KELLIBRATION

 Every time that I've been to Tioman island, I've gone snorkeling around the island, and found it to be a colorful paradise of tropical creatures and clear blue waters. Here are some highlights of this past trip! swimming with baby sharks! just the best beach snack ever. SPICY! I found another friend when I went to get lunch at a local place. Got to see a turtle around here! When we were on the way back to shore in the afternoon, we came across a huge school of dolphins! They were swimming next to the boat, and we stopped for a bit to marvel at them. As we were finally leaving, a couple of them jumped up straight out of the water! I have only ever seen that in movies or at a water show. To see it in nature, it was just incredible!

When asked what my favorite island is, I always say that it's a toss up between a few, but Tioman Island is definitely up there! It's an island in Malaysia that I had been to three times previously, and unique in the sense that though it does have some tourism compared to other nearby tropical islands, has remained relatively untouched. It's large, and the interior is jungle, so all the villages and bungalow operations are at different beaches around the island. Tioman has a kind of wild feel -- maybe since the interior is still rainforest, and from time to time is home to the very elusive Rafflesia flower. It's also world famous for rock climbing, but rock climbing of the extreme type. Once, I stayed in the village called Mukut, the gateway to climb the Dragon Horns, two stone massifs, majestic and mysterious. While in that village, I befriended a local that would take people on rock climbing excursions, and he shared some of his photos of the vertical climbing (as wel...