It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Got dropped off on the highway and walked to Cherating, a small little village on the beach with a river running by it. I really loved Cherating. It has a nice beach, but even nicer people. All the locals, whether in the tourist industry or not, are so very friendly, and just want to sit and talk to you. It's mainly a malaysian tourist destination, so there aren't many westerners, so that makes the place unique as well. It's sort of funny to see all the malays swimming in the ocean in full clothes and the women still wearing their headdresses. I spent a lot of time there hanging out and talking with local malays and also visiting malays.



The first night I took a firefly tour up the river. Even though it was nearly a full moon, it was very stunning. There were so many fireflies in the mangroves that the trees sparkled and looked just like Christmas trees glittering in the night. Very beautiful. I was with a large malay family from KL on the tour. The father mentioned that the best place used to be a river just north of KL in Selangor (which I had planned to go to) but the government built a dam there a couples years ago (so my guidebook wouldn't have been updated on that yet). The gov't said it wouldn't affect the tourism and fireflies there, but it killed all the mangroves and thus there are no fireflies, so I'm glad I did this tour.



The next morning I was walking to go get breakfast, and I saw the family eating nearby. They waved me over and invited me to join them for breakfast. They were having quite a huge feast, so I gladly joined them. Nothing like having rice and sardines and noodles and fish for breakfast. And of course lots of tea terik. They said they saw me going for dinner too and would have invited me to join theirs, but they were afraid it would be too spicy for me. But I have been in s. thailand, so malay food is quite tame compared to that.



That morning I took a mangrove boat tour, through a narrow winding river. We saw three very poisonous mangrove snakes, 3 monitors, logs of mangrove crabs, and some macaques (monkeys). After the tour I walked the beach. The intertidal portion of the beach is just COVERED in the little sand balls that crabs make. The most I'd ever seen. When you're walking you don't see any of the crabs, but if you stop for just a second, all of a sudden it feels like the sand is alive b/c thousands of these little crabs come out of their holes and start making the sand balls. I found them quite fascinating, and I watched for quite some time. And then when the tide starts coming up, they quickly build these igloo type things out of the balls. Great fun to watch.



Later that afternoon I met a really, really nice malay man, hazif. He was incredibly informative about the mangroves, and b/c the tours are so cheap here, I decided to take another mangrove tour that afternoon. And it was definitely well worth it b/c he knew so much on the types of plants, the ecology, the fruits you could eat, etc, etc. He said he just had an interest in science and tried to read what scientists would write as much as he could. On this trip we saw the usual monitors, mangrove snakes, and even a python.



That afternoon when I got back to my chalet, the very, very nice family that ran it, invited me to join them for tea terik and fried banana fritters. Then the owner took me out to near my chalet with a ladder and let me climb up the coconut tree to get some coconuts and then he opened them for me with his machete. For the evening I went out to the beach and sipped on some incredibly cheap banana milkshakes and chatted with some of the locals about surfing (they have it here in the monsoon season) and windsurfing. The nice thing about this place compared to other resorts in thailand is that the beachfront restaurants are still cheap local places, so I can eat right by the beach unlike in thailand where I was usually more in the back alleys.



That night I joined up on the turtle nesting tour. They used to get lots of leatherback turtles here, but now just green turtles unfortunately. I took the tour with a dutch couple, who luckily had a car, so it saved on the transportation which was the major expense of the tour. That night 7 turtles came to shore, but we just watched 3 of them. It was quite amazing to watch them lay eggs. I've seen some of the nesting process on the australia tour, but there they are (rightfully) much more strict and you can't have lights, so it's difficult to watch them. You can just catch the late comers in the dawn. Here, they don't let you go up to the turtles until they start laying the eggs, b/c it is said, and I've heard this before, that once they start laying eggs, they won't stop for anything. So once they started laying, we went up to watch them. They put a little light in the hole where she's laying the eggs and so you can watch it. After she is done, and starts burying them, you can start taking pictures and even touch her. I'm not sure how good all that is, but in the end I think it's much better to have the tourists pay to do this with the park rangers than to have those park rangers selling those eggs to the chinese instead, and it does appear true that she is not too bothered by all the commotion once she has started laying eggs. They also dig up the eggs to place them in incubators and safekeep them, so we got to hold some of the eggs the rangers dug up. So it was definitely very cool for me since I love turtles and quite and up close encounter. Very national geographic like. They're such beautiful animals and it's amazing all the hardwork they go through to lay the eggs.

The next day I rented a kayak to explore the mangrove river by myself. It's much quieter, and although you don't have the eagle eye guide helping to spot wildlife, the ones you do run into are less shy without the boat motor. Plus, it's just fun to explore jungle rivers and to see where they lead. The motor boat could only got three km's up stream, and I knew there was a lot more to see up the river. I really liked paddling up the mangrove river b/c it was shady and so calm and the reflections on the river are almost more clear than the real thing. I did pretty good with the wildlife spotting though. I saw two different families of the very shy silver leaf monkeys, a mangrove snake, and best of all a group of two otters playing and then further upstream a single otter. I love otters. They're so playful and were of course the mascot for our swim team in elementary school. Also followed some king fishers and saw a large eagle. Several km's up the river there was a random rickety old dock. I docked there and walked barefoot for a km through some rural areas with scattered houses. Eventually I came to a little stand sellng coconuts and juices. I think the family selling them was quite surprised to see a white guy there. They were very curious as to how I got there. There aren't many tourists in cherating, and I doubt many rent kayaks and then go that far and then dock and walk that far. After drinking my coconut I continued my paddle journey up the river. The river eventually got pretty narrow and got some small rapids and a much stronger current. I passed under an old train bridge and then got into an area that had the rainforest cleared and there were big barbed wire fences and buildings there. don't know what it was about. Eventually I got to a point where it was too shallow to kayak. I got out to stretch before turning around and there was a random house and guy there. He didn't know any english, but he was happy to see me and happy to talk to me anyways. That evening I enjoyed the breeze by the beach and had some drinks (juice...it's malaysia) with a family there on school holiday. In malaysia they get a 2 week school holiday every year.