Day 76 of The Big Adventure

My alarm went off at 6am in my little capsule room. I got up and checked out and headed to the AirAsia check in desks.

Then I headed through to the departure lounge – assuming there would be a better choice of breakfast places. Wrong.

I walked the entire length to find my only options were Starbucks or Baskin Robins. Now I am all for ice cream for breakfast but this particular morning I had a ham and cheese toastie craving. So I headed back to Starbucks remembering that I had once had the most delightful Croque Monsieur in a Starbucks in Bangkok. So I went to peruse their little food counter to find the closest they had was a ‘Chicken Toastie’.

It didn’t look like a toastie. It didn’t smell like a toastie and, after my first mouthful, I soon found it didn’t taste like a toastie either. It was like a huge hot cross bun, without the cross and without the currents, and was very plain and doughy, with a distinct lack of cheese. Most disappointing.

I headed to my gate to board my flight to Kota Bharu; a distinctly uninteresting flight but I was quite nervous about the big day ahead. I realised I didn’t know much about the turtle conservation project I would be spending the next two weeks volunteering at. The flight was only an hour long so it seemed as soon as we’d finished our ascent we began our descent.

Kota Bharu airport is potentially the smallest airport I have ever been to.

We got off the plane and walked to the terminal building which seemed like nothing more than one room. With taxi hawkers inside trying to drum up business, I almost walked straight past the tiny luggage reclaim conveyor belt.

I grabbed my bag off the belt and headed towards the exit. The lady I had been emailing with at the turtle project said she had arranged a taxi for me and thankfully I saw someone holding a sign with my name on it.

He led me out to a minibus and loaded my luggage in. I had (stupidly) assumed it would be a private taxi and that I would have a private car but before I knew it, a whole load of Chinese tourists were piling into the bus too. They were rather loud and and very annoying.

It was about an hours drive to Kuala Besut, where the taxi driver dropped me by a travel agent. I went inside and they greeted me with ‘You must be Sarah!’, which was a lovely welcome but I hadn’t the faintest idea who they were.

They led me back outside where a group of people were waiting who turned and said ‘Oh hey Sarah’. Again, didn’t have the faintest idea who they were but I was beginning to feel like a bit of a celebrity.

They all introduced themselves; there was a Malaysia family from Bath: Sam, LiLing and their 10 year old daughter Georgia, and there was a middle-aged American couple: Mark and Laurie. And before I could work out whether these were other turtle volunteers or just other holidayers headed to the Perhenthians, we were walking off to the jetty to board the boat.

The boat was already completely full of Malaysians all shouting and joking in Malay so we all had to jump on board and scramble our way to the front where there were a few spare seats. I ended up siting next to Laurie and soon found that these people were indeed other turtle volunteers. They weren’t at all what I’d been expecting. Little did I know, this would be a recurring theme throughout the day.

It was about an hours boat ride to the Perhenthians and by the end my leg had gone completely dead because the boat was so cramped.

We all piled off the boat onto the jetty and our group walked into the village.

It became clear at this point that none of us had any idea where the Ecoteer House was. Thankfully, the Malaysian family could speak Malay and asked some locals for directions. As we walked through the village it became clear that this is where the locals lived; there were chickens and roosters roaming the streets, the pavements were broken and dirty, all the women were wearing niquabs and there was an overwhelming smell of sewage.

As our little bubble of westerness made its way through the village, we bumped into Wid and Ramona who were heading to the jetty to pick us up. Wid was the project manager for the Turtle Project and Ramona was a lovely German girl who was an intern. They took us back to the ecoteer house and showed us to the volunteer house where we would be staying. Basic is an overstatement.

It was essentially a raised shed, with wooden floor boards that had cracks between them where you could see down to the dirt below. The roof was corrugated iron. There were two bunk beds in one room and a small partition making a separate room with another two bunkbeds. They were covered with large mosquito nets (with holes in them) and each had a small pillow. We were given a bed sheet and a pillow case and that was that.

The toilet door didn’t close, the toilet didn’t flush, the shower curtain was tarpaulin and the walls were corrugated iron.

The windows had no panes, but instead had wooden shutters that didn’t fit the frames properly. The door didn’t have a lock so we had to padlock it closed. The walls were wooden panels, no paint. There were no wardrobes or draws to unpack our things. Wifi was out of the question.

I wanted to leave immediately.

We all tried to make it as homely as possible and then headed back to the turtle house.

 

We all sat down on the floor and watch the presentation Ramona projected onto the wall for us and signed a very in depth liability form. One of the clauses went a little something like: I will not stand under any, or in the vicinity, of any Palm trees and if a coconut does fall on my head I will not hold Ecoteer responsible. It did make me wonder what had happened in the past for them to put that in there.

The presentation told us all about the different types of turtles we would be seeing and all the different information we needed to record when we did come across one.

After the presentation we all headed down into the village for a big lunch at a restaurant called Mama’s (I was sent home to put on more ‘respectful clothing’ for the first, but not the last, time that day). We met the other interns and some other volunteers who had arrived a few days before the rest of us: Paul and Gemma.

After lunch, Ramona took us on a little tour of the village (there really wasn’t much to it) and then we headed back to the house to change before we had a ‘water confidence’ session with Jay – a lovely northern chap who was interning. Now the village is a very Muslim area and whenever we were outside of the house the girls had to have their shoulders and knees covered. And this included going swimming at the village beach, which I had not realised and so resulted in me being sent home to change for the second time that day. It was most inconvienet trying to swim in a tshirt, shorts and a sarong. I thought it was very unfair that the boys could walk around topless and in shorts but the girls had to be so covered up.
Anyway, Jay showed us how to get water out of our masks and how to blow water out of our snorkels. He also explained that whenever you were swimming outside of the buoy line you must always wear a life jacket. Not because you might have difficulty swimming but because you needed the fluorescent colour to alert boats that you were there. There had been 5 deaths in the past MONTH due to boats not having seen swimmers.

We had a little swim around and then headed to the pier for Initiation; jumping off the pier.

There was a huge group of us and a few of the local kids joined in too. It was a lot of fun and everyone got involved.

Then we headed back to the house to shower and change and then half of the group (the two couples) packed up their things as they were headed over to Tigre Ruan (a beach on the other island) where they would be doing turtle night patrols for the next 3 days. This left me and the Malaysian family doing activities at the Ecoteer House for the next few days until it was our turn. Me and my new adopted family headed over to the turtle house for dinner.

Sam and LiLing ended up doing the cooking with Georgia and I helping. We had veggie fried rice and all sat around a mat on the floor to eat dinner. It wasn’t the most comfortable but apparently that’s how the locals do it.

We sat around and chatted for a while and we all went to bed pretty early because it had been a rather long day.

I lay on my bed (there were no covers) and hoped that the mosquitos would magically not find the holes in my mosquito net.