Back from Seatru Program @ Hutang Changar Beach, Redang

When life get stuck, the stuck get going with a vacation. Redang is always my favorite island, and this time i have stayed in the most unexplored side of it: the Changar Hutan Beach. The beach is located north of the island, isolated from commercial resorts and tourists. It's own by UMT (or more well known as KUSTEM) and is use for SEATRU turtle conservation project. Thus, it's really clean and beautiful.


The preparation
Signup for the project is easy, simple instruction can be found on their website. I booked the slot (Aug 4-11) back in Jan and then confirm with a small sum of deposit. Slots runs out very fast but you can always call them to try your luck if there's volunteers who doesn't turn up in time.

SEATRU also posted lists of equipments to bring over there. So the shopping began.


The Day before
I went there with two of my PJ ex-housemates. I purchased bus tickets online thru MaraLiner website. The bus depart at 12pm and arrived in Kuala Terrengganu at 9pm. We than stay in the town for a night at Mutiara Hotel. There isn't much choices for chinese food in the town other than Uncle Ng Restaurant. However we never tried it as the two kids afraid of running out of budget.


The first day
Taking a taxi from town to KUSTEM is around RM20. We then meet with a kind KUSTEM student when we were there and he brought us to the little SEATRU hut. There, we meet others volunteers as well as Prof Chan who then gave us a brief power point presentation. Then, we departed to Merang Jeti at 11AM. I had a bad-tasted nasi lemak there as lunch... (hey, nothing is worst than cyber's food).


Kuala Terrenganu -> KUSTEM -> Merang -> Laguna Resrot -> Changar Hutan Beach

I was the only male in the group of 8. I thought i could owned the whole master room but it ended up... cry... :(( Anyway, the living conditions is much much better than i expect: as good as commercial one!


Here, we get introduce to the experienced workers: Adi (MR tipu), Mann (Cool guy) and Garry (Maggie Hair)... as well as the friendly research assistances: Fong, Huda, Irene.

After learn about the schedule and daily routine, there isn't much things for us to do. We are then given our mask and life jacket and we are free to snooker around before 3PM (so we not disturbed the mother turtle).

We help to cook our lunch and dinner. As Fong promised, I have never get hungry here. :) yummy~

At night, we brought our carpet out to the beach and wait for the turtle to come up + enjoy the star sky.


Drunken San teach me how to spot the Scorpio (tat's my horoscope, yeah)! She said it will always be there all the months.

Then, around 11PM, we finally saw the mother turtle landing. It was so dark that I even mistaken it as a stone. She was just 1 meter away from me and I was freeze that time; It's a really experience to get contact with a turtle that close.

to be continue...