Our first trip for the year to Chagar Hutang was made from 27 Feb – 2 March. This was to check out the monitoring work started in January, to plan renovations to the ladies quarters to accommodate for the increased volunteer intake this year and to see how our outdoors posters (designed by our Canadian volunteers) could be displayed.

We (myself, Pelf, Brennan and Ashley) were dropped off at the village jetty by the Redang Reef Resort speedboat (thanks to Mr Chua and Jan Shir who arranged transport for us) and spent a few hours at Mahadi’s house and at the Berjaya Redang beach at Telok Dalam. It was quality time with Mahadi’s kids. We brought them to the beach and Afnan and Zainab had fun with Brennan’s trinity/devil sticks and Ashley’s hoola hoop. I silently thought it would be nice if i could make a set to give to them. Anita, Mahadi’s wife cooked us a sumptuous meal before we left for Chagar Hutang after the Friday prayers.

Later, when we arrived at Chagar Hutang, we were shocked to find our living quarters in quite a mess. Our workers had just confined themselves to the gents’ volunteer chalet, even doing the cooking inside. We wasted no time in cleaning the place and getting it ready and comfortable for our four days there.

Brennan and Ashley were very lucky as they saw their first ever nesting green turtle around midnight. I commissioned Brennan with his Nikon SLR to take good quality pictures for the book I am writing. Hence, the rule on flash photography was relaxed just for that night.

In the 4 days and 3 nights we were there, we had 2 successful nesting events and about 4 or 5 false landings. We had cleaned up almost the entire place, except for the turtle gallery which still needs a final cleanup. Brennan and Ashley enjoyed themselves thoroughly and apart from the turtles, saw mouse deer, monitor lizards, geckos, rats and their babies, butterflies, squirrels, tree shrews, lots of insect life and even a viper!

I managed to add in a prawn spa, made hula hoops and several sets of trinity sticks with help from Man, Mahadi and Brennan. All raw materials were sourced from Chagar Hutang and were mostly recycled stuff.

Coming back to KT was tricky as the sea was very rough. Again Jan Shir came to our help and got a boat to fetch us from the Laguna Jetty to the Berjaya Jetty. He also gave us four complimentary ferry passes. What a blessing it was!

All the pictures used in this post were taken by Brennan C.

• Little Princess deposits her third nest
• Visits to Temple Ponds to Inventory Turtles
• We end the year on a high note
• First group visit to Chagar Hutang
• Turtles take flight!