Japamala Resort – Day #3, 18th June 2009

We woke up to the sound of the waves yet again after the highlight of our vacation last night. Our third day at Japamala began with our first ever spa experience! Being newbies to the various spa treatments available, we got ourselves a package, “Above & Beyond”, that involves a head massage and a feet massage. Nothing too exotic for us, yet. Maybe our next vacation will have something more?

Had our breakfast at Tamarind – Man, I could get used to this! They serve fabulous fish porridge! By now, I guess I don’t have to repeat myself – their service is GREAT as usual.

Headed for our spa treatment at 11am, which was located at a hut high up the slope.  Not knowing what to expect, we headed into the hut and were greeted by two ladies, the very ones were usually mans the DVD counter and spa reservation counter. We changed into their robes and began our relaxing (or painful? Ask Shan?) spa experience!

It was truly heavenly with the soothing music in the background. The 90 minutes felt more like 30 minutes! Ah. An extremely relaxing experience to say the least. Shan even had a extra pedicure/manicure session on top of her massage. Alas, their skills  fell short at this aspect. Stick to their massage =)

While Shan was getting her pedicure/manicure, I roamed the resort and visited the other villas. None could beat the sea cliff chalets in terms of view, that’s for sure. Took a couple of pictures (and a video!) since not a single soul was around.

An interesting thing Mike said to me when I walked past the Tamarind – “How was your massage?”. And this, is truly the strength of Japamala Resort. It seems like people on the island not only treats you as a guest, but also as a friend of Japamala. It was an experience that was quite unlike many of the other hotels and resorts have to offer. Also, because the island has limited guests, the staff simply knows where everyone is at any given point in time. There are no signs to put at our room’s door to signal to the staff to clean our room. They simply do so when we’re having lunch and dinner without us having to ask.

Headed back to my room and added a couple of entries into the journal that was provided. It contains little messages that past occupants of room #15 had wrote. Of course, Shan and I added our very own entries too.

Shan finally returned after a long wait. Apparently, their pedicure/manicure skills aren’t that up to standard. Initially, we had planned for a fishing trip at 3pm in the afternoon, and time was running a little tight. Little did we know that all the rushing were for nothing. And, we even ‘destroyed’ her pretty nail polish in the process.

As we made our way past the Tamarind, we were approached by Jay who informed us that the water is kind of choppy. Not exactly suitable for fishing as it may be a pretty rough trip on the water. After some hesitation, we dropped our plans for our second adventure in Tioman, and instead opted for ‘afternoon tea’ at Mandi Mandi! (the cup noodles we had weren’t fulfilling at all =x) After all, we haven’t had the chance to dine at Mandi Mandi in broad daylight.

Made our way to Mandi Mandi, and ordered a tuna sandwich and a chocolate tart! 3:55pm. As our luck has it, the moment we sat down there, it seemed like the wind kind of picked up. Within minutes, the strong winds and the looming dark clouds threatened us with rain, and we had no choice but to retreat to the relative comfort of the Tamarind to enjoy our afternoon snack.

The chocolate tart, which took 30 minutes to prepare and bake (Jay has informed us before hand) was hot and yummy. The tuna sandwich looks nothing like the pathetic pieces of bread we see so often, and could easily double up as a meal by itself! Another plus point – food at Japamala is always served together. Most of the time, Shan and I had ordered different types of food for our meals. Yet, they were always served together so we could start eating at the same time. I guess we didn’t really mind if our food came one and another because we were used to it. It was just another nice touch to the already excellent package here at Japamala.

Our last evening at Japamala was, sadly, spent packing in our room as we had to check out the following day. After a little packing, we waited for our third and last sunset at Japamala. No pictures of the sunset for today, but we did spot a little re-stocking going on today. Japamala is after all, a pretty private resort and there isn’t any way to access the resort except by boat. So today, we saw this boat docking at our jetty, and pretty soon almost everyone was walking towards Mandi Mandi to help unload the supplies.

Supplies is important, because no supplies means no ham in our pizza! Regardless, it was a refreshing sight for urban-dwellers like us =)

Our last night was spent at Mandi Mandi yet again. Luckily, the light drizzle in the afternoon didn’t make the place too wet or anything like that, so we scooted to the exact seats we sat on the previous night. Enjoyed our dinner and spent some quality time together with Shan before we turned in for the night.