Scribbles Abroad

We got back to Malaysia with two goals.  The first was to eat as much Indian food as we could and the second was to find waves in the South East.  With dedicated focus, we were able to achieve both.  The first couple of days we spent with Ditesh our couchsurfing host and now our true friend.  There we caught up with the world before jumping back into a technologically void island.  Ditesh took us to Indian food, introduced us to his beautiful lady friend Anita, gave us a tour of the gov’t city, and took us to eat Indian food, oh yah said that already.

Kuala Lumpur Government City, (Putrajaya)

We were given a hint by a friend we made in Laos about an island off the South East Coast of Malaysia that had world class waves.  The only problem was getting there as the ferry service was sporadic depending on the weather and the planes were cost prohibitive for us.  We took a 6 hour bus ride from KL, (everyone says KL, its an automatic rookie giveaway to say Kuala Lumpur as I found out one evening).  When we got to the ferry port the weather was nice but the tide was wrong and we had to spend a night in Mersing.  Oh the excitement of Chinese food and internet cafes!  This place is worth avoiding but sometimes as in our case it was unavoidable.  Then next day we got our ferry to Tioman. Tioman was voted 1 of the 10 most beautiful islands in the world and we were eager to see if it would live up to its title.  We kept an open mind, but coming from Hawaii we figured the top 7 were the Hawaiian Islands.  We have to give Tioman a big thumbs up, its awesome and I’ll rank it up there among the top 20. As we boarded the ferry they locked us in the downstairs deathtrap and Louise was feeling really claustrophobic.  Once out of the harbor they let us go upstairs to the open deck.  But as we waited downstairs I noticed another surfer loading his board onto the ferry.  We haven’t seen another surfboard other than ours in ages, we had very little idea what to expect on this island, this guy was dark and looked Malay, so we decided to meet him.

His name was Takin and was one of roughly 20 surfers in all from Singapore.  He manages the Billibong store in Singapore and also had never been to Tioman but had surfed almost the rest of the coast of SE Malaysia.  There are a few world class waves in Malaysia which is saying a lot considering most people would never have guessed there was even surf there.  The ferry stopped at the each of the roughly 7 towns on Tioman but not the side with the surf.  Our stop was at Tekek was around 5pm and we thought we would have to stay the night on the side of the island without surf.  But Takin had already arranged a ride and a place to stay on the other side of the island.  I asked whether we could share a ride and he said no problem.  By 5:30 the same day we were unpacked and surfing a fun beach break right in front of the place we were staying! The next few days were spent surfing when the tide was right, relaxing on the beach, going snorkeling, reading, playing poker, and eating great food.

Our hut for the week

The surf never got very big, just big enough to be fun before beach breaks start to close out.  The beach we were staying on is called Juara (Champion).  It is easily to understand how it got its name.  The beach is long (3k?), wide, lined with coconut trees, a nice breeze, the coarse beige sand you dream about, and decent waves for a quarter of the year.  The time to visit for surfers is November to February (monsoon season).  Although it was monsoon season, the island is spared much of the consistent rains that the coast gets.

The pet monkey, we took care of his area and let him pick our fleas.

We built a sandcastle/temple one day for the gods.  We also watched it tumble.  What else you got to do?

This pic shows the undisturbed beach above us as we laid for hours just reading and sleeping.  Not one person walked by, or even onto the beach the whole time.

This place caused smiles and small green bikinis.

A beautiful full moon in Juara.

We had sunny skies with occasional clouds that gave us respite from the powerful sun.  The non surfing tourist should go during the summer but at the same time its more expensive then and supposedly is much more crowded. The owner of the place we were staying at was the same man our friend in Laos told us to look up and say hi, but we missed him (Tim).  He was in KL trying to promote the idea of having an ASP surfing event at the point break.  From the pictures I saw and the descriptions given to me by others while there, it seems like it would be a great place to have an event.  The only problem I see is the exposure which is a catch 22.  We surfed everyday at mid-tide going higher and surfed with the same 5-7 locals.  They were truly nice guys all having a great time.  Tioman is in its infancy of surfing, its innocent stage, its happy stage free from greed.  I hope it never happens, others would say its inevitable, but I hope Juara keeps its innocence.  The surf event will bring much needed money and would bring more tourists, I just hope the locals are involved in the decision.

The day we went snorkeling was exciting.  We paid roughly $10 USD for the boat ride to three different spots.  The first was an island lined with boulders, the second was monkey bay, and the third was a marine sanctuary.  I was looking forward to taking the spear I found at the place we were staying and catching some fish for the BBQ we would have later in the evening.

I jumped into the water and there were tons of fish, just too small.  But as I swam to the other side of the island the water got deeper and the fish bigger.  I missed the first couple of shots, saw some scuba divers go down there and wanted to snake a swig of air off their octopus, but let them go.  Then I found a nice school of really tasty looking fish near the surface.  I slowly approached and released the home-made spear.  I nailed one right in the body but not the head.  It obviously flipped out and wiggled off of my spear and began swimming away.  I followed him for a while but he got away.

As I went back to the school and prepared for another attempt the fish scattered and out of the corner of my eye a large shark was coming in to inspect. I wasn’t scared at first because it was only about 5 feet long and it was a black tip and we’ve learned that these very rarely attack humans unless threatened or you are between some of their food.  I looked to the shore to see if I could climb up but the boulders looked too slippery and the surf was banging into them making them a quite precarious escape route.  I looked back down at the shark and it looked agitated so at that point I became a bit worried.  I slowly began swimming away backwards keeping my eye on the shark with the spear between my legs and ready to be fired.  I made it back to the other side and was able to scare the rest of the people snorkeling with my story.

We made some great friends that were running Tims place while he was gone.  They were a couple Marcus (Sweden) and Ingrid (Norway).  Also staying there was Goutierre (French dude).

Marcus was a professional chef and even with the minimal amount of supplies on the island he was able to prepare magnificent meals.  I knew I liked this place from the music playing on the stereo which went from reggae to jazz to electronic and then it just kept going.  I was bummed my hard drive is full of videos and wasn’t able to swap any music.  All three of them were new surfers and its always great to meet new surfers.  They are always so amped, they’ve got what we call the bug.  They also liked to play Texas hold em’.  We played three games, I won the first, Ingrid won the second, and the last one was almost won by a young boy Adam but with Poker the river can take you down and he lost to Goutierre.  I kinda felt bad for Goutierre because we were all routing for Adam but he was a good sport and gave the kid back his money.  I can see Adam being a great Poker player some day.

A beautiful spread prepared by our hosts.

The morning we left Juara for Tekek by 4×4 car, then on to Mersing by Ferry, and then by bus to KL started off a bit problematic.  All of a sudden as the car was climbing the steep road in the dark we came to a dead end.  A rubber tree had fallen down in the night, taken out the powerlines, and blocked our way to the other side.  We had a ferry to catch in an hour and a plane to Australia the next day.  If we didn’t make it now we would most likely miss our flight on to OZ.  We got out and tried to avoid the down powerline that was not severed, thank goodness.  We pulled the branches out of the way but soon realized it was frivolous.  We headed back down to get a machete.  When we got back up there it was time to reach deep down into my Filipino roots and pull out my bad ass machete skills. The girls pulled the broken branches to the side, and the driver sat in the car and smoked his ciggarette.  He did give it a few wacks but quickly became short of breath.  About 10 minutes into hacking the driver felt he was ready and without telling us he just gassed it.  He went half on the road and half in the pure jungle.  Louise jumped out of the way just in time and was fine but his passenger side mirror was toast.

The tree and the power line on the ground.  Also the headlights cause was still dark brah.

We jumped back in the car and sped to the ferry.  We had fifteen minutes to do a 25 minute drive.  Luckily as a result of the magic of island time, the ferry was late a few minutes and we made it.  Thank goodness. We had one night in KL with Ditesh and then it was off to Perth.

Some locals we had lunch with and then taught to play gin while we waited.