What is the common denominator between donkeys, sharks, lizards and monkeys? Answer: I saw them all in one day, and I wasn't even at the zoo. We spent last weekend at Tioman Island in the South China Sea off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. This island is famous....its beaches were depicted in the 1958 movie, South Pacific, as Bali Hai. To get there from our house you have about a two hour drive to Mersing, where you board a ferry and arrive on Tioman Island about two hours later. Then the "bus" comes and takes you to the Berjaya Tioman Beach Resort, about another 15 minute ride. We stayed in a room close to the water and facing the sea. It was beautiful! You could walk out the door and snorkel right off the beach when the tide was low and we saw AMAZING fish, and even several stingrays. The coral was pretty, but not nearly as nice as what we have seen in Mexico.
On Saturday we were sitting on the beach under a cabana when Jeff noticed monkeys digging in the trash right behind us. I got my camera, of course, and started snapping pictures. Soon there were four monkeys, one of them a little baby. They really weren't scared of you at all and seemed used to people being around them. I followed them into the next courtyard, right in front of our chalet, where they started digging in the trash that "housekeeping" had set out after cleaning the upstairs rooms. I kept snapping pictures, and this man walks out of his room with a bag of peanuts, holds one up for this monkey and the monkey took it right out of his hand. I am STILL snapping pictures, and this guy asks me if I want to feed the monkeys, so I promptly hand the camera to Jeff and feed this monkey!! It was very cool, for those of you who know how much I like the monkeys over here. You can tell in the picture that the housekeeping dude wasn't much amused that we were feeding these destructive pests:)
So then we take a boat ride to Renggis Island (in the picture above with the sunset), about 2 minutes from the main island and directly across from Berjaya, to do a little snorkeling. The little guy on the boat notices Jeff's dive watch and asks if he dives. When Jeff tells him yes, he said, "want to see shark"? He proceeds to have the driver drop us off quite a ways from the island and told us the sharks were out this way and to just let the waves drift us towards the island and they would pick us up on the platform in "an hour or two". Things are DEFINITELY run a little looser in this part of the world. We jump in and start snorkeling and see some incredible coral and fish, but no sharks. After about an hour, boat guy comes by (bringing more people out to snorkel on Renggis) and asks if we saw sharks and Jeff tells him no. So he says "get back in the boat" and he takes us BACK way out away from the island again and we jump off and start again. This time we saw at least a half dozen blacktip reef sharks. It was unbelievably fun! They were mostly about 5 feet long, but one was significantly longer and heavier.
We are walking from the Marine Center back to the resort after snorkeling when we notice this large monitor lizard digging a hole in the ground. Check out the picture of this guy! He wasn't frightened of us at all and let me get very close. So where do "donkeys" come into this interesting day?? The resort has a "Donkey Ranch"--seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up.
I decide that I want to take a donkey ride, and Jeff decides he wants to take lots of pictures of ME taking a donkey ride. We get to the "ranch" and the man gives me a crash helmet to put on, so I'm thinking this is going to be a really wild ride in all this beautiful jungle here on Tioman. Bring it on! They help me get on the donkey, and a guy gets on another donkey and holds my reins and we start walking down the road that leads to the front security gate of the Berjaya Resort. I ask him what my donkey's name is and he says "Donna". Before I can ask anymore questions he says "he is a boy", and I'm thinking, no wonder this poor donkey seems so downcast and dejected--they named him "Donna"! When we get to the gate, we turn around and he slowly leads my donkey all the way back to the "ranch". At some point I realize that MY legs are even long for the length of the stirrups, and I have very short legs. Then I think about the crash helmet and the "calm" walk with the dude LEADING my donkey, and I figure out that probably I am the only adult that has taken a ride on these donkeys--must be a kid thing! I have to admit, it was an interesting experience and I KNOW Jeff got his 25 ringgits ($6.90) worth of fun watching me on it.
I felt my Saturday was complete at that point...I had been on a donkey, seen sharks and a lizard, and hand fed a monkey peanuts. Doesn't get much better than that!
While on Tioman we also went on a 4 hour snorkel trip to Coral Island (about a 45 minute boat ride). Once again we saw some really beautiful fish. If you kept very still 100's of them, all sizes, would just swim around you like you were in the aquarium. This island is considered one of the top dive spots in this part of Asia, and we are planning on spending a lot of time over there the next few years.
