After beautiful days on Pulau Tioman (more on that later), it was time to head back on Sunday morning. As written earlier, we only managed to get tickets for the 9am ferry. After the long queues at immigration on the way there, we didn’t mind so much anymore as it would mean we could clear earlier and hopefully avoid the worst.

Even though we had our tickets in hard already, we again had to be there an hour early. Not knowing better, we did so and did not regret it. There was already a long queue for registering on the boarding list. Once done, we had our boarding pass in hand and proceeded to clear customs (Tioman is duty free). Up until this point, it seemed to straight forward. And indeed it was too straight forward.

We had individual boarding numbers. In the boarding hall after a while (around 9am) they let people board. After a while boarding stopped for not apparent reason. After a while, word made round that until up to sequence number 116 would be boarded. We were in the 190s. So they proceeded to look for the people who were supposed to board but hadn’t. That took a while. The ferry left about 30mins late.

I’ll spare you on the details but to put it mildly, it was very poorly organized with not announcements (loud speakers weren’t working and neither were the TV screens). We ended up leaving 75mins late. Which of course meant, we missed our direct bus to Singapore.

As luck would have it, all buses to Singapore or JB were sold out. We ended up taking a taxi with another couple for 200 MYR. We reached the checkpoint by 3pm with little queues on the Malaysian side. Until we tried to get on a bus to get to the Singaporean side. Massive queues. So once again we walked.

Happy to see the low-key immigration checkpoint of Woodlands again after the long trips.

Luckily, from there on it was all good again. We were swiftly through Singaporean immigration and quickly managed to get a direct bus close to our hood.

The last leg of our trip.

All in all, the door to door trip took us 8.75 hours… not something we’ll repeat anytime soon.

On a brighter note: friends of ours had private transport arrange and left Singapore around 4am. They managed to catch the 6.30am ferry to Tioman and were having breakfast at the hotel by 9am…

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.

Good Friday – long weekend in Singapore! Flights to just about anywhere except Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta were outrageously expensive, so we settled on Pulau Tioman. Why not travel overland for once instead of flying and visit one of Malaysia’s most beautful island? Sounds good to me.

A hotel was quickly found. Transport was a bit trickier – there is only one ferry operator, Bluewater Express. But multiple agents sellting tickets it seems. After a big back and forth, we secured our tickets – 75 MYR return per person (€19). The schedule is not published until about a month out as the ferry is depending on the tides. Our outbound ended up being scheduled for Friday 9.30am, which was fine by us even though it meant a night in the coastal town of Mersing (the first buses leaving Singapore around 6.30am only make it in time for the 11am ferry).  However the return trip would leave Tioman on Sunday at 9am, which basically meant we would lose Sunday.

Since we had to get to Mersing Thursday evening, we had to go for a transport option from Johor Bharu across the border, since the busses from Singapore don’t depart after noon. We opted for the last bus leaving JB at 7pm that should get us into Mersing by 9pm. Smooth sailing I thought. And 15 MYR (€4) per person was tough to beat.

The first mishap happened when my bus that was supposed to take me to JB did not show up. A call to the hotline revealed that it was cancelled. Makes sense to cancel it on one of the busier travel days. So public bus took me to Khatib, followed by the MRT to Marsiling. This was where it first started to show that I wasn’t the only one headed to the border (not that I was surprised). A short bus ride to the Woodlands Checkpoint and I was jointed by hundreds of travellers headed north. By now it was 6pm, so still 90mins to go until my bus would leave.

But by the time I had cleared Singaporean immigration, I knew the bus would be gone. Not only was the immigration queue nearly 30mins long, but then the next queue to catch a bus across the strait was even longer. We ended up walking the one kilometer across. Not something I would necessarily recommend. Malaysian immigration was fairly quick and we were soon on a bus to the Larkin Bus Terminal, hoping we could catch another bus to Mersing. But as expected the last bus for the night had left.

When going by public transport it is always important to have a Plan B. In this case our Plan B was to take a bus to Kota Tinggi, ca. 100km south of Mersing. Soon enough we were on a bus and reached Kota Tinggi by 10.30pm after a 90mins bus ride.

5.80 MYR to Kota Tinggi (€1.50) for a 90mins bus ride… certainly not overpriced

Here we faced the next problem: the last bus to Mersing had left. And we did not have a Plan C. Not wanting to spend a night in Kota Tinggi and take chances to miss our ferry the next day, we had not choice but to getting to know the local taxi mafia. Starting out with 180 MYR, an 80% mark-up of the normal price, the driver generously settled for 150 Ringgit – a mere 50% surcharge. Our negotiating position was rather weak, hence soon we found ourselves in a beat up Proton and on our way.

Exhausted we finally arrived at our hotel, the Muara Inn (which I would recommend for a short overnight stay) by 11.30pm.

Lessons learnt:

1. Avoid crossing the Woodlands checkpoint on the evening before a Public Holiday
2. If you can’t avoid it, cross in a private car
3. If you still have no other choice, bring plenty of patience, factor in lots of buffer before any connecting buses and bring a Plan B & C.

Stay tuned for the ferry ride from & to Pulau Tioman… as that was a story in itself as well.

Mersing Jetty