Meeting the Turtles in Rantau Abang (1975)

It was the a long weekend. I can't remember what month, but it must have been in July or August. Why did I say so - because it was the Turtle spotting season!

Most students went back home, but I decided to joined the non-Kelantanese students who went for a trip to Rantau Abang. Whe stopped over in Kuala Terengganu, and some of us had this photo taken (click for bigger image):

Standing 3rd from left is Mazlin, with me squatting in black bluse. The late Sharifah is on my right. K Gee (75) is next to Mazlin.

Rantau Abang was only a small fisherman's village, not like what it is now.

We arrived in Rantau Abang just before dusk, if I am not mistaken. We spent that night roaming around the beach, and looking for a turtle that might come ashore to lay eggs. Every few hours, our teacher would call us for a roll-call. Just before midnight, some seniors and I managed to find one unlucky tutle that came ashore. We waited for hours for it to dig the hole, and finally laid her eggs. While watching, I was thinking of the mid-night roll-call that we were going to miss. We thought, what the heck, we may not be lucky enough to see the turtle later, so we gambled. When we went back to our "camp" (no real camp, just open air space where we assembled), we got a good scolding from the teachers!!! Well, it was worth every scolding, as THAT WAS THE ONLY TIME I saw a turtle laying eggs (live!), even though years later I went back a few times to Rantau Abang but was never lucky :-(

The unpleasant memory of the outing was food! I remember most of the options we had then would have turtle eggs (I don't like turtle eggs - it has nothing to do with my pro-conservation stance). Fried rice with turtle eggs, boiled turtle eggs, "masak lemak telur penyu", turtle eggs in EVERY dish! I had to survived on only biscuits...