This past weekend I went to an island in Malaysia called Tioman with my host sister and some other exchange students. We met up at the McDonald's at the Clementi MRT station on Saturday morning around 8:00 am and then loaded up into two vans which took us across the border and three hours to the edge of Malaysia at Mersing. From there, we took a two hour speed ferry ride to Tioman, where we stayed in Kampun Salang (the village of Salang). The boat ride there was beautiful because the water was a different shade of blue at every island. Some areas it was a deep blue, others a greenish blue, and where we were, it was more of an aqua and turquoise colour. As soon as we got off the boat, we dumped our stuff in the huts and went out to the water for a swim because it was already around 4 by then. After hanging out in the water for a while, we played beach volleyball with some of the locals. By then, we were so tired that we decided to go shower up and just have dinner. After dinner, moste people went to bed, but me and Irene went down to the pier to do some reading. While I was there, this little kitten (one of the many on this island) came up and kept snuggling up against me and poking its head in my bag and stuff. It was so cute, it was so hard to not pick it up and pet it, and if Irene hadn't been glaring at me for giving the cat attention and taking pictures of it, I probably would have petted it, even knowing that it was so dirty (you'll see pictures of it and realize why it was so hard for me to resist). The next day, we woke up and had breakfast at the same restaurant as the night before, which was right by the water. It was so relaxing to sit there in the perfect weather, eating by the beach while listening to the waves. This was one of those moments when I was really sad thinking about the fact that I would be back in Canada soon, in the middle of winter, back to real life and real school work, lol. Anyway, after breakfast, we loaded up onto a speedboat to go snorkelling. Our first stop was by a set of rocks in the water, where we just jumped off the boat in the middle of the ocean and started swimming with the fishes. My first look into the water was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. Seeing the beautiful blue water and the coral and all the colourful tropical fish was absolutely gorgeous. It was so surreal, I felt like I was watching a National Geographic documentary. Anyway, I dont' know if words can actually describe my experience, so I'll just move on. After that, we went over to the island of Tulai, where the water was totally clear and the sand was white - basically, it looked like a picture from a brochure you'd find at a travle agency. Anyway, we got out and swum around for a while and fed fish. It was so cool, I had tropical fish eating bread out of my hand! Also, at one point, I had my goggles on under the water and had 5 fish staring at me straight in the face, lol. I will never forget that moment. There was this one type of fish that I kept seeing that was so pretty, it was all colourful and the markings and colours on it made it look like it was wearing make up, with long blue eyelashes and pink lipstick! Unfortunately, while I was in the water, the tide pushed me over and the arch of my foot landed on the point of a rock in the water (because of which I have been limping for the past two days, lol). Anyway, Tulai was absolutely beautiful and I wish we could have had more time there but our boat was leaving that afternoon to take us back to Mersing so we had to get back to Salang to shower and pack up. As we were leaving on the boat, it started raining, but luckily the weather had been good the whole time we were there, even though it was so close to Monsoon season. By the time we took the ferry, then a bus to Johor Bahru, then another bus across the border, then the MRT back to Clementi station, and ate food, and took a taxi back home, it was midnight, so I got back and just went to bed.