Tioman Island offers stunning beaches, vibrant corals and clear turquoise waters, ideal for all travellers. Photo / Unsplash
Whether you’re travelling solo, as honeymooners, with young children or several generations, the little island of Tioman is guaranteed to delight, writes Tim Roxborogh.
There’s a tiny island off the coast of Tioman Island in Malaysia that you can walk to at low tide. Jungle sprouts from its centre, guarded by boulders. And where the boulders disperse, there are white sands, vibrant corals and turquoise waters so clear it’s like liquid glass. I didn’t even know it was big enough to have a name – Pulau Tumok – but as I made my way through the ankle-deep water, I knew this would be one of those places so beautiful it feels criminal to be on your own.
Well, “on my own” in the sense that my wife Aimee was a 20-minute walk away in Paya Village, splashing about in the resort pool with our 6-year-old daughter Riley. And as Aimee and Riley hung out poolside with a family of macaques and the occasional monitor lizard or black giant squirrel for company, the grandparents, Kathy and Alan, were resting up in their air-conditioned room while our 2-year-old boy, Austin, napped. I had a leave pass for a few hours to do one of the things that makes me the happiest: exploring the always astonishing tropical paradise that is Tioman Island.
I’ve been visiting this mountainous, turtle-shaped, 136sq km island of glorious jungle, beaches and diving for almost 20 years. Home to 2000 people spread across seven villages, I was hooked from my first stay in 2008. From treks through ancient rainforest, spectacular snorkelling straight off the beach and a laidback feel with barely any roads and or buildings over three storeys, Tioman was it for me; my own Bali Hai.
Once upon a time, it was just that: one of the filming locations for the mythical Bali Hai in the 1958 smash hit musical South Pacific. For a long time, “Bali Hai” was 20th century pop cultural code for how you’d imagine the most stunning of unspoilt tropical islands, and Tioman was that epitomised. In the 1970s, it was Time Magazine that got on board, proclaiming Tioman one of the world’s 10 most beautiful islands. And yet fast forward to the 21st century and it seems few New Zealanders have heard of Tioman. Bali, yes. But the original Bali Hai?
I’ve stopped apologising for always returning – six times now. Each Tioman chapter involves discovering something new and, without fail, meeting fellow tourists and locals who feel like old friends. In 2009, it was doing the 7km cross-island trail between Tekek and Juara and catching a 4WD for the thrilling jungle road home. In 2010, it was hiking between Air Batang and Salang with a snorkel in my backpack and cooling off at every gorgeous bay along the way.
In 2015, it was finding a turtle sanctuary south of Berjaya, while in 2017, it was honeymooning at one of Malaysia’s most impressive five-star eco-resorts, Japamala, in the island’s southwest. Not a tree chopped down, not a boulder removed. Bringing Aimee to Tioman was always the plan, and when children arrived, I knew one day we’d have to bring them too. And then we thought, “let’s take the grandparents as well!” So, in 2025, we did.
Tioman is an easy 90-minute ferry ride from the town of Mersing on Peninsula Malaysia’s east coast. Accommodation-wise you’ll find everything from simple one and two-star huts aimed at backpackers and divers, through to three-star family resorts, and right up to world-class five-star eco-retreats. It’s truly some of the best jungle on the planet, just as what’s underwater in terms of marine life is up there with Southeast Asia’s most acclaimed.
I made the call: I had to turn around. I’d already trekked up through the jungle behind our resort to a gargantuan 300-year-old fig tree known as “Mother Willow” that has entangled its root system across a series of boulders. I’d then swum in rock pools with the mountain water, a brief respite from the 30C heat. Then it was back down towards the coast and into the outer reaches of Paya village.
Emerging from the trees, I spotted the tiny island. I have a photo of Pulau Tumok from one of my previous Tioman adventures when I did a round-island boat tour, but I’d never set foot on it. But once I got there, it was too special. I’d done Tioman as a bachelor and as a honeymooner, but never with children and grandparents. They had to see this too.
Traipsing back through the water to the beach, I walked along the village’s main path through the palm trees with chalets on the left and the sand and sea on the right. An hour later, but this time in a party of six who’d responded to my insistence that what they’d see would blow them away, we were all on Pulau Tumok.
“It’s neat, eh?” said Alan with typical flourish. He wasn’t wrong; the colour and clarity of the water, the views back to Paya Village with that wall of the densest jungle, and that feeling that if you washed ashore on a deserted island, in your wildest dreams it just might look like this.
The writer was hosted by Tourism Malaysia, Aman Tioman Beach Resort and Malaysia Airlines. Visit malaysiaairlines.com for information about its new A330neo aircraft.