Tioman Island - Sharks and Cuttlefish

The route to Tioman from Kuala Lumpur is long and tiring to say the least. The bus journey takes about 6 hours and the ferry is on time only if the bus is late. The jetty for the ferry is about 10 minutes away so expect the cab guys to fleece you when you are in a hurry. We managed to make it to the ferry with minutes to spare but the 2 hour ferry ride in cramped spaces will definitely wake you up as people with a sea sickness discovered all around me. After a total travel time of over 9 hours, we finally reached the resort and our room, but stepped back out again for the sunset on the beach.

 The next morning was a quick boat-ride on a glass bottom boat got us close to Renggis island which was a tiny piece of land with a few terns on it, but is quite popular for dives and snorkeling. A couple of dives in the afternoon and the next day morning had fairly good visibility and minimal current so were quite comfortable. The most popular location is Renggis island, though there are multiple other nearby spots as well. We saw a couple of small wrecks but the wildlife kept us busy most of the time. The best spotting was of a cuttlefish that kept changing its colors as we followed it around, though large puffers, a couple of turtles and nudibranchs were also visible easily. I managed to snorkel around Renggis island on the last day before we left to spot 3 black tipped reef sharks. Chasing them around for 15 minutes, I was still not able to getvery close, at one point it just felt like they were taking me on a tour of the place.

We did spend an afternoon and an evening in a 4X4, going around the island as well. The thick forest has a beautiful waterfall hidden away and as we got off to see it, a monitor lizard scampered away. The other side of the island had another beach with more resorts, but the area close to the jetty was where the crowds were. The island being duty free has a few low cost souvenir shops for people to buy stuff and a marine center where people sell bread to feed the fishes. The long journey back was even more hectic on the way back as this time both the ferry and the bus were late but comfortable nonetheless as the boat this time round was a lot bigger.

 

Kuala Lumpur and around

Kuala Lumpur as a city seemed to have quite a few malls spread across. The first trip within the city of course was to the Petronas towers and the KLCC mall. The late evening sound and light fountain show near the towers are a pretty sight. We spent quite a bit of time shopping around the local markets and the malls. Public transport or grab was fairly easy to use and English got us around quite easily.

Batu caves are one of the key attractions on the outskirts of the city. The massive Murugan statue at the base of the hill where the caves and the temple is located is easily visible from a distance and the most recognizable image of the cave. A nearby tank at the base of the hill had a monitor lizard swimming about. There are a number of shrines as you go up stairs along with a nice view of the city. At the base are a couple of other temples and another cave with the story of Ramayan.

Genting Highlands on the outskirts of the city is still under construction but there is still a lot to see. A cable car can take you all the way with a stop at the Chinese temple in between. We spent most of our time at the Chinese temple, where the most interesting sculptures were the depictions of different levels of hell. The architecture and the views can take quite some time to cover and there are a couple of koi ponds and a turtle pond as well for the aesthetics. The hilltop has another massive mall with hotels, casinos and eateries. An amusement park seems to be under construction which would then make it a weekend getaway rather than the one day trip it is currently.

We spent quite a bit of time driving around the city where a number of mosques are also good to see. We took a day off to see the aviary and aquarium as well. There is quite a bit of walking involved in both, though the aquarium being right in the mall has the advantage of coming out and having a snack break immediately.

Borneo - primates, elephants and birds

 It had been a while since I had taken a really long vacation, and a trip across a couple of countries in the southeast Asian side could make it a fairly varied vacation. Coming out to Malaysia, the first stop on the trip was to the island of Borneo. A 3 hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sandakkan got us to the island in the evening. We got to know from the hotel desk that there was a mix-up on the pick up early next day from our resort, so we took a Grab to the rain-forest development center for an early morning birding session. The entire area is huge, and we were able to cover a small part of it, but where we really spent time is on the canopy walk, which allowed us to get a peek at the top of the trees. Looking at the vegetation, we would see nothing at the ground level. While there were a multitude of bulbuls, green ioras and other smaller birds, the pick of the morning were the black and yellow broadbill, a giant squirrel and hawk. A couple of kingfishers - collared and stork billed made their appearance as we hurried to the hotel and then to a long drive back to resort.

The journey by road was largely through farmlands, and some of the other resorts, bring you in by boat which is more of a safari than a transfer, however we had booked late, and our resort didnt have the boats, so we missed that. The safaris though more than made up for the missed boatride. Being, a tropical rain forest sliced through by a river in these parts, so all trips into the jungle were by boats. With the dense trees blocking out most views inside, we scanned the banks and treetops for the wildlife. We caught a herd of pygmy elephants crossing the river a couple of times and a crocodile lazing out in front of the resort frequently while monitor lizards laze out on the banks during the day. A couple of mangrove snakes were spotted occasionally. A civet, a slow loris and a few warthogs would visit the resort at night for leftovers and fruits that the nearby people left out.

Among the primates, the macaques were the easiest to find, with some of them making their way into the resort frequently as well. The proboscis monkeys were the next most abundant primates, with quite a few groups foraging near the banks. We also spotted a couple of leaf macaques, but the main draw were the orangutans. After the first few safaris, we were spotting quite a few of them early in the morning or late evenings. The bad light made photographing them difficult, but we spotted quite a few of them including a mother with a baby.

The bird life though was what kept us really busy. We found 7 of the 8 species of hornbills found in Borneo after some relentless searches. The afternoon boat-rides, got us a bunch of raptors - sea eagles, fish eagles, hawk eagles along with woodpeckers, adjutants and raptors. Evenings would send green pigeons and imperial pigeons flying about. We saw owls and kingfishers in the night safari while dollarbirds and black and red broadbills basked in the sunlight during the day. Most birds were photographed flying over the river, and other than the pigeons and hornbills, a falconet was a welcome surprise. A total of 8 boat rides later, we would have wanted more despite the wildlife we were able to see.