Cherating

Injured 6' Monitor lizard
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After an overnight stop in a musty rundown hotel in Kuala Terengganu , I made my way to Cherating.

I chose to come here by looking at places on route to Singapore and going by the description in the guidebook.Cherating sounds like a travellers hangout , well worth a look. However over the last few years it's fallen out of favour for some reason and tourists are very thin on the ground. It's almost like a ghost village with many of the cafes abd shops closed and the remainder empty. You can see it has been much more popular in the past by the number of resorts. The bonus for me is that prices have fallen too.

Mosque on route
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I don't mind somewhere like this for a few days. I can sit and read and chill in the heat , if that makes sense.However, it turned out to be a great few days with some unexpected attractions.

The backpackers itself is set in a garden full of birds , from large cumbersome hornbills to the tiniest wee bird that perched on flowers on a shrub.The chalets are basic but fine. I realised that some expect a little more though when I overheard a  young daughter talking to Mum next door.

Knackered turtle.
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"Mummy, why are  we in a shed?"

Theres a river behind the backpackers and a boat trip with a guide was superb. I never expected to see so much wildlife. In the trees were a python, mangrove snakes and a monitor lizard.The real excitement tho' were the otters. I've never seen one in the wild. In the U.K they're very shy, but not here. We saw maybe a dozen in and around the mangrove roots and a lovely scene of one with a fish, eating with both paws. Made my day.

A short bike ride away is the Turtle Sanctuary. Not a huge amount there to see but it advertised turtle watching and the release of hatchlings that evening .So after dark I returned to find I was the only person there. Eventually a Ranger appeared and told me to follow him to see a turtle. This was a very different affair from a few nights ago.No flashlight allowed and a very quiet beach with no development at all as I think it is all protected. I could just make out the shape and could see the sand flying as she dug. We sat and waited for some time .Once laying had begun we crept round to the business end where he collected the eggs by torchlight ( out of view of mum to be) as they were laid to rear in the hatchery.I had an amazing view , inches from a  Green turtle.

Egg laying by torchlight.
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In many ways it surpassed the previous experience. I now realize we had made that turtle in the Perhentians less likely to return the following year by the use of so much flash photography and the number of people present. By contrast ,in this controlled fashion the turtle was subjected to the mimimum amount of intrusion.

To top the evening off we returned to the centre just in time to see the  released hatchlings struggle down to the sea. I could never have imagined I'd have experiences like this and am  aware of how very lucky I am.

Not a great photo but best I could get of Python in a tree.
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After 3 nights it's time to move on. I've been chatting to a couple in the guesthouse and as we're going to the same place  we caught a bus to Kuantan together, then had a quick walk across town to get another bus to Mersing before getting a boat to Pulau Tioman the next morning. Sadly we saw a monitor lizard that must have been hit by a car ;motionless but alive on the pavement.Didn't know what to do to help. What do you do with a 2 metre lizard?