my tes­ti­cles were just start­ing to set­tle back in their right­ful place of residence.

We stepped out of the agency office with a few other tourists who were also count­ing how lit­tle money they had left, and were then fetched by our cab dri­ver from J.B., Michael Schu­macher, to the jetty, where we promptly boarded the wrong ferry. Good thing they inspected our tick­ets before the boat departed. We waited an hour longer on the jetty for the right boat (a help­ful local gen­tle­man in a tank-top with an out­ra­geous mul­let hair­style ala Billy Ray ‘Achy Breaky’ Cyrus told us what time our boat would dock), where I bought some tid­bits and lis­tened to the first of my friend’s many tales of woe regard­ing her for­mer part­ner, whom she had dated for the past seven months, and whom she had planned (to her­self) to marry, and with whom she had wanted to raise a clutch of chil­dren, all bear­ing mono­syl­labic New Age unpro­nounce­able names that would only have sounded nor­mal in Wales or if your last name was Phoenix.

I was thus happy to dis­cover that our ride to Tioman was to be in an open-decked speed­boat. Not only would that afford us an unim­peded view of the open sea, the roar of the out­board would also post­pone any fur­ther dis­cus­sion on my friend’s failed rela­tion­ship. Or so I thought. We were actu­ally kept sans con­ver­sa­tion only because this was phase two of astro­naut train­ing, and I was truly fear­ful of being flung over­board, and I couldn’t help won­der­ing what ‘Man Over­board!’ was in Malay. Thank­fully, within the hour, we had skimmed, skid­ded and bounced the fifty odd kilo­me­tres and had begun mak­ing stops on Tioman Island, of which ours was the last. The other pas­sen­gers, includ­ing Billy Ray Cyrus, dis­em­barked at the var­i­ous kam­pongs as I grad­u­ally loos­ened my death grip on one of the boat’s rails and rubbed the bruises on my achy breaky back­side. Only then did I begin to process what I had seen, calmed by the cobalt blue waters and the emer­ald hills of the islands along the way.

Tioman is part of Pahang State, and is the largest of a group of islands which dot the South China Sea just off the east­ern coast of penin­su­lar Malaysia. All the islands which lie in the 200km radius are remark­ably beau­ti­ful, with rugged fea­tures like extinct vol­ca­noes and cliffs of gran­ite. Most of the larger islands are pop­u­lated, in the past by small fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and of late by staff of the island resorts and their fam­i­lies, and of course by sou­venir ped­dlers who sell mostly cockle shells glued together to look like other marine ani­mals, since Tioman and its envi­rons have recently been declared a marine her­itage area, and the poach­ing and sale of marine wildlife have since been banned.

Marine tourism is big in these islands, and there is, quite lit­er­ally, one div­ing cen­tre for every kilo­me­tre stretch of beach. But if the author­i­ties were seri­ous about pre­serv­ing the sanc­tity of the marine envi­ron­ment, it must have been evi­dent only below the sur­face, because the waters around Tioman were chock-full of speed­ing water­craft, fer­ry­ing newly-fleeced tourists to and from resorts by the dozen. I had trav­elled to Tioman twice before, once, ten years ago on a risky kayak­ing expe­di­tion (no life­jack­ets, no radio, no flares, no brains) from Sin­ga­pore, and another in 1995 with my then girl­friend, in the rel­a­tive com­fort of the direct ferry from Tanah Merah in Singapore.

Then, there weren’t as many resorts on the island, nor boats ply­ing the waters around it. It used to be that an old wooden ferry with a con­verted lorry engine would make a twice daily trip round the island stop­ping at the wooden jet­ties of the larger kam­pongs. Now, most of the kam­pongs have grotesque con­crete eye­sores fin­ger­ing the sea, and there are all man­ner of boats arriv­ing or depart­ing every other hour.

Except at Kam­pong Salang, where we finally docked at the last wooden jetty on Tioman. We had touched the Happy Isle. Only the sky was turn­ing a leaden grey, the tide was low, and we were hun­gry, or at least I was. My friend had a stom­ach com­plaint, of which flat­u­lence and loss of appetite were major symp­toms. To her credit, she announced each time she was about to pass gas, so that her ‘audi­ence’ had ample time to pinch their noses. Pretty con­sid­er­ate espe­cially in con­fined spaces like those in buses, taxis and ferries.