Holiday memories

Why is it that the moment you get back from holiday, the second you step foot in your own airport,  it feels like you never left at all? Honestly, it feels like my vacation was some alternate timeline, some dream dimension, some imagined reality (ooh, nice oxymoron).

Anyway, it was fanatastic. We landed in Singapore but pretty much went straight to Tioman Island in Malaysia. Man, I don't really know where to begin. First of all, everything was so easy. Which is a huge change from living in China where everything seems to be done in the most complicated, roundabout, inconvenient way possible. We caught one bus from Singapore to the Malaysian border city, then with perfect timing caught another bus to the next town we needed, and once again had impeccable timing when we arrived and hopped on the boat to the island.

The island was beautiful, the water was surreal in colour, and I know my pictures will never be able to do it justice. In some places it was an amazing shade of turquoise, other places it was more emerald, and some it was a deep and rich Toilet Duck blue. Without the dirty toilet connotations. And of course it was surrounding a prisitine white sand beach with overhanging palm trees. Breathtaking.

We spent 6 1/2 days on the island, mostly just lazing on the beach and swimming. It was so unbearably hot there that I couldn't even last 30 mins in the sun before I had to drag myself into the water. I'd be laying in the intense heat, on the verge of passing out, starting to hallucinate mildly, trying to hold off as long as I could. Oh, was it ever nice to get in that water. It was so hot though, that the water wasn't always refreshing. You had to go out a little ways in order for the water to cool down, near the shore it was like hot bathwater. Some days it was actually unpleasant it was so hot.

We also did some scuba diving while we were there which was fantastic. I've had my certification for about 9 years now, and my boyfriend decided to finish up his course. We dove 3 times and went snorkelling once. I love diving, it is so amazing! I saw loads of beautiful and colourful fish and coral, plus some puffer fish (unpuffed), stingrays, baracudas, scorpionfish and triggerfish (that are quite dangerous and can apparently eat your flesh to the bone - ew). Sigh...no turtle or shark sightings though.

The only thing I have to complain about is that I totally got bitten up by sandfleas (sandflies?) - those itty bitty, harmless looking things that left nasty, itchy welts all over me. Oh well, I've more or less stopped itching now, but for a while there I thought I was going to claw myself til I was just a bloody mess of ragged flesh. Nice, eh?

The island also had plenty of wildlife (beside the insects). We saw monkeys in trees and some massive bats as well. But the coolest were these giant monitor lizards that just meandered about, mostly swimming in this one stream. So neat, like little dinosaurs.

(I'll put up real pictures when I get my film developped)

 

Anyway, I don't want to overload everyone on holiday info (I know, too late). So I shall finish up later. Although it sucks to be back from holiday and back to work, it is good to be back to my blog! haha