Hi Frances,
There might be 2 reasons if you are not able to connect to MySQL service even after binding IP.
First, IP provided by you is not accessible from outside ie it is not the static/public IP. If you are running behind the firewall then the static IP is different from your machine IP. In that case, your machine IP would not work, you need to provide the static IP which you can obtain by running
http://whatismyip.com/
Second, while connecting to MySQL from your local machine, you need to use the Public IP instead of VM IP as explained in the below post
http://blogs.shephertz.com/2014/02/19/managing-your-app42-paas-data/