We got up at 6.30 am. We packed our bags. We walked to the railway station. We waited for the commuter train. We got on the train and hopped off in the KL main station. We made our way to the bus terminal. We got on the bus and off again after a six-hours drive. We waited three hours for the ferry. We sat on the ferry for two hours while dozing off, listening to music and watching the sunset on the horizon of the blue sea. We arrived at the island, squeezed ourselves in a 2-bed room, ordered an extra matress for the floor. We went to the grocery store and filled our empty stomaches with fried noodles. And then at around eight at night, after spending a day travelling in the heat, we were finally setting our feet on the beach of Pulau Tioman, opened our Carlsberg cans (that were surprisingly cheap - hooray for duty free alcohol) and sipped the cool beer as we were watching the stars in the clear sky, listening to the sound of the waves and enjoying the feeling of the sand between our toes.
Two months is actually a quite short time to stay in a country if you spend most of the weekdays working and only have the weekends to discover the other parts. That's why I started already in the first week to plan accordingly and started preparations for the remaining time. So now all the weekends are booked with upcoming trips to Hong Kong, Singapur, Cameroon Highlands or last-day shopping in KL. However, the first journey took me and my flatmates to one of the many beautiful beaches of Malaysia. We picked Tioman as it is relatively close and it was easy to arrange everything. Although the part of the island where we stayed didn't offer too much excitement, it was nice for relaxing at the seaside for a couple of hours.
While I was lying in the shadow and listening to my favorite playlists, I noticed a cultural difference between Asians and Europeans. They don't like to tan - or at least many of them. While I was enjoying the beach in a bikini, the locals went into the water with their clothes on and also my fellow travellers from Korea spend fewer hours at the beach than I did because they were not keen on getting a tan and were tired of the heat. Even tough I - for obvious reasons - was never a part of the hype of roasting in the sun / solarium to get some color or using artificial tanning products and I find it at times even quite riduculous, it's weird to see that people are kind of afraid of the sun, use umbrellas during sunny days and are totally into buying whitening products.
Although I truly enjoyed getting out of the suburbs of KL for a weekend, I once again discovered that I get easily bored with doing nothing these days. That's why after some at time the beach when I was getting to tired to read, I started to explore the island and was quite disappointed that my walking paths were kind of limited. That said, I'm glad that this was my last trip to a beach on my journey as I am much more into seeing and doing stuff right now. I'm sick of lying in the sun and being lazy. - Wait, did I just say that?
current music: Billy Bragg & Wilco - California Stars
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