30/05/2004 Sunday

I started my journey on Saturday 8:00PM from Komtar by taking SP BUMI bus to Kuala Terengganu (KT). Reach KT at 6:00AM. Take a taxi to KUSTEM which is the meeting point for everybody. Taxi cost RM20. Its 7:15AM, I am the first one to arrive. Soon other volunteers start to arrive. They are Siew Ying, Mei Hui, Pei Yen, Hong and Penny. Janet and Iris, SEATRU research assistant gives us a short briefing and power point presentation on SEATRU conservation work. 

At 12 noon, we are off to Merang jetty to take a boat to Chagar Hutang Beach. We meet up with slot D volunteers who were on the research center a week earlier and two SEATRU staff, Man and Zul. Food supplies for a week are loaded into the boat. Time to go, everybody climb in the boat and we are off to Redang Island. Janet, will accompany us for the slot E volunteer group. She's 21 years old, just completed her diploma in fishery studies. Meanwhile the other five volunteers are university's student. After 45 minutes ride, we had reached our destination. Beautiful blue and turquoise water is the first thing to greet us. I am so amaze to see such unspoiled beaches. Welcome to paradise.

We unload our bags and stuff to the research center. To our surprise, there is rubbish everywhere. It's the work of the monitor lizard trying to look for food in the rubbish can. We clean up the whole place and settle down. After a short rest, Janet took us to survey the surroundings. The beach is divided into 35 sectors; each sector is marked by a stick painted in red with the sector number on it.

That night, Man and Zul cook dinner. Fried vegetable with salted fish…. Hmmmm taste salty! 7:30PM, time to get ready for turtle watch. There is a lot of NO NO while you are on the beach at night. No touch light, no talking loudly, no wearing bright color shirt, no walking along the water edge because this will scare the turtle away and the biggest NO NO of all, no WHISTLING on Chagar Hutang Beach. It's a local superstitious belief. Everybody waits eagerly for the turtle to crawl up the beach. Although it's full moon that night, it's quite hard to see anything in the dark. Finally at 8:10PM, Janet spotted the first turtle landing at sector 10++. Yeah!! This is so exciting! After a few minutes another turtle was sighted. That night we had three turtle landing and nesting. You can only touch the turtle when she begins to lay her eggs. We are allowed to touch the turtle after Man and Zul measure her. It's the first time I get so close to the magnificent creature.

Sleeping on the beach with stars above your head is such an amazing feeling. We take turns to watch the turtle while others can take a quick shut eye. Almost midnight now and it had started to rain. Everybody went back to the hut. Hermit crabs were all over the kitchen area looking for leftover food under the sink. There were hundreds of them. I started to get boring now, no TV no radio. We get a few hermit crabs on the table to race among themselves. Crab entertainment!

3:00AM, it's my turn to patrol the beach together with Pei Yen and Hong. No turtle was sighted after walking up and down along the beach a few times. We talk until 4:00AM to keep ourselves awake. It's also a good time to get to know the two of them. It's time to go back to sleep and let the next shift people take over. End of day 1.

Picture top left: Basic accommodation.

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