Turtle diary

Last post I promised to tell you a little more about Cherating, but there is not all that much to tell. I stayed in a place called "Shadow of the Moon at half past four". A great name for a place that consists of 10 wooden 'chalets' as they call them, on a jungle clad hill. A great setting if it had not been for the bulldozers clearing away the trees on the site next door, waking me up at the unholy hour of 10 a.m every morning... I spend a couple of days on the beach, testing out my new very hip bathing suit and I am glad to report that it works really well. However, after a while a small problem started to develop on the bits outside the bathing suit. Luckily red looks good on me.
The nicest thing I did in Cherating was helping to release some baby turtles as part of a government conservation effort. As you can see I had a bit of a moment with one of them. It was moved - I could tell:


(BTW Don't you think baby turtles look good on me as well?)

Just outside Cherating green turtles come top lay their eggs on 4 different beaches every year. At night rangers dig out the eggs and take them to a protected area where they put them back in the ground and wait until they hatch. After they have hatched they are put on the beach by enthousiastic tourists happy to pay for the privilege so they can find their way to the sea (the baby-turtles that is - but you got that, didn't you?) Here they go, the brave little babies:
We were supposed to go and look at the mammie-turtles laying eggs on the beach as well. Unfortunately that night the turtles chose two of the more rocky beaches, where it was not safe to go clambering about at night, so we had to miss out on that. I can not really blame them for chosing an inaccessible beach, I guiess I would do the same. I mean, who needs a bunch of foreigners staring at your ass night after night while you're trying to save your species by popping out a 100+ eggs? Give me a break!


The next day I left for Kuala Terrenganu, a busy provincial capital on the east coast of Malaysia. My first experience of an almost completely muslim city. All women with head scarves, call to prayer 5 times a day from the mosques.


People here are not used to foreigners, judging by the amount of stares and "Hellooooo!'s" I receive walking around. At first I thought this was because I was not dressing conservatively enough, eventhough I am wearing skirts well below the knee and t-shirts with short sleeves instead of tank tops. But I had a chat with a woman in a store where I bought a nice batik souvenir today and she assured me this is just a sign of enthousiasm and curiosity at seeing a white woman. No judgement intended. Alright then.

Today I also started a new project. When I get home I want to make a quilt consisting of all different kinds of pieces of material that I collect on my journey. One of the unexpected by-products of this project is that it leads to lovely chats with people in cloth shops such as these:



Don't you just love this woman on her moped? No moped for me though, tomorrow I am hopping on a bus again. Will spend the next week or so on bounty-type island going by the name of Pulau Perhentian, for those of you on WorldGoogle. Talk to you after!