Julia and Billy's SE Asia Travel Adventure: Pulau Tioman

Our next stop after Singapore was Tioman Island, a small island off the Southeast coast of Peninsular Malaysia. This is the same island where Billy had a summer internship and got his divemaster certification 2 years ago.

While on the island, we went on four dives together with Billy's old dive shop, Eco Divers. The dives were really fun and beautiful. They were the first time that we dived together, and of course, we managed to stay entertained at all times by goofing around in the water, as we had done all the time growing up. Billy showed Julia his skills of blowing rings in the water and Julia proceeded to pop the bubbles. Billy went on two more morning dives, which required waking up at the butt-crack of dawn to dive before 6am as the sun was rising.

The island itself was beautiful. Although the reef is pretty, it used to be much more lush and live. El Nino, divers, and boats have killed much of the reef, and sadly, there are plans to put in an airport that will run across the ocean and kill even more of the reef. There has been some new development and construction on the island, but other than that, not too much has changed since Billy was here last.

We met Billy's old friends, Anita and Norita who work at Nazri's a local hotel/restaurant. Anita actually now owns her own Pizzeria/bar called Sunset Corner. They remembered Billy and it was fun introducing Julia to his old friends. Norita has two new baby boys and her oldest son Akmal is a real handful, as Billy had recalled.

One drawback to the island were the mosquitoes that made it hard to sleep at night, even with mosquito nets. Julia's ankle swelled up to the size of a tennis ball from a probable spider bite. The bugs won on this trip as even our DEET couldn't stave them off.

-Julia and Billy