Pulau Tioman: How NOT to organize ferry operations

• Pulau Tioman: How NOT to get there
• Pulau Tioman: How NOT to organize ferry operations
• Pulau Tioman: How to get back

So we made it to Mersing. Our ticket agent for the ferry told us to collect our tickets 1.5hrs before departure. We did not quite understand why but obliged after the hotel owner recommended the same.

Busy jetty on Friday morning

By the time we got to the jetty, the place was packed already (it’s a relatively small jetty with most services going to Tioman). Without going into the details, these are the five simple steps to get on the ferry with your booked and pre-paid tickets:

1. Find your agent and collect tickets
2. Queue to pay to for your conservation fee (it would be too easy if this fee was included in the ticket price)
3. Queue to have your ticket validated
4. Queue to register your name on the boarding list
5. Queue to exchange your ticket for a boarding pass

The 20 MYR Conservation Fee and 5 MYR Conservation Charge

In the boarding area it was disorderly… no anouncements. Some people holding on to purple boarding passes, with others having yellow boarding passes. Eventually it turned out that there were two ferrys running in parallel and the color of the boarding pass deciding which you are on. We were booked on the Bistari 1 and finally left Mersing around 30mins late.

Our ticket after having cleared the five steps to boarding and every step leaving its mark.

Tioman here we come!

The reward for not an exactly straight forward trip.