Palau Tioman was a welcome break from Singapore. It felt like we were having a mini holiday! we slept in late, had afternoon naps, big dinners and mostly lazed around.

(we are back in mersing now got back this afternoon)

it was a two hour boat ride two the island, and we got off at the last stop, salong beach. the stretch of beach is probally equal distance of Tesco's. we found ourself a little wooden hut just back from the beach and behind a swamp (yea really!) it was a nice little garden space with coconut trees and orchids and lots and lots of cats! friendly ones who would come and sit on our laps! we have seen so much wild life here; moniter lizards, which if you don't know are f***ing huge!! like two metres, massive bats, pretty butterflies, monkeys (grey, brown and orange ones) shrews, lizards, thousands of tropical fish but luckily no snakes!!

The majority of the wild life spotted was on our jungle trek. what started off as a 45min jaunt (!) turned into an hour and a half of sheer exertion, with jess complaining that she couldn't go on every two minutes, when she was suppossed to be checking for snakes in the trees!! seriously though it was so hard going up hill, in parts we were almost climbing. negotiating fallen trees overgrown bush's and giant ants!! we'd brought our snokelling gear with us as we were told there was good snorkelling around monkey bay. unfortunatly the beach was littered with jelly fish. yuk. we was the only people on this stretch surrounded by thick jungle so it felt pretty cool to be so isolated. until we had lunch that is. my god, about ten monkeys, literally crept up on us and scared the life outta us. we didn't think we could handle the trek back until now, i've never moved so fast!!

There is only one 'bar' on this beach of which me and jess literally homed into straight away. unfortunately, due to the lack of cash machines, we had to make a bit of a choice between food and drink. no prizes for guessing what we chose!! however on the penultimate day we scraped together some english cash and managed to change it up. being absolutely famished, especially after our jungle trek, we feasted on bbq'd tuna, and fresh squid with cabbage. main of the good!! although at one point a cat did jump up on the table headed for the tuna!

we were lucky enough to make a new friend on the island, although i can't for the life of me remember his name!! (nothing much changes) he was from mersing (malaysia) and did seasons on the island. he was the nice guy who told us about the trek! he made me laugh, he was on ramadam, but he smoked (your not allowed to smoke) and drank during the day anyway!! as did many of the youger men to be honest! i heard him saying he liked blonde women to the men next door :s , he was very sweet kept trying to buy us beer and chat us up! bit sad as i didn't get to say good bye this morning!!

Im also pretty sure we saw some famous people too, one guy was definately some kind of punk rock star and one of our neighbours was a big american dude who told us he lived in LA, didn't really think about it until we heard him talking about film directing and famous people to someone else. tried to catch him this morning but he didn't get up till late damn it.

we did some snorkelling, although on our beach the coral was mostly dead by the shore. you had to get a boat a bit further out for that. it was ok though because the fish were amazia!! felt like being in a giant fish tank!!

it was quite sad to leave this afternoon but we have to get back for our jungle trek. endua rompin national park, we are spending two days and one night there then off to KL. the boat ride back was sooo scary. it was fine most of the way, (although i did get offered a joint!i did decline no worrys) then it stopped about ten minutes offshore. no one told us what was occuring and there were children vomiting al over the place.once it wasn't moving the boat really started to rock and then it pissed it down with rain. i seriousely thought we was going to sink and we'd all drown! it turned out though it was just low tide and we all needed to be bundled into two smaller boats. my god, at that point i wanted to be back on the jungle trek, imagaine transferring to a boat lower down, which was soaking wet and going up and down about a foot as each wave hit it!! me and jess were the last ones on and as a result had to stand on the back of the boat with the two malay boat men and literally cling on for dear life. we got absolutely drenched, but it was kinda fun!! the two malay dudes, told us 'don't worry-be happy' hmmm.

Chow for now

ash and jess xxxxxx