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19 AugA dismantled light aircraft lies among the building materials in the village.
19 AugA white cat with two differently coloured eyes.
19 AugThe duty-free shop in Tekek sells cognac in three-litre bottles — and it costs more than at
home in Germany.
19 AugThe breakfast pancake is a rolled crêpe with banana.
19 AugThe bay is not one continuous beach, and late in the morning it is empty.
What did not work 2
The route
Eight stops between Singapore and the north of Borneo. The journey out via Frankfurt and Bahrain lies outside the frame. The 29 first-hand entries hang off the stops — a second way into the text, by place instead of by topic.
The map tiles come from OpenStreetMap. Loading them tells openstreetmap.org your IP address — so it happens on your click, not before.
- Singapur215–17 Aug · 5–7 Sep
- Johor Bahru417 Aug · border and Larkin Sentral
- Mersing1117–18 Aug · ferry port for Tioman
- The long-distance bus stops right at the Plaza D'Jeti ferry terminal.
- The town is full of cats.
- The BSN cash machine in Mersing paid out, on a travel credit card and with no fee.
- RM500 was the amount, and that is tighter than it sounds.
- In the late afternoon the town happens on the seafront promenade.
- And this is what it looks like (17 Aug, 18:20 local).
- The fees are not collected in the terminal but in an office near the jetty.
- Only the marine park fee was charged.
- The waiting hall is an open pavilion, not a building.
- You board from the pontoon, right alongside the hull.
- A mamak stall in Mersing charges RM 6.50 to RM 11.00 for a full plate, and RM 3.50 for breakfast.
- Tioman1218–21 Aug
- The place we stay sits directly on the sand.
- The bay is shallow and calm, and the jetty at the far end is in sight.
- The place is called Coral Reef Holiday Resort, and breakfast is served on the sand.
- The breakfast pancake is a rolled crêpe with banana.
- The bay is not one continuous beach, and late in the morning it is empty.
- The rainforest starts right behind the houses of Tekek.
- The village road in Tekek is a concrete strip, and not much drives along it.
- A board on the waterfront in Tekek sorts the whole island at a glance.
- Flying foxes hang in the needle trees along the shore in Tekek, dozens of them.
- The duty-free shop in Tekek sells cognac in three-litre bottles — and it costs more than at home in Germany.
- A dismantled light aircraft lies among the building materials in the village.
- A white cat with two differently coloured eyes.
- Kuala Lumpur22–24 Aug
- Sandakan25–28 Aug · Sabah
- Kota Kinabalu29 Aug – 3 Sep
- Kudat4–5 Sep · Tip of Borneo
How to read this document
Every point carries a mark. That is the most important part of the document:
- ✓ we did it ourselves — we did this, it worked this way. Date follows.
- ○ looked up beforehand — from a solid source, but we have not checked it ourselves. May be right, may be out of date.
- ✗ did not work — so that nobody tries it twice.
A travel report that mixes the two is worth nothing: the reader can then no longer tell, for a single sentence in it, whether there is an experience behind it or a web page.
Getting around Singapore
From Jalan Besar to Gardens by the Bay: 33 minutes, at seven in the evening (16 Aug). Measured between "we're at Jalan Besar" and "we're at the garden", so including the walk to the station and the walk at the far end. By MRT, Downtown Line, six stops to Bayfront.
The direction of travel is the trap, and it costs you the connection. The Downtown Line runs in an arc: Bayfront (DT16) lies geographically south of Jalan Besar (DT22), but the right train goes towards Bukit Panjang, which looks like north. On the platform, look at the station numbers, not at the compass. From Bayfront: exit B, underpass, then Dragonfly Bridge or Meadow Bridge.
Garden Rhapsody in the Supertree Grove — free, no ticket, and you simply stand underneath it (16 Aug). No barriers, no rows, no admission: the audience spreads across the plaza between the trees and a lot of people lie flat on their backs, because the show plays upwards. You need no particular spot for a photograph — you need distance, because up close a single Supertree fills the entire frame. In the wide shot below a good number of umbrellas are up in the crowd, so the show carries on in the rain. (That is read off the picture, not something we reported.)
Telegram 17 Aug, 09:39live on this page 17 Aug, 09:5011 min
2 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
The second light show is called Spectra and sits 800 metres away. Water, light and lasers, at 20:00 and 21:00 on the Event Plaza at Marina Bay Sands, right at the station exit; Garden Rhapsody runs at 19:45 and 20:45. Fifteen minutes each. You can do both in one evening: 20:00 Spectra, ten minutes' walk, 20:45 Garden Rhapsody. We only went to Garden Rhapsody — what stands here about Spectra has stayed research.
From the airport into town, the luggage decides, not the price. MRT S$2.20 per person (45–50 min, two changes), taxi S$25–45 including the S$6 airport surcharge, a six-seater from the fixed-price counter for S$75. A normal taxi seats four people but does not take four suitcases for three weeks — then it is two cars or a six-seater, and comparing fares alone gives you the wrong answer.
Border Singapore → Malaysia
On a Monday morning we were through on the Malaysian side by about 12:00 local time (17 Aug). We set off from Little India. How long the control itself took is not recorded — other people's experience is that almost all of the time goes on queueing rather than on the distance; the Causeway is a good kilometre long.
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The signage in the border hall is already there. After the control you stand in front of
signs reading ↑ JB Sentral. JB Sentral is the station directly next to the border building
and the place everything continues from — bus, taxi, train, all of it there. You do not have
to ask anyone.
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A bus runs from JB Sentral to Larkin, and it is the easiest way (17 Aug). Larkin Sentral is the long-distance bus station from which you go on into the country — about 5 kilometres from the border building. The bus from JB Sentral takes contactless cards and Google Pay, see “Paying” below. What you will usually be recommended is a Grab for around RM20; the bus does the same thing for a fraction of it.
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5 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
You cannot order a Grab at the border building itself. The pick-up point would be the ground floor of JB Sentral next door. Open the app inside the hall and you will find no car.
Walking across the Causeway is illegal on the Malaysian side (RM300–2000, signs since April 2026). Singapore does not forbid it, but you would be entering the other side — so it is not an option, however short the walk looks on the map.
Going through by car remains the most comfortable variant with luggage. Grab has been
crossing the border under its own licence since 4 May 2026 (SG>JB (Beta) in the app, book
6 hours to 7 days ahead). In the car everyone stays seated at both controls, passports go
through the window, fingerprint and face scan happen in the vehicle, the luggage stays in the
boot. On the bus you get out twice with everything you own. A six-seater is around S$120 = 81
euros from the hotel door to Larkin Sentral.
The Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) is compulsory at the land border too. There is
no exemption for Germans, it is free, available at the earliest 3 days before arrival, and
only at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main — paid imitations rank above it on Google,
so type the address rather than clicking a search result. You need your passport, the arrival
date, the Malaysian accommodation address, an email address and a phone number.
The trap when reading up on it: almost every hit for "MDAC exemption" is about Singaporeans
and reads like an all-clear for everybody.
Singapore has the same thing (SG Arrival Card), and it applies per entry. If, like us,
you enter twice, you need it twice. Free, at the earliest 3 days ahead, only
eservices.ica.gov.sg/sgarrivalcard or the MyICA app.
From the border to Mersing
From the border to the ferry terminal in Mersing: a good four hours (17 Aug). Measured between "we're through the control" at 12:01 local time and the photo of the ferry terminal at 16:11 — that covers everything: the way to Larkin, the waiting and the ride itself. If you want to catch the ferry to Tioman on the same day, budget half a day for this leg.
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The long-distance bus stops right at the Plaza D'Jeti ferry terminal (17 Aug). Terminal, ticket counters, shops and the bus forecourt are all on the same square; between getting off the bus and reaching the ferry counter there is no transfer and no second ride.
In mid-August Johor is covered in flags (17 Aug). Malaysian flags and the Johor flag on fences, poles and house walls, in small towns too. The national holiday, Merdeka, is on 31 August and the decorations go up weeks ahead — good for photographs, and a warning that the end of August means busy roads and holiday traffic.
In Mersing
The town is full of cats (17 Aug). Jens's message about it was one sentence: "we love all the cats". The photographs show three different animals in three places in the town centre, all well fed, none of them running away: a black one in the shade under a market cart, a ginger-and-white one stretched out asleep across a tiled floor, a black-and-white one glancing over as it walks past. This is not a quirk of the day — it is what a small Malaysian town looks like.
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Petting them is harmless here — on Borneo it is not, and not in the part most people assume. Peninsular Malaysia, which includes Johor and Mersing, has been officially rabies-free since July 2013; the last human case was in 1998. Sarawak, by contrast, has had an ongoing outbreak since 2017 that is still killing people: between January and mid-September 2025 it recorded 13,894 animal bites, and 59.7 % of them came from cats, not dogs. Sabah — Sandakan, Kota Kinabalu, Kudat — is likewise considered rabies-free. The two states sit on the same island and are constantly mixed up. So before touching a cat on Borneo, know which of the two you are standing in; and after a bite or a scratch the rule is the same everywhere: see a doctor straight away, do not wait.
The BSN cash machine in Mersing paid out, on a travel credit card and with no fee (17 Aug). This is the most useful line in the section, and it contradicts what we had assumed beforehand (see "Paying"): the card was not refused, no foreign-card fee was charged — and it happened at the very bank we had warned against. Anyone carrying a travel credit card without a foreign transaction charge needs no money changer for Mersing and does not have to stock up on cash in Johor Bahru.
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RM500 was the amount, and that is tighter than it sounds (17 Aug). RM165 of it is already committed: RM105 marine park fee at the ferry counter in Mersing and RM60 tourist tax at the accommodation on Tioman. That leaves RM335 for four people across three island days — breakfast is included at the guesthouse, boat rides between the bays and a snorkelling trip are not. We had budgeted RM800–1,200 for those, but that figure is an estimate and carries no source. Anyone who would rather not find out tops up in Mersing while five banks still stand side by side; on the island there is exactly one machine, and an island machine can be empty.
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No fee is not the same as no interest. On many credit cards a cash withdrawal counts as a cash advance and accrues interest from the day it is taken, even when no fee is charged; some travel cards waive both, others only the fee. That is written in the card terms, not on the machine. We did not look it up for our own card — it is the only point in this section we have not checked ourselves.
The conspicuous empty building in the town centre used to be a cinema. The lettering above the entrance has worn away to the shadows of its letters, but the last word clearly ends in THEATRE, and the windowless block on the roof is the tower that held the projection and stage machinery of old picture houses. No open source gives up the name. One trail does lead on: Mersing has a locally famous noodle stall called Mee Goreng Panggung Wayang — literally "cinema fried noodles" — which by local account once stood inside the cinema itself; it is on Google Maps as "Panggung Cafe Mersing". That does not prove it was this building.
In the late afternoon the town happens on the seafront promenade (17 Aug). A paved path between coconut palms and the sea, pavilions to sit in, playground equipment, and behind it the road with the parking spaces. In the photo families are walking, children are cycling, and the flags for Merdeka are already up on the masts. If you are waiting for the ferry in Mersing and do not know where to go: here — this is where everyone is in the evening. (Read off the picture, not reported by us.)
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Mersing to Tioman — what has to be done before boarding
A ferry is not a train. Between the terminal and the boat there are several counters, two of them cash only, and the departure time is not set by a timetable but by the tide. This section was written the evening before, which is why every point carries a ○ — what actually happened goes in here on 18 Aug.
The departure time follows the tide and changes every day. Mersing's harbour basin is shallow; the ferry can only leave when there is enough water under it. The published August schedule therefore shows something different on every date: 08:30 and 13:00 on 15 Aug, only 10:00 on 16 Aug, 10:30 and 15:00 on 17 Aug, 11:30 on 18 Aug. Anyone taking the departure time from a guidebook or from last week is planning against the moon — and the operator says itself that the schedule may change without notice. The second harbour, Tanjung Gemok (many bookings still carry its old name, Teluk Gading), is 40 kilometres north and does not have the problem, because the water there is deep enough. Both harbours serve Tioman, but only one of them is on your ticket.
And this is what it looks like (17 Aug, 18:20 local). On the evening before the crossing the small boats on the far bank were sitting in the mud while the two larger boats at the pontoon were still afloat. That is not storm damage and not a bad day — it is the ordinary tidal range, and it is the reason the departure time in Mersing is different every day. Once you have seen it, the timetable explains itself.
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The Jabatan Laut, Malaysia's marine department, sits on the same quay. The building with the small green tower stands right at the river mouth. It is not a place travellers need — but it does show that these are not only pleasure boats: Mersing is a working harbour with a fishing fleet, and the ferries share the water with it.
Three counters, and the order is fixed.
- Ferry counter. The online booking is exchanged for boarding passes. Every traveller's passport is scanned and registered; one person cannot do it for the group.
- Marine park counter. Cash, on presentation of the ferry tickets. Keep the receipt: the places to stay on Tioman ask for it at check-in, and it covers the whole stay.
- Johor fee counter. Its own counter and its own amount — although on 18 Aug it was not charged at all, see below.
The fees are not collected in the terminal but in an office near the jetty (18.08.). Jens reported it on the morning of the crossing: the office sits away from the terminal building, with a pavilion in front of it — that is how you find it. So the boarding passes come from one place and the fees are paid at another. That is an extra walk, and it was not in our plan further down. Which fee is charged there is two paragraphs on; the amount is still open.
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The fees, and the one where the sources disagree. The marine park fee is not in dispute: foreigners pay RM30 as adults and RM15 as a child aged 6 to 12, under 6 free, over 60 also RM15 (rates published by the Malaysian Department of Fisheries). For the four of us — three adults and a twelve-year-old — that is RM105. On top of it comes a Johor national park fee of RM20 per adult, explicitly charged only on departures from Mersing, not from Tanjung Gemok. For the child rate one source says RM5 and another RM10, so for us it is either RM65 or RM70. And the author of one very thorough guide writes that he never met it in practice. That is the reason to carry it in cash anyway: not being charged costs nothing, not having it costs you the ferry.
Only the marine park fee was charged (18 Aug). That settles the question the sources disagree about in the paragraph above: at the office by the jetty the marine park fee was the only thing collected — no second amount and no second counter. The author of the guide who wrote that he never met the Johor fee in practice turns out to be right. We would still carry it in cash: one Tuesday morning in August does not overturn a published schedule of fees, it only shows that on that day, at that spot, nobody collected it. What the marine park fee came to in the end goes here as soon as it is reported.
Telegram 18 Aug, 02:19live on this page 18 Aug, 02:3920 min
3 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
Both fees cash only — and there is no cash machine in the terminal. The nearest ones are 400 to 494 metres away, five to seven minutes on foot (calculated from OpenStreetMap coordinates, not paced out). Five banks stand next to each other there, and for anyone staying in the town centre the distances invert: from Jalan Abu Bakar it is 85 metres to Bank Simpanan Nasional and 90 to Public Bank. So you draw the cash before checking out, not on the way to the boat. Ask for small notes: the fee counters keep little change.
When you have to be there. The ticket hall is open from 07:30 to 20:00. Check-in starts one hour before departure, boarding passes are sometimes handed out only 30 minutes before, and you should be standing on the pontoon 30 minutes before. The usual advice is 60 minutes off season and 90 during the school holidays. More than an hour and a half buys nothing, because nobody is at the counter before that.
The crew take your luggage as you board and ask where you are getting off. On Tioman the boat calls at several villages — Genting, Paya, Tekek, ABC, Salang. If you cannot name your village on the spot, you will be looking for your bags in the wrong bay.
The waiting hall is an open pavilion, not a building (18.08.). A tiled roof on posts, open at the sides, ceiling fans overhead, fixed rows of seats, two screens with the departures. There is no air conditioning here and there cannot be — anyone counting on a cooled hall is dressed wrong for the midday wait. The shade is the whole offer, and it is enough.
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You board from the pontoon, right alongside the hull (18.08.). The queue stands under a canopy, everyone still carrying their own luggage. The boat is a catamaran and the operator is Cataferry — the name is painted in large letters on the side, so you can tell from the pontoon whether you are standing at the right boat.
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You travel in an enclosed cabin, not on deck (18.08.). Airline-style seating, screens on the bulkhead, a board on the wall listing the forbidden items. A safety video about the life jackets runs before departure. Whatever you need during the crossing therefore belongs in the bag at your seat, not in the luggage you hand over as you board. At 11:32 local time we were in our seats, with departure scheduled for 11:30 — the timings in the table below held all the way to the seat.
Telegram 18 Aug, 03:32live on this page 18 Aug, 03:419 min
The order we are going to work through tomorrow — ferry at 11:30.
| Time | What |
|---|---|
| 09:00 | Draw cash, 85 metres from the door, at the machine that worked yesterday. Ask for small notes |
| 09:45 | Check out (possible until 12:00, but the rest of the morning should not hang on it) |
| 10:00 | At the terminal. Passports to hand, collect boarding passes |
| 10:20 | To the office by the jetty, the one with the pavilion in front: marine park fee in cash, receipt filed with the passports. The Johor fee was not asked for |
| 10:45 | Food and toilets — both at the terminal, neither on the boat |
| 11:00 | On the pontoon. Hand over luggage, name the village: Tekek |
| 11:30 | Cast off |
On Tioman — what we expect to find
This section was written before we arrived, so almost all of it is still ○. What we have seen for ourselves since 18 August stands at the top with ✓; the ○ lines below are still waiting to be checked.
The place we stay sits directly on the sand (18.08.). Not a hotel building but a row of white cabins side by side, each with its own door onto the beach. Between the bottom step and the water there are a few paces of sand and no road. Kayaks lie in front of the doors for guests, and hand-painted signs on a tree point towards breakfast and showers. Anyone expecting a lobby and a reception desk will look in vain: the door of the cabin is the entrance.
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The bay is shallow and calm, and the jetty at the far end is in sight (18.08.). Bright water without waves, clear a long way out, forested hills running down to the shore behind it. A hammock hangs between two posts at the waterline. Just before 3 pm local time the beach was empty. At the far end of the bay stands a long jetty with a few roofs in front of it — from here that is all one can make out.
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The place is called Coral Reef Holiday Resort, and breakfast is served on the sand (19.08.). Until now the name stood here as "Coral Beach or something" — that is settled. The tables stand outdoors between the palms and the waterline, white cloths, black plastic chairs, a parasol among them. Behind the tables runs a line of pale boulders as a breakwater, and behind that the turquoise water of the bay. Breakfast came with two tall glasses of fruit drink, one magenta from dragon fruit, one pale yellow. Whether they are included or paid for separately is not measured here — breakfast itself is included according to the booking.
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The breakfast pancake is a rolled crêpe with banana (19.08.). Not a stack of American pancakes but a thin sheet of batter, rolled up, dusted with icing sugar and topped with three slices of banana. The filling is pale brown and coarse; the photo does not say what it is. With it comes coffee in a glass mug and a bottle of amber syrup or honey on the table. Nothing savoury is on the plate — no egg, no toast, no bacon. Whether you can ask for that, we did not ask.
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The bay is not one continuous beach, and late in the morning it is empty (19.08.). One stretch of the shore is armoured with a bank of pale boulders, several metres wide — anyone expecting a single unbroken sweep of sand is wrong at that spot. Next to it the sand starts and runs in a shallow curve along the bay to a wooded point, where a pavilion with an orange tiled roof stands on yellow-painted posts. Far out beyond the bay lies a small wooded rock island. Along the tree line a few things sit in the sand: a black net, an old sack, a pale sheet of metal — nothing here is raked. Just before twelve local time there was not a single person on the beach.
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The rainforest starts right behind the houses of Tekek (18.08.). Behind the row of houses at the edge of the village the slope rises straight away, densely overgrown up to the ridge, with single tall trees standing out above the canopy. Between the last roof and the forest there is neither a field nor a garden. Stand on the village road and you have corrugated iron roofs on one side and the forest on the other.
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The village road in Tekek is a concrete strip, and not much drives along it (18.08.). One lane wide, orange and white plastic barriers along the edges, small shops under metal roofs between them, a blue gazebo with a chest freezer in front of it and a bridge with a white railing. On the road: one scooter, a goat crossing it, and a single pickup with a company decal on the door. Malaysian flags hang from poles and fences.
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The flags are up because of the month. Malaysia celebrates its independence day, Hari Merdeka, on 31 August; throughout August national and state flags hang from houses, fences and street poles. On that day we will be in Kota Kinabalu.
A board on the waterfront in Tekek sorts the whole island at a glance (18 Aug). A blue frame with "Pulau Tioman" down the side in large letters, holding a drawn map with one box per village. Tekek: the marina, the marine park centre, a golf course, the jungle path across the island to Juara, and a zip line at Keluang. Salang in the far north: a whale rock sculpture and the forest track over from Panuba. Juara on the east side, the only village facing the open sea: two waterfalls, a viewpoint, a surf school. Nipah and Mukut in the south: a cave, kayaking, the Asah waterfall and a via ferrata on Gunung Nenek Semukut. Between the villages lie the dive islands — Chebeh, Tulai, Labas, Sepoi, Soyak, Renggis, Jahat — each marked with a diver or snorkel symbol. Whether any of it holds up goes here once we have seen it ourselves.
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Flying foxes hang in the needle trees along the shore in Tekek, dozens of them (18 Aug). Just before half past six in the evening, a good hour before sunset, they are still there: dark bundles on the thin branches, head down, each wrapped in its own wings, three or four side by side on some boughs. More than sixty can be counted individually in the enlarged crops; where they hang densely they merge into one another, so the colony is larger. The strip of trees stands between the concrete path and the sand, with the beach behind it. From the path you only see them if you look up — from below they are shadows in the branches.
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3 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
They are island flying foxes, and this strip of trees is one of only two roosts on the whole island. The species on Tioman is Pteropus hypomelanus, the island flying fox. A count running from March to October 2015 found the animals in exactly two places: Tekek and Juara. It came to 675–1,033 animals in Juara and 2,178–5,385 for the entire island, so the larger share hangs here. The international red list rates the species as not threatened, the Malaysian one as endangered, and the population is falling. Which species hangs there is not settled by the photograph but taken from the study (Aziz et al., Human Ecology 2017).
These animals pollinate durian — and it was proved for the first time on this island. In Juara, on the other side of Tioman, nineteen camera traps hung in four flowering durian trees from April to July 2015. The flying foxes drink the nectar without destroying the flower, and they work above six metres, where the smaller nectar bats do not reach. The trees with the most flying fox visits bore ripe fruit; those with few did not. Many farmers treat the animals as pests because they sit in the blossom; in fact the harvest depends on them (Aziz et al., Ecology and Evolution 2017).
Do not touch a flying fox, not even a dead one. That is the only rule needed, and it holds for every bat everywhere. Looking, photographing and walking underneath is harmless.
Still open: what the marine park fee at the ferry counter actually cost, whether the receipt was asked for at check-in, and how one gets from the jetty to the cabins — on foot or by boat.
2 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
Tekek is the village with the infrastructure, and the whole island hangs off it. There is exactly one cash machine on Tioman, a BSN, just around the corner from the airstrip in Tekek. The bank, a small clinic, the police, a money changer, the marine park information centre and the large duty-free shops are all there too. Staying in any other bay means taking a boat for each of those. That is the practical reason to sleep in Tekek, and it has nothing to do with the beach.
"Tioman is cashless" is true — and it does not help us. The island switched over officially on 7 August 2023: BSN brought QR codes, card terminals and banking agents (Ejen Bank BSN) to the villages, and the bank now writes that nearly every purchase runs that way. The rails behind it are Malaysian, though — DuitNow QR, a Malaysian debit card, a bank transfer. You scan a DuitNow code with a Malaysian banking app, not with a German one. The one bridge that existed is closed: My TouristPay, the app that let foreigners register a Visa or Mastercard and pay DuitNow codes with it, was discontinued on 31 December 2024 — the how-to articles are still online and read as current. And the Alipay+ tie-in only connects Asian wallets (AlipayHK, GCash, Kakao Pay, TrueMoney), no European ones. That leaves us two ways: card terminals where they exist, and the single ATM in Tekek. Anyone who reads the headline and packs less cash because of it draws exactly the wrong conclusion.
The duty-free shop in Tekek sells cognac in three-litre bottles — and it costs more than at home in Germany (19 Aug). Three three-litre bottles stand side by side on the counter, with shelves of Johnnie Walker, Chivas, Dewar's and more Martell behind them. The yellow price tags carry the shop's name, Star Glory: Martell XO 3 l at RM 3,980, Hennessy XO 3 l at RM 4,775, Martell Cordon Bleu 3 l at RM 3,300. At the 18 Aug rate (RM 1 = €0.2128) that is €847, €1,016 and €702, or €282, €339 and €234 per litre. German retail asks €154, €178.50 and €122.89 for the same three brands in the 0.7-litre bottle — €220, €255 and €176 per litre. The duty-free bottle is therefore 28 to 33 per cent more expensive than the same brand at home. One caveat belongs with it: three-litre bottles are a special format in Germany too and carry their own premium, and the comparison here runs against the ordinary 0.7-litre size. That does not change the direction.
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6 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
The island has been duty-free since 2002 — and you may carry one litre of it away per person. Alcohol, tobacco and chocolate cost less than on the mainland, up to 50 per cent is the figure quoted; for cognac that does not hold, see above. The largest shop is in Tekek. Going back to the mainland, the Malaysian allowance for the duty-free islands applies: one litre of wine, spirits or beer per person, plus other goods up to RM 500, and both only after at least 48 hours on the island. This question stood here as open until 19 Aug.
Carrying a bottle all the way home means crossing three borders with three different allowances. Tioman → mainland: one litre per person. Malaysia → Singapore: no allowance at all. Singapore expressly withholds the duty-free liquor concession from anyone who cleared Malaysian immigration before arriving, so duty is payable on every drop, and the import-tax relief never covers alcohol anyway. Singapore → Germany: one litre of spirits above 22 per cent per person aged 17 or over; children do not count. Above the allowance German customs charges a flat €6.80 per litre, but only up to a goods value of €700 per traveller — an €847 bottle sits above that and is assessed by tariff, where the 19 per cent import VAT alone comes to more than €160. The three-litre bottle is too big at all three borders.
There is no through road between the villages. That leaves three ways: the coastal paths on foot, a bicycle, or a sea taxi. Tekek to ABC (Air Batang) is 3.5 kilometres of flat path, about 30 minutes; a promenade was built for it in 2017 and it runs along a protected snorkelling area, so you see fish from the path itself. A sea taxi to ABC or Salang costs RM25 to RM30, up to RM60 over longer distances, priced per person and negotiable. Small boats do not carry a card reader.
The network is better than the island's reputation, but not everywhere. Since 2023 all four Malaysian networks report 4G in every village, and an undersea cable has run to Tekek since 2018. Tioman is still a forested ridge, though: there are dead spots behind the hills and in the remote bays, and they do not disappear because the coverage is officially complete.
The return runs on the same mechanics as the outward leg. Check-in one hour before departure, the counter closes 30 minutes before, boarding pass against passport, be on the pontoon 30 minutes before. Tekek is only one of five piers on the island; the boat calls at the bays in turn, and a delay at one pier lands on everyone after it. The tide that moves the Mersing timetable every day moves the return as well — ask the day before is the advice every source here gives, and it costs nothing.
Do not pack the marine park receipt in the suitcase. It is asked for at check-in where you stay, and it covers the whole visit.
A dismantled light aircraft lies among the building materials in the village (19.08.). White with a dark blue trim line, the word Cirrus on the tail, the registration 9M-ZWP on the fuselage — 9M is Malaysia. The cabin is stripped, doors and side windows are gone, the canopy is still there, one wing lies broken off beside it. The whole thing rests on a stack of black plastic pipes and steel beams, with a backhoe loader next to it and a red-tiled shell of a house behind. No fence, no tape, no sign: it lies there like the rest of the building material.
Telegram 19 Aug, 10:22live on this page 19 Aug, 10:3412 min
2 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
There is no public record for this registration. Searched on 19.08. in the accident databases, in the aircraft registers and in Malaysian news in English and Malay: 9M-ZWP appears nowhere. What happened to the aircraft, when and where, is therefore not written here. What is described is what lies in the yard — not how it got there.
Nobody flies to Tioman any more; the ferry is the only way on and off the island. The airstrip sits in the middle of Tekek and has a 992-metre runway (02/20). Because of the hills at the southern end it is approached from one direction only, which is why it counts among the more demanding strips in the region. Berjaya Air served it from Singapore-Seletar and Kuala Lumpur-Subang until 2014. The last operator, SKS Airways, suspended its Tioman and Redang flights in November 2023, lost its air operator's certificate in October 2024 and shut down for good on 16 January 2025. For planning that means there is no fallback. Miss the ferry and you wait for the next ferry.
A white cat with two differently coloured eyes (19.08.). One eye blue, the other amber, and a blue collar with a bell — she belongs to someone, and she is stretched out on the artificial turf. The fourth cat of this trip after the three in Mersing, and the first one that gets out of nobody's way.
Telegram 19 Aug, 10:22live on this page 19 Aug, 10:3412 min
Two different eye colours on a white cat usually mean deaf on the blue side. Both traits run on the same inheritance. Of white cats with two blue eyes 60 to 80 per cent are deaf, with two non-blue eyes 10 to 20 per cent, and with one blue eye 30 to 40 per cent — and then almost always in the ear on the blue-eyed side only (figures from the English Wikipedia article Odd-eyed cat, sourced there to Richards, ASPCA Complete Guide to Cats, 1999). In practice: approach from the front and do not speak to her from the blue side. Whether this particular animal hears is not settled by that, only the odds are.
Eating
A mamak stall in Mersing charges RM 6.50 to RM 11.00 for a full plate, and RM 3.50 for breakfast (17 Aug). Figures off the menu board, not estimated: nasi goreng, mee goreng, kuey teow goreng and mehoon goreng are RM 6.50 each; with chicken RM 10.00, with beef RM 10.50, with mutton RM 11.50. Plain rice RM 2.50, vegetables RM 2.00, a fried egg RM 1.50. Roti canai RM 1.50, tosai RM 2.00, capati RM 2.50. Drinks run RM 1.50 to RM 3.50, teh tarik RM 2.00 hot and RM 2.50 cold — cold costs 50 sen more here, across the board. So breakfast of roti canai and teh tarik is RM 3.50 (about €0.70), and dinner for four with a plate and a drink each is RM 34 to RM 54 (€7 to €11). Takeaway adds 20 sen per box; that is the only footnote on the board.
Telegram 17 Aug, 11:19live on this page 17 Aug, 11:4224 min
2 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
"It is on the vegetarian side of the menu" and "it is vegetarian" are not the same thing at a mamak stall. Meat-free on the board are nasi goreng, mee goreng, kuey teow goreng, mehoon goreng biasa, sayur-sayuran, telur goreng, telur dadar and the whole roti range (canai, planta, pisang, bom, tisu, naan, capati, tosai, puri kosong). Two things are nowhere on the board, though: sambal almost always contains belacan, that is shrimp paste, and the wok is not washed between dishes. If you eat strictly vegetarian, ask for "tanpa sambal" and lean towards roti and tosai rather than the fried dishes — those come off the griddle, not out of the wok.
Seven words are enough to read any mamak menu yourself. Ayam chicken · daging beef · kambing mutton · ikan fish · telur egg · sayur vegetable · goreng fried. So "nasi goreng ayam" is fried rice with chicken, and "mee goreng" is fried noodles with nothing added. Kosong means empty, so without filling, biasa plain, panas hot and sejuk cold — the last two head the two price columns on the drinks board.
Paying
On the bus from JB Sentral to Larkin you can pay contactless, by credit card and with Google Pay (17 Aug). Both were accepted, with no preparation and no local transit card. That is the practically most useful thing we learned that day: for the stretch from the border building to the long-distance bus station you need neither ringgit in cash nor an app, and the bus is far cheaper than the taxi you will otherwise be steered towards.
Telegram 17 Aug, 04:41live on this page 17 Aug, 05:4666 min
Cash is still compulsory in Malaysia — but for other things. Government fees and small stalls take nothing else. Budgeted for Tioman: RM105 marine park fee at the ferry counter in Mersing (adults RM30, children 6–12 RM15, source: Malaysian Ministry of Fisheries) and RM60 tourist tax at the accommodation. Around 35 euros together, in cash, before boarding.
"A money changer beats an ATM" — not for us it didn't (17 Aug). This stood here as a recommendation until 17 August: in Malaysia the ATM charges a foreign card fee and the money changer does not. That same day a travel credit card paid out in Mersing with no fee at all. So the rule does not hang on the country, it hangs on the card — and anyone holding one without a foreign transaction charge should not be talked into a detour. Money changers do exist, for instance inside the terminal at Larkin Sentral in Johor Bahru (Tajmuhabath, 10:00–20:00); with cash brought from home they beat the ATM, with the right card they do not.
Mersing has five banks with ATMs close together in the town centre. Maybank, Bank Rakyat and Hong Leong Bank on Jalan Ismail, the main road; Public Bank and Bank Simpanan Nasional one street over on Jalan Sulaiman. All five sit within 250 metres, and every branch has its ATM in the lobby. This matters because the Tioman marine park fee is payable in cash at the ferry counter and Mersing is the last town before it. (Locations pulled from OpenStreetMap on 17 August, not checked on the ground.)
Until 17 August this paragraph also carried the advice to use Maybank or Public Bank with a foreign card, on the grounds that Bank Rakyat and Bank Simpanan Nasional are built for Malaysian cards. That was assumed, not measured — and it was wrong. The cash came out of a Bank Simpanan Nasional machine, which is to say the very bank this page had warned against. The sentence is gone.
And the error would have cost us later, because it points forward: Tioman has exactly one cash machine, and it is a BSN (in Tekek, by the airstrip). Anyone who had believed the old advice would have arrived on the island expecting no access to cash at all, and would have had to withdraw accordingly in Mersing or hunt for a money changer. BSN is Malaysia's post office savings bank; it stands in small towns where none of the big banks does. That makes it more important to travellers, not less.
2 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
Tipping: nowhere in Singapore or Malaysia. The reason is printed on the bill.
Singapore: 10 % service charge + 9 % GST, announced on the menu as ++ after the price — so
roughly 20 % is added anyway. Malaysia: 10 % service charge + 6 % SST on food and drink. In a
hawker centre or at a street stall there is neither, and you pay the price on the sign. Taxi
drivers expect nothing — ComfortDelGro writes on its own site that "you are not expected to
tip your driver". At Changi airport staff are not allowed to accept anything at all.
Careful with older guidebooks: the tax rates are recent. Singapore's GST has only been at 9 % since 1 Jan 2024 (8 % before that). In Malaysia the general service tax rose to 8 % in March 2024, while food and drink stayed at 6 % — including after the extension in July 2025. Anyone reading 8 % for restaurants is reading a wrong number.
Open, still to come: whether cards also work for the ferry ticket, in shops on Tioman and for the tours in Sabah.
Power, internet, phone
2 looked-up notes — not checked ourselves
Bahrain, Singapore and Malaysia all use type G — the British plug with three flat pins. A German Schuko plug fits the wall in none of the three. Voltage 230 V (Bahrain, Singapore) and 240 V (Malaysia), 50 Hz everywhere. Without an adapter it is three weeks of power bank, and you only notice on the first evening, when all four devices are flat. Adapters are available in duty-free in Bahrain, at Changi and in any Malaysian electronics shop.
At Bahrain airport there are charging points built into the seating rows at the gates,
past security, USB right at the seat — no adapter needed for those. Before security, in the
public area, there are only ordinary sockets. Wi-Fi BIA Free WiFi, no registration.
Malaysian long-distance buses have a USB socket at the seat (17 Aug). Two USB-A ports, set into the side panel under the armrest, so below seat level and not at eye height — you only find them if you go looking. Which means your own cable belongs in your hand luggage and not in the suitcase in the hold. The socket was reported with a photo from a bus leaving Larkin Sentral; exactly which line it was is not established.
Telegram 17 Aug, 06:21live on this page 17 Aug, 06:3817 min
There are CCTV cameras in the coach, and the complaints number is stuck to the windscreen (17 Aug). Two dome cameras in the ceiling above the aisle, plus a sticker from the Malaysian transport ministry reading "Talian Aduan MOT" with a freephone number and a QR code. If you are wondering how regulated Malaysian long-distance coach travel is: regulated enough that the supervising authority puts its complaints desk in every passenger's line of sight. For a traveller that reads as reassuring rather than bureaucratic.
Telegram 17 Aug, 09:37live on this page 17 Aug, 09:5013 min
CelcomDigi could not be bought online. The order process broke reproducibly at the address entry. It works at a counter with the original passport; places to buy in Kuala Lumpur (Pavilion, Suria KLCC) and at KLIA airport.
Singtel hi!Tourist is limited to three per passport. After that the passport is used up and the next card has to go on somebody else's.
The Singapore eSIM does work in Malaysia — the table was right, not the small print
(17 Aug). The plan is Singtel hi!Tourist eSIM, S$15 (about 10 euros), 30 days, 500 GB,
and the country list on the sales page names Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Hong Kong
alongside Singapore. That was exactly the open question: the same terms say under 2.3 only
"local calls, local SMS, local data" — a Singapore-only card, in other words. The country
table is what holds. You buy and activate it online before the trip and install it by QR
code; it is registered against your passport, and one passport takes no more than three.
Telegram 17 Aug, 10:58live on this page 17 Aug, 11:024 min
What the plan cannot do: make calls. Voice is barred on the tourist cards, data only. For a phone number that can be reached, the group needs either a home card in roaming or a local card on a second passport. If you have to call a bank or a government office, plan for it — over data it only works as long as the other end accepts a messenger.
Open, still to come: how the network holds up on Tioman and in Sabah. On the island it is thin by all accounts, and 500 GB are worth nothing where there is no mast.
What we had planned wrong beforehand
The most useful part for other people, because these mistakes have nothing to do with us.
The international driving permit can only be obtained inside Germany. German missions abroad explicitly do not issue it. Malaysia requires it in addition to the German licence, and so do the car rental firms; without it, a fine of RM300–1,000. Forget it at home and you cannot drive yourself for the entire trip. The substitute is day tours with a driver — no great loss for us, because only one destination depended on it.
"One provider can't" does not mean "it can't be done". Because ComfortDelGro no longer allows cross-border rides to be booked in advance, our planning said "nothing is bookable across the border" for days. Grab has had its own licence since May 2026. After a refusal, ask about the category, do not generalise the refusal.
Our own itinerary was older than the bookings. For six days our schedule claimed a leg was not booked — the ticket had been in the folder since eighteen minutes after it was issued. Before making any statement about the trip, read the folder with the documents, never the summary.
The departure port was different in the order email and on the ticket. The email said Tanjung Gemok, the boarding pass says Mersing — 40 kilometres apart, two different states, and a whole travel day hangs on it. The ticket counts, not the order.
Timeline
| Date | Where | Covered above under |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Aug | Frankfurt → Bahrain (stopover) → Singapore | Power, internet, phone |
| 16 Aug | Singapore, Little India · Gardens by the Bay | Getting around Singapore |
| 17 Aug | Border to Johor Bahru · Larkin Sentral · bus to Mersing | Border · Paying |
| 18–21 Aug | Tioman | — |
| 22–24 Aug | Kuala Lumpur | — |
| 25–28 Aug | Sandakan, Sabah | — |
| 29 Aug – 3 Sep | Kota Kinabalu | — |
| 4–5 Sep | Kudat, Tip of Borneo | — |
| 5–7 Sep | Singapore → Bahrain → Frankfurt | — |
Who writes this
There are four of us travelling — three weeks of Singapore, the peninsula and Borneo. None of us typed this page. Jens sends a Telegram message when something has worked; the rest is done by Otto, an assistant on a mini-PC in a basement in Karlstein am Main, Germany: look it up, place it, hold it against the notes so far, check it for private data, rebuild the page, publish.
That is not a party trick on the side, it is the job. Jens Laufer works as a Forward Deployed Engineer — he takes models out of the demo and into the place where the real data, the real workflows and the real failures are — and half of that by now is Harness Engineering: not building the model, but building the scaffolding around it in which it works unattended. This trip is the stress test. For three weeks, whatever cannot be commissioned from a phone does not happen.
One thing belongs here, because the page would otherwise claim more than it delivers. Jens reads every version, and his most frequent objection is the language: it still sounds too much like AI to him. Too smooth, too many invented words, sentences that read like text rather than like somebody telling you something. He is strict about it — stricter than about anything else on this page. It says so here because a page meant to show what a setup like this can do should also say where it is not good yet.
How the setup works, with all the numbers → Jens on LinkedIn