5 days stuck at sea for THIS?! Diving paradise at Tioman Island

[00:00:24]Since we had been sailing with just one engine since Koala Lumpur, we decided to hang around a bit and Putri Harbor just to get the part fixed. Which of course ended up taking a few weeks.

[00:00:35]Look at this guy.

[00:00:38]Little crab on a boat. It's underwater.

[00:00:41]It's a submarine.

[00:00:44]During this time, we [music] met some new friends that recommend us going to this town called Forest City, which was a 20-minute car ride from Putri Harbor.

[00:00:52]We realized that these were the same buildings that we had seen from the ocean when we sailed there. Making this skyscraper skyline.

[00:00:59]We learned that the forest city is basically a huge hundred billion US dollar building project which today is basically just a ghost town.

[00:01:07]This city has enough room for 700,000 residents but today it's about 15 to 20,000 people that live there or they don't even live there. They just use it as like vacation homes.

[00:01:21]The project wasn't really targeted at local Malaysian people, but it was targeted at upper middle class citizens from China who just wanted to park some of their wealth abroad. So, they basically just destroyed the whole forest that were there and also a couple of marine ecosystems [music] and then they built this man-made island before some new laws and regulations hit and then it made it very difficult for the Chinese people to actually buy property there. And then the pandemic hit and after that it was basically just dead. But they still maintain the buildings there.

[00:01:53]>> Oh wow, look at that tower.

[00:01:55]>> All the buildings have forest on them.

[00:01:57]It's crazy.

[00:01:59]>> Yeah.

[00:02:01]But how can that?

[00:02:03]>> Unfortunately, it was pouring down the day we were there. So, we didn't really get to experience the whole empty space of the city. But there was a mall open, so we went there and had some food. And then we went to Singapore again the next day.

[00:02:16]We are back in Singapore for just one day cuz uh Sam needs to get a garden hose and um some things at the marine store and it's nice to just uh see another city for a little bit. We love Singapore.

[00:02:31]You can get Magic cards in that's why it's called a card shack. I thought it was like a credit card, but it's not.

[00:02:38]You can get Magic cards just at the trade station and Pokemon cards. Dang.

[00:02:46]While Sam went out and did his errands, I went down to the Garden of the Bay again because I love that place and I wanted to see it just one more time.

[00:02:54][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Hey, Heat.

[00:03:47]>> [music] [music] >> So, after some delicious lunch, we went back out to see if we can find a garden hose, a motor part and some sumbrella fabric.

[00:04:06]>> Two strikes, two strikeouts where we could not find motor parts or garden hose. But we did find a fabric store and uh it was a good one actually. It's a gosh darn good one. So in Singapore, if you want to have something Oh, a scuba house. Cool.

[00:04:28]If you want to have something that's not typically in a mall, you will find it in these places. So, it's basically a huge parking garage where just all the stores are. And half of them are closed. So, you never know. You never know if they're you're going to get to a closed door.

[00:04:49]So, this is the fabric store.

[00:04:53]Who would have thought there would be a decent fabric store in here?

[00:04:57]We got it.

[00:04:59]>> Say yellow.

[00:05:00]>> And the fresh yellow for the back seat.

[00:05:04]I'm excited about that one. I think this will be really cool.

[00:05:07]>> Yeah.

[00:05:14]So, we're going to give this boat store one more chance. There's one more we haven't been to. Hopefully, they will have what we need. Fingers crossed.

[00:05:29]Oh my god, I just forgot our fabric. We had to walk like nine blocks back to get it, but it was still there.

[00:05:43]So, we came in here to have an ice cream and it's like a it's like a what do you call it?

[00:05:48]>> Umbrellas.

[00:05:50]It's like umbrellas, but also it feels like we're at um like a studio or a movie set or something. Super weird.

[00:06:20]So, we got this uh sumbrella in uh Singapore and uh they didn't have all the colors, but we decided to go for a yellow one because they had that one.

[00:06:29]And since we have the yellow sail bag and stuff, uh this back piece that's very I'll show you. It's been very um beat up here. This is like some fake suede or something. this. I don't know if this is sumbrella. It holds up very well. So, we just want to keep that. But instead of trying to match it, we're just gonna go completely wild. So, we're going to go for yellow. And I think it's going [clears throat] to be really cool. So, as you can see, I went straight to [music] work cuz I was really excited to see what that yellow would look like.

[00:07:01]So, I basically just removed the fabric and transferred the [music] pattern over to the new fabric. And uh then I sewed it together. And I thought it [music] looked pretty great. I'm really no seamstress and I have not sewn a lot in my life at all, but I actually thought it was pretty easy.

[00:07:17]We' also been a trip to IKEA and there I got some accessories that would match the yellow and make the saloon a little bit more cozy and homey.

[00:07:27]So, we spent the last days in Putri [music] Harbor just doing various boat projects, going on walks, eating good food, and relaxing a bit before the next leg. And after a few weeks, our engine part was done and fixed, and we could finally continue on our journey. Our next [music] destination would be Tioman, which is an island located on the northeast side of the Malaysian mainland.

[00:07:49]So, early one morning, it was time to leave. It's 5:00, 5:30, and we're backing out.

[00:08:02]Okay. Yeah.

[00:08:05]I'm going to stand here and see. Make sure he doesn't touch the You're clear of that thing.

[00:08:24]There we go.

[00:08:29]We've been here for like uh three weeks almost. So, uh it's a nice place, very nice place to be. But it was time to get moving again.

[00:08:45]So, the trip from Putri Harbor to Tiaman Island was about 162 nautical miles, and we expected it to take [music] a few days, mostly because we had no wind. And uh this time we also had uh current against us.

[00:09:01][music] [music] So, there's a lot of garbage here in these waters.

[00:10:07]Been driving around driving past garbage all day today. Over there is Singapore.

[00:10:12]I recognize that boat banana building and the ferris wheel. You even see the ferris wheel. There are also still a lot of boats here.

[00:10:24]Still on the shipping lane. I guess we are uh almost where we want to anchor for today.

[00:10:36]And um call it call it a day.

[00:10:43]For dinner today, we made some uh pasta lemon stuff with mustard and a salad.

[00:10:53]Yeah, that cheese in there, too.

[00:10:55]>> So, the first day we only made it like 45 nautical miles, maybe. And we spent the first night at anchor outside one of the Malaysian islands in the in the street. It's the next morning and we're already going over there.

[00:11:23]Oh, we could finally turn off the engine. Going nine knots.

[00:11:29]There's a rainbow.

[00:11:32]Ah, magical.

[00:12:09]So, we have been motoring for the last hours, but there is a squall building up here. We were supposed to anchor in that bay right over there where it is. But now we're thinking maybe we should just put the sails up and see how far we can ride this one cuz we still have to go quite a few miles up the coast.

[00:12:31]I decided to sew the last pillow. So now we have a yellow living room. I think it looks pretty nice and fresh.

[00:12:41]What do you think?

[00:12:44]I made a new seat cushion from some of the old sumbrella we had lying around.

[00:12:48]You see that it's like it's a little damaged because it's been folded, but it doesn't really matter for this thing.

[00:12:54]And uh I just wanted to try cuz we bought new umbrella in the same color for the blue pillows. And I wanted to just try and see what it this design or whatever you call it would look like. So it's uh it's velcro so you can take it off. Uh, and as you saw, there's this just like mesh in the bottom, so water should go through if it gets wet. Uh, I think that's going to work.

[00:13:22]Sam is sewing new, uh, covers for the some of the pillows because they get so moldy.

[00:13:29]So, uh, but it's fine underneath. So, one pillow done and then a few to go.

[00:13:35]This is our old, um, mattress sheet cuz we threw away one of the mattresses.

[00:13:42]And the the seat cushion is also from the mattress just cut out a So I tried this new recipe today. It's basically just the chicken and some satai based sauce that you put in a salad leaf. It smells very good. There's a lot of vegetables.

[00:14:11]So, we ended up finding a seam mount to anchor on out here in the darkness.

[00:14:21]Um, we sailed all day and uh we still didn't make it. This place is so dark.

[00:14:27]There's no fishing boats out here like in Thailand.

[00:14:33]It's new morning here. Just woke up. Sam has been going for a few hours. I hope he's still here. There he is.

[00:14:42]bags.

[00:14:44]It's a beautiful morning.

[00:14:51]>> Good morning.

[00:14:53]>> We're sailing.

[00:14:54]>> We're sailing. It looks like there might be some uh wind in front of us there.

[00:14:59]>> Oh, yeah. Maybe.

[00:15:02]>> Wow. Look at the light coming down on that mountain or the island behind there.

[00:15:07]Beautiful.

[00:15:14]Sam just told me there's a bird.

[00:15:20]>> Oh, did it sit on the Oh, there it is.

[00:15:37]Oh, we can finally see the island clearly. There it is. Ah, 1 hour. A little bit more than approximately 1 hour away. We're going to stop at some of the closer islands first, [clears throat] like this one.

[00:15:55]So, all the islands around here are marine protected areas, so you cannot anchor. you have to find a moring ball.

[00:16:01]And uh I respect that. That's perfect.

[00:16:04]Should be like that everywhere.

[00:16:06]So, let's see if we can find a moring wall.

[00:16:10]And then we're going to uh assess the dive site and see if we can dive there.

[00:16:14]Apparently, it could be a lot of currents. And I am uh kind of freaked out about that. So, we'll we will see.

[00:16:20]Maybe at least we can snorkel.

[00:16:23]I'm actually so excited about that because I have not been, believe it or not, I have not been in the ocean since we came back. Maybe I was in the ocean lancave once or twice, but not a lot.

[00:16:37]And uh the waters down the Malaka straight has just been so nasty. You don't want to swim in it. It's so sad.

[00:16:44]It really you you can't even swim in the ocean, but you don't want it. So full of garbage and uh I don't know. Here the water is clear. there are corals and uh it feels more inviting when you can actually see something. So, I'm so excited to have corals and fish outside of my doorstep again because uh I haven't seen them in so long.

[00:17:08]>> I don't see any more evol.

[00:17:12]>> There's a lot of bird poop here. That makes me happy.

[00:17:16]Look at this beautiful island.

[00:17:19]I love it. Unfortunately, we can't see any moing balls, so I guess there's not going to be any dives. But look at that.

[00:17:27]Oh, I love it. So pretty.

[00:17:31]Oh, so there are divers in the water over there, but they are with this uh the dive boats that just wait for them basically and then pick them up again.

[00:17:43]And uh since this is a place where there could be a lot of currents, that might actually be a good idea. Oh my god, we're both idiots. Like we saw this on the map. You can't really see it there.

[00:17:53]You see it, right? And uh it said astronomical.

[00:17:58]We thought it said astronomical site and we were like, "Oh, it's a meteorite crater," but then it said astronomical tide.

[00:18:07]So, it's like a the lowest astronomical tide or height. I can't remember. But at least there there's no meteor meteor crater. But Sam jumped in still. to just to be sure that there's nothing in there that we are missing. There he is. Was there anything there?

[00:18:24]>> No.

[00:18:25]>> No.

[00:18:28]No. Meteorite. Well, darn. Gosh darn.

[00:18:32]Sometimes you just you just read what you want to read. But then I guess we just continue on to uh to man. It's right over there. I'm so excited. Oh, there's a waterfall. We can go on a hike. Can use our little legs. Look at that. We're so close. Oh, wow. Oh, look at that mountain up there.

[00:18:51]Holy smokes.

[00:18:55]I don't think we're going up there.

[00:18:59]This place is just unreal.

[00:19:02]We found this bay over here to anchor.

[00:19:05]We're anchored on sand. That's allowed.

[00:19:08]Um, you can see the corals over there. I had a look and they are beautiful. I can't wait to film them.

[00:19:43]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:05]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:22]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:47]After spending so many days at sea and then waking up to bird song as we did here in Tiaman is just un I can't even describe it. It's uh it's amazing.

[00:21:20]After a coffee and some breakfast, we took the dinghy out to do some exploring of the island because we had seen that there was a waterfall nearby.

[00:21:28]>> First ride in the dinghy in a long time.

[00:21:31]We got to remember your backpack.

[00:21:33]>> Right up.

[00:21:36]>> Let's do it. Let's go see that waterfall.

[00:21:38]>> Yeah, >> you can see the two horns from here.

[00:21:42]They're called the dragon horns. I see why now. That looks cool.

[00:21:48]I can only see one from the anchorage.

[00:21:50]Look at the corals in the dock.

[00:21:54]Oh my god.

[00:21:59]>> So, because of the corals, we couldn't really anchor there. So, [music] we decided to go to the next bay and check our luck there.

[00:22:12]Not really good dingy docks, but >> you want to just beach it.

[00:22:18]But there's so many rocks here.

[00:22:22]So, here we are. There is more uh sand over here. So, throw out the anchor. Keeps the dinghy nice and not scratchy.

[00:22:34]And now we can go see the waterfall.

[00:22:36]Should be in here somewhere.

[00:22:39]Oh, no. Kitty cat, don't do that to me.

[00:22:41]I'm getting so sad of that. Don't do it.

[00:22:46]Someone is working up here.

[00:22:52]Guess someone needs to keep this trail. It's pretty nice.

[00:23:22]This one has dropped a big freaking spiky coconut.

[00:23:25]>> I know.

[00:23:26]>> Dang.

[00:23:27]>> Oh my god. It's huge.

[00:23:36]Woohoo!

[00:23:47]Here you go.

[00:23:50]Super.

[00:23:51]It's a little later in the day. We're back. Uh, and I want to see if I can find the cat again cuz it was so skinny.

[00:23:59]I have brought food. the two cats that were following us into the waterfall. I felt so bad. I thought about them all day.

[00:24:09]So, we are leaving this beautiful anchorage today.

[00:24:13]Bittersweet, but the swell coming in here is horrible. So, it's fun in the morning and it's horrible in the evening.

[00:24:21]But this view, man, I think this is the nicest anchorage we've been at thus far.

[00:24:28]And now we're just going to continue a little bit up the coast over there. and uh see if we can find a place to dive and uh eventually another place to anchor. Um there's supposed to be restaurants and stuff stuff up there, so that'll be nice. Not cooking for a day.

[00:24:45]So, we sailed until the evening and then we found a place to anchor before going ashore and just checking out the island.

[00:24:51]Super cute little village with a love the style. 10 out of 10.

[00:25:06]We're walking in kind of like the main street, I guess, and it's very islandy. Super cute.

[00:25:38]Look at this great rock.

[00:25:39]>> Oh my god. You're standing on it.

[00:25:41]>> Yeah.

[00:25:42]>> Wow.

[00:25:44]You He climbed it. He climbed that rock.

[00:25:53]We have changed Anchorage today to um the biggest uh I guess town that's here.

[00:26:05]I think it's called Teek here. Um going to go in a short, check it out. We had a a very rough night at the other anchorage. We woke up around 12:00 and the waves were just slamming in and there was a system that was uh right above us. So, it was pouring down rain, pitch black. You couldn't see anything and the waves were kind of hitting us from the side. So, we're just like slamming into the boat and uh it was scary. I was scared. Uh luckily it lasted maybe like an hour or two. Uh not like the whole night, but still that was uh not fun. Luck that the anchor held.

[00:26:46]So, I guess it could be worse, but so scary when you can't see. I don't think the waves were that big. It was just it was so steep. So, the boat were just like was going everywhere.

[00:26:57]We are both wearing our Lima t-shirts today. We're going to match.

[00:27:04]Heck yeah. These are from Lancavi.

[00:27:07]Everyone wears them there from this uh what is it? Uh it's like >> the biggest uh military expo in Southeast Asia.

[00:27:17]>> Yeah, >> there's like fighter jets and they're doing like cliffs and cool tricks and there's a battleships and all this cool stuff. [laughter] >> We got we got these t-shirts when we were there and we're going to use >> I think it's every two years maybe.

[00:27:29]>> Oh, okay.

[00:27:30]>> Not going to be this year.

[00:27:31]>> No. Well, it's okay. We were there last year or you were. I'm just I'm just getting the merch.

[00:27:40]That's where we are.

[00:27:51]We found the cutest place to have lunch.

[00:27:54]Oh my god, look at that view. It's a little breeze.

[00:27:58]And uh I mean, life is good.

[00:28:03]Let's hope the food is good.

[00:28:06]Look at that burger. It's black.

[00:28:09]So, I got the chicken burger and Sam got the beef burger.

[00:28:16]There are these weird fish. They just stand still.

[00:28:24]They just stand there. These fish were acting super weird and just like a glitch in the matrix. It looked like they were stuck in the water.

[00:28:33]In the evening, we went on a walk to go to find some food in the next village, and we found a thousand fruit bats in the tree.

[00:28:40]>> Look at those.

[00:28:44]Wow.

[00:28:47]Oh, they're so freaking cute.

[00:29:47]Wow.

[00:29:54]We are on our way to go find a restaurant. Look at these rocks. this uh this walkway also along the water.

[00:30:04]Beautiful. Also, scooters are driving on it. That's okay.

[00:30:11]Love it.

[00:30:13]>> Someone is doing a night dive. It's like that the foreigners that serious.

[00:30:17]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:30:18]>> They're going to spawn. So, we arrived at the next village.

[00:30:22]I love these fences that they have on the little bridges. It's so freaking cute.

[00:30:30]This is the literally the main street.

[00:30:36]>> Coming home to this street. A little moth on the light bulb.

[00:30:57]So, we are dealing with this today.

[00:31:00]These freaking waves coming in, man.

[00:31:03]It doesn't maybe look like much, but it's super annoying. There was one other sailboat here, but they moved went around on the other side of the island, but we want to go to that island at some point. And if we move all the way around, there's a chance that we might not turn around and go over there to dive. And I don't want to risk that. So, we have to just suck it up. Um, but instead of staying on the boat, which drives us mad, we are gonna go on a hike in the jungle. Today is actually a pretty good day since it's overcast.

[00:31:36]Might be some rain, but hopefully not.

[00:31:42]So, first we got to go find the trail head where it starts. And uh, supposedly it's up here somewhere, but it could also be hard to find. So, hope we find it.

[00:31:53]Just following the main road.

[00:32:10]So, this is the start of the trail. We had to walk past a no entry sign and there was the military guys in there.

[00:32:16]It's like a I don't know waterworks or something. They said that the trail was here. So, We're going to trust them. But it's kind of funny that the trail starts in a no entry zone.

[00:32:30]Well, so we made it to the entrance of the trail, but we uh made it also 20 m in before we realized, no, this is not our hike. It is completely overgrown and you can barely see the where the trail is. And uh it is uh like you don't know if you're going to step into an antill or or so many bugs. We're going to see if we can There's a road going there also. I think it's a scooter road probably.

[00:33:00]Not so roady as it seems on the map. So maybe that will be better because look at this. Like how the hell are you going to walk for like this for 3 hours?

[00:33:09]>> A few moments later.

[00:33:21]Today is the 17th of May and Sam printed out these cute little uh cute little Norwegian flags. They're not all in the right proportions, but who cares? This is the right colors. See see what they're supposed to be. I love it.

[00:33:43]Go get that breakfast.

[00:33:48]It was raining all day yesterday and today is super freaking hot.

[00:33:55]Came sun came back with uh vengeance.

[00:34:02]>> Oh, there are these beautiful butterflies here. Please sit still so I can a It's green.

[00:34:08]Oh wow. Drinking water.

[00:34:13]There are these huge mango trees here.

[00:34:14]And look, they are riping up there. A that looks delicious.

[00:34:20]Ah, one day I'll have this mango tree or something similar. Maybe not. Maybe not the exact one, but mango tree. It's in here.

[00:34:30]This is the view from the restaurant.

[00:34:34]I love this one.

[00:34:37]Tuman Cababana. So, we started the day with some good breakfast at our favorite breakfast place and then we went out to get some groceries before our little at a 17th of May adventure. There's a lizard some things from the store.

[00:35:00]Barbecue.

[00:35:02]So, barbecue is like a classic 17th of May food. So, that's what we were looking for, as well as some gas for the dinghy. Over here, you got some more gas for the dinghy.

[00:35:14]You can only get 10 of these bottles of gas a day. You have to fill it on your own tank and leave the plastic bottles.

[00:35:25]I just can't get enough of these bats.

[00:35:28]They are so cool. I think they are doing that because they're hot. just like using their wings as little plants. So, they're all uh [laughter] poor things. So, we took the boat and we sailed over to the nearby island which is called Pulao Tuli or Coral Island.

[00:35:48]The plan was to just hang out there and spend the 17th of May barbecuing and then potentially go for a little dive in the next morning.

[00:35:59]We sailed over there and we had some trouble finding [music] a good morning ball cuz there were three there we could choose from and we ended up picking the one that was a little bit too close to shore and figuring this out a little bit last minute. We ended up in a situation where we only had one engine that was on the wrong side from where the reef we were getting closer to was us and uh we almost crashed. It was very close. Sam was even in the dinghy at some point trying to pull us in the right direction but with no luck. But all of a sudden the wind just shifted and turned the boat around and we just could motor right out of there and find the moing ball that was uh at a little bit safer distance. But it was pretty hectic.

[00:36:39]So we don't have any footage of this because uh I mean naturally we had other things to think about than filming right then.

[00:36:47]We're having ourselves a well-deserved drink. a blue lagoon after almost crashing in the blue lagoon.

[00:36:57]>> But we made it.

[00:36:58]>> We got out.

[00:37:00]>> Today is the 17th of May. And then it's the Norwegian uh constitution. Is that what it's called?

[00:37:07]>> Best day of the year.

[00:37:08]>> Constitution day. And we have the flags.

[00:37:10]We have the king and the queen and brown cheese and uh northern lights and uh on a fjord with the flags and boonuts and we're eating barbecue because that's what you do on the on the 17th of May.

[00:37:34]The next morning we woke up early and we took the dinghy out for a little morning dive session. [music] So, we are now finding a place to anchor. And the way we do that is that Sam takes a anchor um on the dinghy in case there's a current or something that we haven't predicted and he swims over there. See if we can attach the anchor to a rock so we don't destroy any corals.

[00:38:44]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:39:54]We're making our way back to the Tiamman Island today. It's right over there.

[00:40:00]It's not very far.

[00:40:01]Um, but uh yeah, we need to go back and uh pack our stuff or buy the stuff that we need um and check out and stuff so we can go or start thinking about going to the Anambas.

[00:40:17]So excited. So the trip over from Tiaman to the Anambus Island would be around 100 nautical miles and we expected it would take [music] maybe 5 to 7 days uh with a weather forecast that we were predicted.

[00:40:31]Around here you never really know what it's going to be like if you're going to be stuck out there in no wind or if it's going to be gusty to 30 [music] knots.

[00:40:40]But at some point you just have to trust that it's going to be okay. And uh we were ready to go for it. So off we went.

[00:40:50]We spent the last day just hanging around in Toman and taking it all in and uh having some good food at all the restaurants before packing up and uh getting getting ready to leave.

[00:41:02]We needed to make sure that we had enough food for the [music] upcoming week. So, we had to do a big grocery run and get all the stuff that we might [music] think that we want.

[00:41:24]before we left Toma for [music] good. We decided to have a quick stop at the northernmost village that we hadn't been to and uh just to see if we can find some [music] lunch before leaving for good.

[00:41:36]Toman was a [music] super nice island to visit. And it's really a divers. Most of the resorts and hotels around here are diverts. [music] And everywhere you look, there are divers and gear going in or out of the water. The coral around the Tiaman Island was also one of the best one that we had [music] ever seen on our trip so far. And uh so I understand why divers come here. There's a lot of uh awesome things to [music] see underwater.

[00:41:59]So after walking around for a little bit, we eventually went back to the [music] catfish and uh set sail towards the Anabas Islands. That were some islands that before this I had never even heard about before.

[00:42:55]>> [music] [music] [music]