"Holiday from Hell - 03/2004" a Pulau Tioman Travel Page by XLH

It started off fairly alright... After we boarded the boat, the nightmare started. We saw waves as high as (what felt like) 7m rocking our boat such that 2 hours later, when we finally reached Tioman, we had to nap it off. Our first day was gone.

The next 3 days was faced with going up to the "village chief" to ask when they could bring us out to sea but the answer would always be in the negative ("seas too rough, rain too heavy" etc).

The last day, what seemed like the whole of Tioman had to be packed into a boat to ferry all of us back. And it chose to rain while we were in a sampan getting all of us drenched till we reached our coach in Mersing.

Whew, what a relief to reach HSH! But you bet I'll be going there again, after checking out that the monsoon has ended!

Unlike our first and previous trip (above), the Pulau Tioman we visited just barely a half year later was dramatically different.
This time, we saw millions of stars in the night sky (some even saw a shooting star),beautiful island paradise with an abundant marine wildlife, and of course, the brilliant sun to light up our days.
All these were possible because of the favourable monsoon season, and furthermore, we could get up close to the marine life, as we were there for a Diver course.