Tioman O Tioman! [Take 3]

Sunday morning we woke up early-ish because the thunderstorm had caused us to go to sleep early. We had a nice breakfast with fruit pancakes and then planned to do some hiking before leaving on the 1pm ferry....

It was an extremely bright, scorching hot day. We heard there was a hiking trail from Salang Beach to ABC Beach, so we started on it, but it was an intensely steep uphill climb and the three of us climbed very quickly at first and then I died very quickly >.< We took some nice pictures, and then decided to go back down instead of continuing because it looked like it was going to be steep uphill hell all the way. Sweat was pouring out of us like rivers, ewwwww. I knew I wasn't feeling well and couldn't have hiked further. Indeed, as soon as I forced myself to make it safely down, I promptly blacked out. Basically, I suck because I don't like drinking water. The whole day before when we were under the sun and I snorkeled into salt water, I almost did not drink any water. Kathleen and Arpun on the other hand drank like a hippo o.O So the sun gave me heatstroke and severe dehydration, which really killed me when I tried to run up a mountain as fast as possible and overexerted myself -_- Yea Julia loses. But no worries, Julia can still shoot you in the dead center with her .22 rifle ;-)

So after I laid down for a while, and Arpun made me drink lots of water (bleh! he kept forcing me to drink more water), I felt better. Also, A komodo dragon (monitor lizard!) came over next to me and really scared me. I recovered my sight and felt conscious, but when I tried to get up and continue walking, I saw dark spots in my eyes and blacked out again. It's super scary to walk when your sight and most of your senses and conscious are blacked out... your legs just kinda walk. Anyway, this walk-blackout-rest-walk-blackout-etc situation cycled repeatedly because we were trying to get back to our room, which wasn't even that far away. It got so bad that someone almost had to carry me, but I think the thought of that gave me enough energy to make it back to the room. There, we rested and I drank more water until time to check out. I felt much after resting in an A/Ced room, so finally, sadly, we said goodbye to Tioman and made our way to the 1pm ferry.

Transportation back, in short:
1:00pm Ferry from Tioman to Mersing
3:30 arrive at Mersing
4:30 Local Malaysian bus from Mersing to Kota Tinggi
6:00 arrive at Kota Tinggi
6:15 Local Malaysian bus from Kota Tinggi to Johor Bahru (JB) Larkin Bus Terminal
7:45 arrive at JB
8:00 Johor Bahru-Singapore Express Bus from JB to Singapore
- pass through Malaysia immigration departure
- pass through Singapore immigration entrance

The local bus rides back were actually quite comfortable, not hot either even without A/C because the windows were open and created a nice breeze. It gave us a good view of non-touristy Malaysian towns and way of life, kind of like a roadtrip. Finding the buses and changing buses went smoothly, except for an annoying hitch at the end when we were at the Singapore immigration Woodlands after officially entering Singapore, our express bus never came, so we ended up wasting time waiting then taking a taxi then MRT back home. But other than that last part, we were actually very lucky and had an extremely smooth trip. Plus, it was all for < USD$100!

[Album 1] Pictures are worth a thousand words
[Album 2] Pictures pictures pictures are never enough

I don't think I want or need to write some fancy thoughtful concluding summary of Tioman.

Tioman is amazing, The End.