Malaysia (Cherating)

We arrived in Cherating for a short few days sun and beach time before moving further south to Mallaca for the end of the Muslim fasting month, Eid or Hari Ryia as people in Malaysia say.

On arrival the place seemed like a ghost town, no one was around, all we saw were closed shop fronts and restaurants. Eventually we found a small pizza shop and got some tea, average considering we waited ages and it was made fresh in front of us. We meet a local who told us things would slowly heat up and people will start to arrive in time for the festive celebrations.

The first few day we spent lounging on the beach and a bit of exploring. Only 6 people were on the entire beach the first day and it felt like ours, very quiet and the sea was warm and shallow for about 150m out. The only problem was there seemed to be jelly fish, we saw several washed up on the beach and several in in sea which we quickly ran from, not they they move fast at all. I don't know what type they were but they where large and later in the trip a young man got stung and had to be taken to hospital as it was so painful.

Second day we went to book our transport to Mallacca only to find that not only were all the buses fully booked until after we planned to leave but they werent even running over the holiday period. After some deliberation we decided we could do nothing but settle down to 6 days in Cherating and miss out Malacca before heading back to Kuala Lumpur to fly to Borneo.

Next day we headed to see the turtles at a protected beach nearby, we had no idea what to expect. We arrived to a small crowd of 30 which quickly grew to about 60/70 people. We got a quick intro and got introduced to three buckets full of freshly hatched turtles which were to be released tonight. The intro included why they do it and the success the sanctuary has had and why you can't use tourches or camera flash and why you need to be quiet on the beach to not scare the turtles. We headed to the beach and got told two green back turtles were coming ashore and would start to find and dig a nest to lay in. We slowly walked in a line to beach and got told to wait. We weren't allowed to distribute the turtles until they had chosen and dug their nest so all we could do was wait. We waited for an hour, one of the turtles had only three flippers and was finding it hard to dig the nest. The second one was more promising and nearly ready to go see. As we had such a big group we needed to break up in to groups of 5 then we could go closer and see it for only a few minutes. Watching the turtle lay her eggs was a very interesting and odd experience. It felt wrong that this beautiful animal was being disturbed and crowded round at such an intermate time. What made it worse was that the group was comprised of about 30 Chinese tourists who only seemed to care about getting a good photo. They were loud and used flash on their cameras even after being repeatedly being told not to. After the turtle had finished laying her eggs we could go and see her. Again this was nice but felt wrong having over 60 people crowd round this massive and beautiful creature all talking and taking photos again with flash which got me and izzi very annoyed. I even told some people to move to let other look as you only need a few photos not hundreds. The overall experience felt like a blessing and curse to the turtles, they receive money to help protect the beach but in turn this moment they have is ruined by ignorant and selfish tourists coming to get a good photo for facebook. It wasn't as we both expected and in hindsight seeing them in the flesh maybe isn't as good as we thought. Its better to see them on blue planet or something similar and to leave them in peace maybe? If the groups were more controlled and we felt like more emphasis was given to the turtle maybe we would have felt different. The last part of the trip was good fun, we all got given a baby turtle no larger than a couple of inches. We got told to line up along the shore, name them and on the count of 3 release them and hopefully in 5 years time they will also come back to the same beach. Izzi named hers Terry and mine was Teresa and they were off, the remaining were in not so gentley distributed along the beach straight from the bucket. Only 1% survive  until adulthood but I think ours were fighters and obviously would survive.

The remaining time we spent in Cherating was spent lounging around and reading with the odd game of pool thrown in. We meet a women who had been travelling for nearly 18 months and to be honest seemed a little odd and quiet stereotypical of some who travel who like meditation, praying and yoga. We however are far to realistic and conversation soon got lost after she would mention she needed to go meditate, prey and ponder the answer to something, how about just think about it and stop pissing about!

When Ramadan finishes and the fesitval season started we awoke to what felt like a different town. Hundreds of people and cars everywhere, atleast the shops were open but on the down side it took ages to get food as all the restaurants where full. We also had to move as the hotel we were in doubled its price due to the Bank Holiday but we found a nice guesthouse round the corner which was just as good and cheaper.

The final day we needed go head back to KL, we had a ticket but still had to wait nearly 2 hours at the bus stop as the holiday season was causing traffic jams and slowing everything down. The trip back was fine and we both slept. Arriving back in KL felt strange leaving such a small town and arriving back in this huge modern 24hr city. Only one full day then we fly to Borneo.