Around the time I saw the snake we were expecting our boatman Joju to turn up at 11am. He did not show, Ramona then rang him and couldn't get through to him. She then tried his wife it turned out Joju double booked and had to take some people to Long Beach first before coming to get us. As much as it is helpful getting slight discount off boat trips, time management definitely needs to be worked on especially when we have places to be at certain times. Joju eventually arrived at 11:45 and took us back to the village. It was my turn to take the volunteers down for lunch, each volunteer gets 12RM for lunch and I get 10RM. This is normally enough for a decent meal and a drink for the volunteers but I usually just get a big meal and bring a water bottle. After lunch Me, Ramona, Anne and Spencer were off on a Snorkel Tour. Tanya was meant to be coming as well but still felt ill. We headed off all still quite tired, the first place we went was Turtle beach this was the reef just round from Tiga Ruang. While there we saw lots of cool fish and coral but the highlight was on the way back to the boat seeing a couple of baby black tip reef sharks.
After turtle beach we went to PIR the place we normally do our surveys as we had three tourists in our boat. Mat Lias our boatman quickly found us a turtle, Joelle who is often in the shallows feeding, she is the one with the crack in her shell. Once the tourists were happy we went to one of my favourite places I've been to D'Lagoon. While here we saw a family of 9 bump-head parrot fish I didn't manage to get any photos myself but might be able to add one from someone else's photos later. We also saw two blue spotted stingrays and a barracuda on his own luckily otherwise I would not have been in the water long.
We got back sorted tidying our stuff from Tiga Ruang we hadn't had a chance to sort out. I also went through photos from my camera ready to put on this blog. It is Ramona's birthday Monday so we are planning to go to Long Beach Saturday, so that evening we were sorting out details. We all wanted a strict staff only night as when we have volunteers we are responsible for them and after last time I went don't want another repeat of that. There is also a staff trip planned for Sunday to Redang an island north of the Perhentian that is meant to be really nice. There is another turtle project there we link up with and share data but we were just going for a picnic and relax. Looking forward to this weekend.
The next day I went out on survey with Spencer to PIR. We didn't have much luck seeing turtles we saw three a juvenile, a male and a female. I had already learnt who the male and female were, the female was Polly and the male Long Dragon. These are two of our most commonly seen turtle at PIR. That afternoon was data analysis but this was easy as we had such few turtles and I already knew two of the three. The third one the juvenile was Bojin.
After this I went to Pitani with Anne for a relax and to get away from the village for a bit. We went to a shack called Mari Mari, apparently the interns and some of the volunteers last year used to always go there for some drinks and to chill. However when we got there it looked a bit run down, it had been hit badly during the monsoon season. The previous owner who Anne knew had left and a new owner had come in but the new owner stopped selling alcohol. Anne recognised one of the other staff there Eddie and after a little while he remembered her, he went out back and found us two beers. They were his own beers and he was a really nice guy. We sat and had a drink and then went for a sunbathe on the deck chairs. It nice to rest and not worry about anything for an hour.
For dinner instead of cooking we had Malay Dinner at my adopted mum's house Kad Dar. She lives a few doors down the path and she always feeds me up. I always come away feeling well fed and she likes the fact I eat a lot and don't like waste. She cooked us chicken curry, vegetables, egg omelette and some tuna. It was all Sedat Gilla (which means very delicious, I think) and after we walked home and collapsed into food comas.
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