Hope you brought a good book and some sunscreen

Hiking to Monkey Beach
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Fortunately, we brought several good books and lots of sunscreen.  Which means we were all set for the beautiful Pulau Tioman, a resort island off the East coast which has been listed as one of the top 10 island destinations in the world.  We planned to check it out for a few days, and ended up there for a week and a half.  We stayed in 4 different villages around the island, slept in chalets which were never more than a minute walk from the beach, snorkled in the clearest water I have ever seen, and spent most of our time laying on the sand, soaking in the water, and attempting to make ourselves less blindingly white.  One day when we got bored of our beach, we trekked across the entire island to find an even more remote town and discovered the most beautiful place on this planet.  We're talking untouched sandy beaches without even other tourists to bother us.  As it was the end of the season, we were limited to only one open restaurant, but they made a mean tofu dish that we could (and did) eat over and over.

Made it!!
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On top of the standard beautiful beaches, this place also had a place called Monkey Bay, which was appropriately full of monkeys.  It was covered with mango trees which to our disappointment were never ripe enough to enjoy.  Despite mild phobias, we attempted snorkling, and I am telling you it looked like a Pixar movie.  Truly breathtaking.

We also got to experience Hari Raya, the celebration marking the end of Ramadan.  This means that most of the restaurants were closed for several days, but it also means that we got to witness a lot of happy Islamic people parading around in fancy clothes and eating good food.  Some days we even were invited to celebrate with them a bit, eating their satay and cookies.

Giant lizards that are everywhere
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Although this is typically a resort town, we were able to avoid much of the resort scene by being there during the end of the big season, at the beginning of the monsoons.  We did get a light rain almost every afternoon, but this was the perfect time to catch up on our UNO playing.  Tioman Island allowed us to find the value of spending entire days lounging on the beach, thus preparing us for the rest of the East coast of Malaysia, and hopefully soon for southern Thailand.