Tioman

We absolutely could not let our nieces come all this way to the tropics and not take them to a proper beach. That would have been blasphemous and we are not blasphemous. We decided that Tioman Island off the east coast of Malaysia, where South Pacific (the old musical) was filmed, would do since it was voted by Time magazine in the 1970s as one of the world's top ten most beautiful beaches. I know we made a pretty big sacrifice taking them there but we were willing to take one for the team.

We finally bought a portable DVD player since the bus ride was 4-5 hours. We wanted to buy one for the plane ride when we moved here and finally did. Samara was instantly mesmerized by it. We love the head phones because they squeeze her cute cheeks together and make them look like her chubby baby cheeks. Maybe she's got a future as a DJ.

We enjoyed some quality beach time. Samara loved collecting shells and broken coral.

Sarah was our resident chief with her bamboo staff.

The lovely Suzanne. We stayed at Paya Beach Resort--that's what it says it the sand.

Beach resort (as Samara called it) was a bit of a stretch, although, from the outside it looks quite nice. The girls were a little more accurate in describing our accommodations as "girls camp" but we certainly didn't mind. The rooms were fine, just not super fancy.

Besides we went there to snorkel and snorkel we did. When I graduated from high school I went on a trip to Hawaii with my cousin and two friends and it still remains one of the most magical trips I've ever been on. My mom's cousin is a builder there and let us stay in a house he'd built and use a car. It was tre magnifique. Hawaii was my first time spending a significant time at the ocean and I fell in love. So much so that my first semester of college I took an oceanography class and got SCUBA certified. After my cousin and I got certified we were going to be the 1st ever SCUBA missionaries but then she got married and I got sent to Russia. I was convinced it was my destiny to be a marine biologist or at least a professional beach vacationer. I was only able to go diving a few times and haven't been for 10 years. I'm trying to convince Ben and save the money for us to get certified here. I don't remember much and I'm sure I'd have to get re-certified.

The snorkeling was fabulous!! We went several times a day right off our beach. The coral was stunning and there were so many different fish. Our package included a little snorkel trip (to the marine park and renggis island) but we actually liked the snorkeling right off our beach best. This was a really small island near our beach that was awesome to snorkel at during low tide. Sarah was kind enough to watch Samara one afternoon while Ben and I had a snorkel date. Suzanne came out with us to take photos. Although, the mountains will always be #1 to me, the coast is narrowing the gap between 1st and 2nd.

Our friends also joined us for the trip and this is their niece and daughter. My friend (the mom) is a nursery leader in our ward. Thanks to her, Samara now stay happily in nursery by herself. It was so fun to have them on the trip with us as well. As you can see this 7-inch HD bad boy can really hold its audience.

When the tide comes in the water spills through a river-like opening that cuts through a far end of the beach. We went exploring through the still water at the back, where we saw an old boat graveyard.

I do occasionally let Ben be the one behind the camera and look what he produces. So cute...maybe I should give it to him more often.

I love this photo especially when it's small and you can't see all my aging skin damage. Darn all those years of high-altitude sun exposure. When we were uploading this my nieces pointed out that she was signing "I love you". How adorable is that?! She just recently mastered the sign. Of course, it's also the sign for airplane when you turn the hand upside down so this could have had something to do with the loud jet flying overhead. Whatever. She loves me.

The rest of these are just some random photos to convince you all to come visit us.

The dark water is all fish! There were so many of them. This was below the pier/boat dock. I think they all hang around because people throw out bread/food for them.

The water was gorgeous! I was fascinated by how the time of day and light changed the color of the ocean. There was a storm one day and it changed from this to midnight blue in a couple minutes and then to the colors you see below once the rain stopped. Light + water=perfection.

As I worked on this post another one of our pet fish died (Samara's lu lu). On second thought, it's probably a really good thing that I didn't major in Oceanography and become a marine biologist. Half the fish in the ocean would be dead. I better stick with "professional beach vacationer". I wonder if anyone is hiring...

Here are some thoughts for those of you here who are thinking of or planning a trip to Tioman.

If you have a car definitely go. It would only be a couple hours drive. We loved it and would totally go again. However, we'd probably do it a little different. We booked a package through Discovery Tours. They were fine to work with but the bus ride was LONG. The bus ride was very windy and bumpy and we were at the back. We all got really car sick, which is something we are not prone to. I feel so sorry for people who get car sick easily. The way home was a little better because we were in the front. I looked into hiring a vehicle at one point and am pretty sure you could hire a taxi/van for about as much or a little more depending on your group size. With a car you wouldn't have the hassle of getting in/out twice for customs and could stop when you wanted. We had to make a rest stop about 20 minutes after Johor Bahru, which seemed like a waste of time since we'd just stopped and pottied and all but because of Ramadan it was the only place opened for the rest of the journey. The ferry ride was about 1.5 hours but we were one of the first stops of it would be longer if you were staying more on the north end of the island. The ferry ride was enjoyable except for the silly Malaysian karaoke music videos playing. You can also get a speed boat, again for probably not much more but I'm not sure how much faster it is.

Like I mentioned in the post, the snorkeling is fantastic. The places we went on our trip were neat but not any cooler than right off our beach. We really wish we could have gone to corral island. We've heard that is amazing and thought we were going there. Corral island was listed as a stop on the website so we didn't think to ask but we didn't go there for some reason. We bought a couple snorkel sets before we went that we'd be happy to loan out in exchange for chocolate. :) You can also rent them at your resort though. There are also some waterfalls and jungle trekking that we didn't do this time. We only went on a short little hike.

Our accommodations were fine but if you want something fancy I've heard you need to go with the big resort, Berjaya. I'm not sure if it's right on the beach though like the smaller places are. I don't think you could go wrong wherever you stayed. I've talked to others who stayed in more rustic places but it seems the beaches are all nice as is the snorkeling right off them. Ours was a little dirty (trash) is some places and we expected more of a white sand beach. I know there are some beautiful white sand beaches (at least I've seen pictures) but I'm not sure if there are hotels on those.