One of those changes was to be able to spend our Singapore overnight stop at Raffles, staying in a Courtyard Suite - with valet!! - at what is reputed to be the best hotel in the world. Well worth the extra cost for a totally indulgent start to the holiday (“That’s what bonuses are for”, I believe I said). Of course we had to have Singapore Slings in the Long Bar and learnt why it’s traditional to drop your peanut shells on the floor, but only in this bar.

The next day, it was on to Tioman, a small island 36 nautical miles off the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. All the statistics I have seen tell me that the island is about 12 by 7 miles – half the size of Singapore - with only 2 km of roads (I’m sure you spotted the mixture of miles, nautical miles and kilometres too!) Basically the road just links the airport to Berjaya Resort, the only international class hotel on the island but too big to appeal to us. The lack of roads means getting around by sea taxi if you want to travel around on the island. The situation shouldn’t change too much – the island is just too mountainous with just a small band of beaches divided by granite headlands around the outside to make logging viable, and expansion of hotels means building the odd extra lodge on the mountainside, with all the inherent problems this brings. However, there is a marina being built at Tekek.

Back to the plot. Bearing in mind that our criteria was location, location and location, this led to our choices of JapaMala in the rainforest for our first week and the second week at Panuba Inn, chosen for the Bali Hai dive operation which would support Ken’s rebreather. JapaMala is in the even more mountainous south of the island, which is also wilder than the north, with a lot of wildlife in the pretty inaccessible interior. Mobile phones don’t work here and you cannot get any channels on the TV (there are DVDs available), although mobiles have good reception at Panuba Inn and there is TV coverage, though the programmes are apparently not up to much (we were told that during the world coverage of events during 9/11, there was a choice of a programme on pineapple canning or one on sheep farming!). We don’t watch TV, read papers or take interest in the outside world on holiday – that’s what we’re getting away from – so it was of little consequence to us.

JapaMala was lovely – the location was superb, everyone was charming and the food was really good (we thoroughly recommend the pineapple rice and the pancakes with banana and honey). Panuba Inn was a lot more basic (we had to get our own luggage to our “Super Durian” room, which was only cleaned every other day), but the food was much improved from the pre-trip reports we had read and was very cheap. We had booked air-conditioned accommodation at both.

Our treetop villa at JapaMala was great and we saw so much wildlife during that first week. You tend to notice the butterflies first, because there are just so many and in such incredible colours. As keen photographers, we find them so frustrating, because they fold up their wings when they settle, so a lovely turquoise butterfly is suddenly just a drab brown. Along with the butterflies, there are beautiful flowers. We love the fact that the rainforest tends to be shades of green with highlights of colour – actually this is echoed in our own garden.

We were surprised to see so few birds on Tioman, apart from the numerous swifts, although we did see a few greater racket tailed drongos, a sea eagle (on one occasion with a fish in its talons), a few little seed eaters, a couple of ground doves (up a tree!) and a pretty orange-red sunbird. Oh, and I mustn’t forget the large blue kingfisher we saw at Tekek. But there was ample compensation for the scarcity of bird life. There was a magic assortment of spiders ranging from tiny jumping spiders to huge palm spiders high in the trees or with massive webs spanning the power cables. Terrific insects, such as brightly coloured beetles, crickets in all sizes from tiny to enormous, a large stick insect. While the thought occurs to me, although we did get insect bites from mosquitoes etc, the bites were not horrendous and soon disappeared. Incidentally, the mosquitoes are non-malarial.

We found it fascinating to spot a lizard on the trunk of the tree, possibly displaying to another, only to see it take off and glide gracefully through the air to end up on another tree – we hadn’t seen flying lizards before. There were also plenty of monitor lizards of varying size and various skinks basking in the sun.

You will by now have worked out that Ken and I love rainforests - we find the diversity of wildlife mind-blowing. As an indication, Ken gave me an image intensifier for my birthday (and incidentally, built me a bat detector for Valentines’ Day – the usual predictable romantic gift every normal guy gives to the object of his affections on such occasions!!). We took the image intensifier on the beach one night, enabling us to spot a brush-tailed porcupine (Ken had spotted its tracks on the beach the previous day), which we found really exciting. Other brilliant nocturnal wildlife included a palm civet in the tree beside the door to our villa as we returned after dinner to go to bed, and what we think must have been a colugo or flying lemur in the tree behind the villa, having first spotted it by our torch lighting up its eyes.

It’s difficult to choose a favourite among the myriad of creatures we saw. However, I had a soft spot for the green crested lizards – very photogenic and we had never seen a lizard wearing eyeliner before! During our stay, we only saw one snake, a very pretty bright green vine snake at Panuba, but there were lots of bats. We saw a few tiny insect-eating bats, but it was the huge island flying foxes that we saw in large numbers. They roost in trees beside your arrival point (whether you arrive by plane or boat), so they are visible by day as you arrive. At Panuba at 7.30 p.m. (you could set your watch by them!), the bats began to congregate in the fruit tree beside the Panuba Inn’s restaurant. For about 20 minutes, we watched their antics, as they fed, squabbling noisily with each other although there was plenty of fruit for them all. I was enthralled – as you may have realised from my Valentines’ gift, I’m rather fond of bats.

From bats to cats. There are feral versions of domestic cats around – but with strange short tails. Not like the tailless Manx cats, but unusual to those used to cats with “normal” long tails. There is also a troop of opportunist long-tailed macaques at Panuba (we only saw one monkey high in a tree at JapaMala), looking for the chance to raid the rubbish for a free meal – rather like the urban foxes at home. There were little squirrels everywhere, but also dark giant squirrels, with golden undersides. Really dramatic, and again something we had never seen before.

And life under the sea? Ken was very impressed with the dive operation, the name of Bali Hai reflecting the fact that Tioman was one of the islands used as Bali Hai in the classic film “South Pacific” – not quite where Tioman is located! As an aside, Tioman was also named as one of the world’s most beautiful islands by Time Magazine.

Ken’s view of the diving - “The best time to visit Tioman is between April and October. We went there in May, avoiding the November to March monsoons. The diving was fairly easy in the main (no pun intended!). There was not much in the way of pelagics – I didn’t even see any sharks, although that could just be due to the time of year. However, the compensation for this was the stunning coral. The huge pristine corals are among the best I have ever seen and the only location where I had seen gorgonias feeding by day. In fact I would go as far as to describe the hard corals at Magicienne Rock as the best I have seen. I was very fortunate to be able to dive Magiciennes, which was fantastic. Drew, my dive guide, had been on the island for a year without experiencing suitable conditions (sea/tides/weather) to make diving this submerged pinnacle viable, as the site is rarely able to be dived due to its exposed position. Why is it called Magiciennes? It was named by Admiral Keppel of the HMS Magicienne who discovered this peak with its surrounding coral reef plateau on his way to Singapore in 1837. The scenery is simply stunning. I also particularly enjoyed Tiger Reef, another submerged pinnacle.

Just a few of the highlights from my dives – turtles, rays, a school of bumphead parrotfish (unusual to see so many together), a sea snake, a gold moray in black coral, puffers, barracuda, batfish, angelfish, butterflyfish, lionfish, cuttlefish, many species of nudibranch, crown of thorns, feather stars, really huge groupers and absolutely clouds of fish.

Visibility was good – very good for this part of the world. I would not describe it as excellent, but then I’ve been spoilt!! The vis was generally inferior at Renggis, quite no doubt due to its proximity to the construction site of new marina. I was very fortunate in that we normally had the dive sites to ourselves – in fact, I often had the Bali Hai dive boat to myself, with just the boatman and my dive guide. It was only the last weekend that things got rather busy due to the public holiday in Singapore, so suddenly lots of Singaporeans arrived.

I cannot praise Bali Hai Divers too much – professional and friendly, with a good dive boat and skilled boatmen. I had arranged one dive through JapaMala during my first week, and they used Eco Divers. Although I enjoyed the dive, Bali Hai Divers were far superior and in my opinion, JapaMala would be wise to use Bali Hai instead – more in keeping with the re-vamped more up-market image they are striving to achieve.”

While Ken was diving, I was snorkelling. I am the world’s biggest coward in the water, and although I can swim, I have to be in my depth. Tioman was therefore the best snorkelling destination for me, especially at Panuba Bay, where I had a vast expanse of sea including the area around the huge granite boulders, well within my range. Because it is still shallow so far out, I could actually get to areas of live corals and the number of different varieties of reef fish and the sheer numbers of them was absolutely breath taking. Visibility was really good and I spent hours in the sea. It was a sobering thought that just looking around me at any one time, the number and size of the fish I could see would not have been within the budget of our local aquarist shop!! It’s difficult to choose favourites – the beautiful colours and markings were awesome. Even in my depth, apart from the incredible exotic array of reef fish, I saw rays, a moray eel (free-swimming), sea cucumbers feeding, nudibranchs, bright blue clams, and two absolutely enormous bumphead parrotfish. It was only the risk of sunburn (even with factor 30, a
t-shirt and a hat) that made me keep an eye on the time to drag myself away from watching a stunning butterfly fish and back on the beach. Incidentally, the beaches are lovely. Clean yellow sand, which could have been poured out of a sack from the builder’s yard.

We have already praised Bali Hai Divers – they could not have been more friendly or helpful. In fact, when we decided to visit Tekek, Bali Hai Divers made a diversion to drop us on the jetty at Tekek on their way out with a boatload of divers (Ken couldn’t dive then, as were we due to fly home the following day). After a quick look round the duty free shops (it doesn’t take long!), we got a sea taxi back, having at last managed to get postcards – but no stamps!! (On reflection, we could probably have got stamps from the Berjaya resort – in the event, we posted our cards from Singapore on the way home). Bali Hai’s final kindness to us was offering to take us to Tekek when we left for home. Panuba Inn has a very small boat, making it untenable to take all of our luggage (Ken’s dive gear, not my clothes!!) as well as us. Bali Hai has a good-sized dive boat and we were particularly grateful, as the day we left was the one day that the sea wasn’t as flat as a millpond.

To sum up. Tioman was a great destination for us. We loved the wildlife both on land and below the sea and the dive operation was very professionally run with friendly staff. Once we had paid the cost of the holiday, it was difficult to spend much money (apart from at Singapore’s Changi airport on the way home, where there is plenty to overheat your credit card!). We would recommend the holiday to others who are like-minded, especially Bali Hai Divers and JapaMala – and if your budget stretches to a night at Raffles, then go for it, because it’s something you’ll always remember. We were very impressed with Magic of the Orient and would not hesitate to use them again. In fact, Alison has already booked my trip to China for September. Watch this space!