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Welcome to Paradise! Hello everyone, tis been a few days since I last wrote, I blame, travel to some extent however I believe that a certain degree of laziness must play a part. For now, we have reached the 'relaxation' portion of this trip and I must admit we have chosen a sterling place to attempt such a feat! Lee promises to write one of the blogs from here but he's still on the beach at the mo. (I'd had enough sun for the day - hard lessons learnt in my previous dalliances with the strong Tioman sun!) And so, I'll begin....
We left Cambodia bright and early (again!) and had a very smooth flight back to KL in an appropriately sized jet plane. Kat was a happy flyer once again! We landed back into what feels like our second home, the LCCT terminal at KL airport. We whisked through customs and immigration and were relieved to see our roly poly clingfilmed bags trundle along the baggage claim, forever getting a little more of a bulge with the trinkets that keep finding their way into our bags! We had read that whilst our bags were suitable for the big flights, we may come a cropper for excess baggage when flying to Tioman as the allowance is just 10kg, which our bags were before stepping foot out of the UK! So, we tootled across to the hotel at the airport where we will spend our final night in KL before flying to Hong Kong (and hopefully home!) and for a reasonable fee they agreed to store our excess baggage. It was a hot and sweaty 20 minutes later that we handed them our re-shuffled bags for them to lock safely away before we walked back to the airport considerably lighter! We had a taxi coupon to go to our next hotel about an hour and 15 mins away - out the other side of KL, conveniently chosen as it was near to the Subang airport from which we would fly off to Tioman. Our taxi driver was a star and kept us chatting, in pretty much perfect English, people we have met have often apologised for their poor English, to which we have always replied 'Your English is fantastic, especially compared to our .....(insert appropriate language e.g. bhasa Malay, Vietnamese, Cambodian etc) The driver asked about our trip and with all the ash palaver you guys are dealing with at the moment, everyone's a comic. Everyone asks where we are from and when we say England, there is normally a chortle and a 'well you're not going home anytime soon are you....hee hee!' We're hoping against hope that the ash vamooses before we hit the Hong Kong Airport for our return flight, it's over a week away so we are hopeful! After watching the news about it and the navy boats coming to help, I confess I got a little confused, asking Lee just how long it would take going home from Hong Kong on a Navy boat, cos I'm all done on my annual, leave!
Anyways, said chatty/comic taxi driver played a bit of a blinder for us, when he pulled up to our fancy schmancy hotel near the airport he accidently took us to the check in which was the executive club suite, the proper lobby being about 100m up the complex, we apologised and set off to walk when she told us not to bother and upgraded us to an executive club room - our first upgrade! We were very excited and had a lovely room overlooking the gardens! What a brucie bonus! We spent the afternoon swimming (in an Olympic size outdoor pool, believe me swimming one length takes an age!) and then we ate out in the colonial style courtyard before scuttling off to bed fairly early, because quite frankly we are pooped!
The next day dawned (murkily as is often the way in KL) and we made our way to the airport, getting slightly ripped off by the taxi driver who charged us extra because the traffic on the opposite side of the road was busy and he'd have to join it to get back - the monkey!) Now I had surmised that flying to a tiny airport might mean something very worrying....a tiny plane. How right I was, sat bold as brass on the tarmac was a teeny plane, this time with 4 propellers which instead of reassuring me made me ask worriedly, 'why are there 4, are they expecting 2 to break?' Lee was a star again, trying to stop we from turning into a gibbering wreck as I saw something big and black flash by the window just after take-off (the wheels of the plane apparently - doing what it was meant to do) and generally keeping me calm through the measly 1hr flight. Until that is....the landing! Now Tioman is a tiny island, mostly covered by rainforest, it has just one road and little coves of turquoise translucent water and white sandy beaches - good times. It also has a runway which feels not much larger than Mum and Dad's driveway - bad times. This means that you get lower and lower over the trees with me clambering over Lee as much as the seatbelt would allow saying, 'can you see it yet, can you see it, we're going to land in the forest' until it suddenly went into what I thought was some kamikaze nosedive (Lee says the gradient was a little less than I felt, but believe me it felt like a dive.) At what felt like the last moment the plane straightened out and landed without a fault at the teeny tiny airport, and I tumbled off the plane swearing never to get on one like that again, until Sunday when we have to fly back!
We collected our bags (from the pile taken directly from the plane - too small for carousels!) and within 10mins were whisked away to the hotel where we were staying. Now we are at the Berjaya resort, which is beautiful, we have a lovely big room (the brochure says we are in a deluxe bungalow but I disagree - it's up a flight of stairs you see!) and from our balcony you peer through the palm fronds and no more than 20 meters away is that crystal clear sea and white sandy beach - b-liss! So, when in paradise tis only right that you head straight to the beach! Now my last experience in Tioman, in my GAP year did not end well for Kat, who seduced by the sunshine and white beaches sunbathed for a cracking 5-6hrs, only a few weeks after arriving Malaysia. I basically crisped myself like a chicken, ending up with huge blisters and a touch of sunstroke, so this time I vowed to be careful, layering up the sun cream (it had been cloudy when we arrived, but the sun soon streamed through!) In fact, today we even bought more sun cream - choosing factor 20 instead of 10 cos we couldn't get the 15 we were after (I did look a little longingly at the tanning oil at a cracking factor 4 though!).
We whiled away the afternoon on the beach, watching an amazing sunset and having a lovely dinner. And then it started....the itchy feet, now I am not sure what began this, the fact that we were on a 'resort' when we're not really 'resort' people, the fact that the lounge singers in the bar were a bit too Butlins and meant we were singing blooming 'Fernando' for hours after they had warbled through it, or the proven fact that I am absolutely, 100% unable to relax like a normal human being! I distracted myself with the idea of booking a snorkelling trip and we made the decision to leave the complex (gasp!) to explore some of the areas a bit further up, the ones which could be reached by the 1 road the island possess. We could have explored further but there are no roads and it involved a lengthy, tough jungle trek with an experienced guide (been there, done that) so we declined that politely and this morning after breakfast (where strangely enough bread and butter pudding with vanilla sauce was part of the international buffet!) we headed out. We walked for the next 3hrs, loving the scenery, the cool, aqua waters which lap at the white sanded beaches edged with gently swaying palm trees. We exclaimed over the family of monkeys just chilling by the side of the road and pointed out the huge and decorative butterflies and dragonflies which come in a vibrant range of colours, some bright yellow, others deep red and bright blue. I was posted on 'Lizard Watch' as Tioman is home to a number of rather large monitor lizards, which Lee was not looking forward to meeting. These are harmless but they are a lot bigger than the geckos which decorate the walls so liberally everywhere else we have been, these can be about 4-6ft including their long tail which they use to swim and they look much more primitive, plodding along like dinosaurs. We did see a few but they generally stay away, unless you have food that is! We ended our walk when we reached Air Batang, the very beach and beach shack where I stayed and incurred my sun related injuries. It has changed quite a bit with the swing we played on rotting away and the sand road, being replaced by a concrete path. I saw a couple of girls cooking themselves in the very spot where I fried and considered warning them but decided they were probably big enough to figure it out themselves! On our return we went to the duty free shop (the whole island is duty free - 50p a Tiger - hurray!) and stocked up with water and beers for our room so we could have a drink on the balcony or beach after dinner and not have to sit in the bar with the lounge singers, who are imaginatively called 'the islanders!'. After our journey out I felt strangely more able to relax, in a weird way I felt better about feeling 'trapped' in a resort once I'd left it for a good explore around! We've spent the afternoon on the beach (taking regular breaks Mums - live it, learn it!!) taking regular swims in the clear as a bell sea, which is so warm and calm. Every now and then we look at each other and admit how bloody lucky we are! We're planning a snorkelling trip for Friday so will update after that, but probably not in between, you see relaxing means that we aren't doing much of interest to you lovely lot (and the t'internet is also extortionate here too!), we leave here on Sunday so we'll update when we're back in KL or when we are in Hong Kong, the final leg of our trip (boo!)
Big huge hugs to everyone!
Love Kat & Lee
- comments
sar awwww...and thought that Lee would be first in line feeding the crisps to the monitor lizards!! ;o) sounds completely idylic and Im very jealous - both of the location you are in and that "relaxing" thing you are doing....sounds luverly! Have a fab rest of the stay on the island and enjoy!!! love u loads from team knaggs xxxx
donna-marie whatmore hey there hope you get home okay xx