Tioman is a beautiful, remote island with some great diving in warm water. There are more than enough dive sites to last a week's uninterrupted diving.
Sites are reached by day boat from the main villages around the coast. The most popular are Salang (northwest of the island) and Air Batang (also known as ABC and located a little further south along the coast).
There are impressive and intact hard and soft corals, plenty of anenomes and nudibranchs, plus the usual warm water suspects from parrot fish to rays and morays. More occasional sightings are hump-headed wrasse, reef sharks and turtles.
Most of the sites have gentle currents, if any, although tiger reef had a very strong surface current when I dived. This, though, eased substantially by the time we had hit the bottom at 20m.
There are some modest wrecks, but the WWII wrecks such as Repulse and Prince of Wales can be booked on liveaboards via Tioman, if this is your bag.
You can get to the island by flights from Kuala Lumpur and Singapore (www.berjaya-air.com) or via ferries from Mersing (Johor state, Malaysia).
Best time to visit is March or April (best viz), but I went in June and it was great. Time it to avoid the northeast monsoon that can spoil the weather and the viz.
Plenty of bars and eateries on the island, plus opportunities for snorkelling, shore diving and mountain climbing/jungle trekking.
All in all, a great - and cheap - place to dive in SE Asia.
Ian Matthews - June 2006
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