Tioman Island

On the 12th we caught a ferry to Pulau Tioman, an island off the east coast of Malaysia. We arrived at Air Batang Beach at 12:30pm, found a small chalet for about $10 a night, and we hit the beach along with our Dutch friends. The island is fairly deserted now since it's still technically typhoon season, but in our 3 days on the island we only encountered rain once (at 7am!) The 13th we walked to Tekek, the only town on the island, to get some snacks and such. Then we all took a walking trail in hopes of reaching Monkey Bay, a spot supposedly great for snorkeling and swimming. We only had flip-flops on, and the trail was more like a hiking trail so we just stopped when we saw the 1st signs of beach. Although it wasn't Monkey Bay, it was still a nice beach and we had it all to ourselves! Unfortunately, our underwater camera somehow got water into the battery, so the screen is now not functioning...we're hoping that once back in Korea we'll be able to get it fixed. Our friends convinced us that Friday the 13th was to blame for our bad luck. That night after dinner we stayed up playing Dutch and American cards all night.
The 14th we stayed at our own beach all day and did some swimming and snorkeling. When we went to grab lunch, we accidentally left our snorkel gear on the beach and when we finally remembered a few hours later, both sets were gone. I guess it was still the 13th somewhere...
Today at 9:30 we caught the only ferry back to the mainland but had to say goodbye to our Dutch friends, who are staying in paradise for one more day. We arrived at 11:55am, so we missed the noon bus to Singapore. The next time open is 3pm, and that only takes us to the border of Malaysia/Singapore, where we'll have to get a new bus to take us into Singapore. We've read that traffic going into SP is really bad on sunday evenings (which is when we'll get there since our bus leaves at 3 and takes 4 hours...) so we'll see what time we reach our hostel. We'll see SP all day tomorrow (the 16th) and some of the 17th but we'll have to leave around 2pm in order to get to Kuala Lumpur to catch our flight, which leaves at 12:30am the 18th.