Singapore is probably the best place for the English speaking tourist to ease into travel in Southeast Asia. English is the lingua franca, and everything has been so meticulously well organised, all you need to do is put your head down and follow the signs (some signs are on the ground, for this exact reason I guess). We had an excellent stay with our couchsurfing host Shariff (and his flatmate and small fluffy dog) in the lovely neighbourhood of Hougang, where the apartment blocks aren’t too towering and many are even covered in huge murals overflowing with positive symbolism.
With only two days to sightsee, we might have overdone it on the first day, walking from Little India, through Fort Canning Park and Chinatown (where we visited the Buddha’s Tooth Temple – didn’t see said tooth but many pretty statues), around the marina and out to the Gardens by the Bay. We saw a lot of cool stuff in these wanderings, bustling sidestreets, amazing architecture, stunning views, but we were so busy marinating in all of it we hardly took any photos! Until we got to Gardens by the Bay that is – then the cameras came out and the shoes came off.
The Gardens are a modern marvel, an impressive balance between nature and human design, all in the service of looking amazing. Along with the impressive array of plants the place is packed with sculpture and art, including some amazing pieces that look like they’ve been painstakingly assembled from small bits of driftwood.
We ended up hanging out there from about 3ish right through to 8pm, reading by a secluded lily pond, watching lizards, birds, bugs and eventually bats (Baaaaats!) We drifted to the Super Tree (massive tree like structures full of plants) grove as it got dark to see an impressive lights display, set to a medley of show tunes (and all that jazz!).
The next morning we took it a bit more cruisey, hanging with our hosts and eventually going out with Shariff to an Hawker Centre (Singapore doesn’t allow street vendors, but they are gathered in well regulated food centres) to try some of his local favourites (mmmmmmmm). Then he took us out to Vivo City, a megamall overlooking Sentosa (an actual theme park island). However we quickly fled this monumental altar to commercial excess to walk the Southern Ridges track, see the Henderson Waves bridge and a meander along a relaxing tree top pathway (carefully avoiding the scary looking ants on the handrails).
We came home in time to witness Shariff’s flatmate Carey making the worlds shittiest cake – a cake version of the poo emoji – the process of which involved mixing red, blue and yellow icing in the hope of making brown. It got there in the end, though for a while it looked more like a pile of magical unicorn poo.
We stayed up way too late, but managed to get up in time to catch our 6:30am bus to Tanjung Gemok, from where we hoped to get a ferry to Tioman Island.
Tioman Island! Pulau Tioman! Man oh man, what a place! Now I’ll admit I’m fairly inexperienced when it comes to tropical island paradises, but I feel like Tioman would be pretty hard to beat. Palm trees, golden sandy beaches, coral reefs, tropical jungle, I feel like it ticks all the boxes, yet it remains relatively untouched by heavy commercial exploitation and generally felt very quiet – even to our kiwi isolationist standards. Initially we stayed in Air Batang (known to travellers as ABC) on the western side of the island, where much of our time was spent meandering up and down the narrow road that winds between the sea and the smattering of family run cafes, accommodation and dive centres, stepping aside as locals on sidecar motorbikes puttled past.
Somehow we ended up staying in room in an otherwise empty Kampung style house, where we would regularly see monitor lizards outside our window – some over two metres long! We ate delicious varieties of fried rice, noodles or tom yum soup, snorkelled over some coral reefs, waving at the colourful fishies – we even saw a stingray! We took a short hike through the jungle, following a set of power lines (which local fauna also used to get around, information highway indeed!) to the aptly named Monkey Bay. Just as we were stripping off to jump in the sea, a monkey appeared and showed great interest in our clothes and backpack, so we took turns, one person swimming while the other guarded our stuff from the cheeky opportunist!
One sour note was after one swim, I found black sticky stuff on one of my feet, which then got all over my hands when I tried to rub it off – turns out it was crude oil. We later learned that Chinese tankers dump huge amounts of it into the South China Sea at least once a year, however for some reason the Malaysian Government has declared it a “natural occurrence”. A concerted effort by locals cleans it up within a couple of days, but it’s not an ideal situation.
Before heading to Juara on the east side of the island, we treated ourselves to a night in an Air Conditioned room at the Go Deeper hotel, the rooms were all made from big concrete cylinders stacked on top of each other! We had a high intensity game of Jenga with the friendly staff while waiting for our ride the next day.
Juara felt even more paradisical, with a long golden beach stretching the length of the bay, and somehow we ended up in a cute little shack right on the beach! We finally got round to going on the obligatory snorkelling tour to Coral Island, which was well worth it, sooo much coral and tropical fish, including Nemo and all his friends. I was kinda hanging out to see a sea turtle or some reef sharks but no such luck. After the tour we mosied down to the Sea Turtle Project, an NGO that aims to help breeding odds by creating hatcheries where the eggs and baby turtles are safe from predators and poachers. A nest had hatched the night before, and while we were there they were excavating the nest to see how many eggs had failed to hatch etc, and lo and behold there was one baby turtle who hadn’t managed to dig itself out with the rest of it’s brothers and sisters! We got to see it make it’s inaugural dash to the sea!
Our last day we decided to look for a waterfall we’d heard a few people talk about. The trip there involved crossing a river by raft, finding a secret trail behind an abandoned power station and walking through gorgeous jungle until we got to this place…
And there was no-one else there! It seemed to good to be true! A tranquil swimming hole, complete with massage-waterfall in the jungle on an island paradise! Are you convinced yet? I can’t recommend Tioman highly enough – go there! Quick, before everyone else finds out!
Exclamation Marks the Spot 