It's blowing quite hard out there. We're expecting a good 15kts of wind maybe 20.
Can you hear that? It's the sounds of the rain forest.
We're half way... more than half way?
The trip back over the mountain was a little bit sketchy.
It's very, very steep. The signpost said 45 degrees.
Turtles should be free!
They should be free to lay their eggs and do what they do in the sea!
Well, as you may be able to hear. Liz is freaking out, the bats have returned...
Just getting the torch.
Let's go and see what Liz is up to.
Well, we can hear other boats...
... in the anchorage also shaking their halyards. I can hear a girl on another boat
shouting "go away!" We were chatting... [INCOMING!] Oh here we go...
[Laughter] We were chatting to a German guy yesterday on the boat next to us who apparently had a
bat land on his his wind instrument and broke it. So he no longer has wind speed
There he is. Look at that!
This is us on our scooters. We are going off for a little ride over the hill of
Tioman onto the East Coast. Apparently there's a turtle sanctuary there which we want to
go and check out so... Let's go!
Well here we are. Dunno where we are actually. We're somewhere in the middle
of the jungle. And as you can see we're surrounded by these huge palms.
These palms stand about 20m high. Take a look at this.
Can you hear that? It's the sounds of the rain forest.
We're... don't know... halfway, more than halfway? [No idea] No idea!
But it's just lovely here! You've got the canopy overhead.
So it's lovely and cool...
You can hear the noise!
Just above the sound of the surf, which you can hear behind me,
because we're now on the east side which is where the wind's coming from.
You can see that there's quite big breaking waves. Can you believe there's actually boats
out on moorings over there which surprises me considering the amount of
water that's coming in here. But I'm not quite sure where I am so I need to find
the local information center and find my way around. Oh it looks like it's
right here. Hold on.
Excuse me.
[Yep]
I'd like to know where the turtle sanctuary is please.
[Over there]
"Welcome to Malaysia."
You ruined it by smiling at the end.
This is Nuajit. And he's from the Juara Turtle Sanctuary.
[Yes, exactly] And we just had a giggle because you've seen my turtle.
Which is part of the Sea Monkey Project. And you guys are working with them.
You've got a machine, selling them. Makes perfect sense!
Yeah it's very good what a plastic waste can become
something like this. Yeah. So what do you do here?
Here we try to focus on protecting the nests, the eggs and also the habitats
of sea turtles. Especially on the east coast of Tioman. When you find any eggs,
any nests on the other beaches, on this beach, we try to relocate everything
inside our hatchery. OK, so you're protecting them,
because if they're on other beaches they're open to predators. And so you try
and bring as many as you can here. You have an actual hatchery.
Yeah we have on the beach,
just over there. Is that open to the public?
It's closed, but being surrounded by the mesh you can
actually see through the hatchery.
So that's good, they need protecting. You did just tell me...
the main predator is the monitor lizard, and we know there are a lot of monitor lizards
in this area. I asked you if humans are still a problem.
Back 20, 30, 40 yrs ago the local people here collected the eggs for
their consumption. It's like a delicacy for them for eating the eggs. But I think
right now there are less and less, just a minority only. Because right now
they have actually already changed to another profession, so
they are actually involved more in tourism because tourism here is quite
booming. So a lot of people come here so they need a lot of resources
to support that kind of work. And the island really supports sustainable
tourism as much as possible. Yeah especially here we still have the
nesting of sea turtle, so we try to have sustainable tourism so that we can
actually coexist together with the sea turtles.
So tourists coming here is actually helping Tioman, and certainly helping
Tioman's turtles. It's giving local people employment and the turtles are being
looked after. Yeah exactly, very good.
You can see all the Xs here...
... used to have the nesting of the sea turtles, but unfortunately right now we
have around five or six beaches that still have the nesting.
On Juara, this area here, actually is the last resort for them to nest.
Juara here we have two beaches here.
On this beach here we already had 8 nests, so actually all the
8 nests are from one turtle. One mother turtle can lay up to 8 times per season.
Wow! How many eggs in one nest?
Roughly, for green turtles around 100 to 120.
Hawksbill they lay more, around 150 eggs.
And is it mostly green and hawksbill? In Juara we only have two species, green and hawksbill.
Some of the visitors they have here are disappointed there aren't any turtles to see.
Now obviously that's not something that the guys here want to do because
turtles should be free they should be free to lay their eggs and do what they
do in the sea. They did keep a turtle for a while, Jo, and they kept that
turtle because it was blind and they looked after it. But a couple of
years ago they got up one morning and the turtle was gone. It used to be
- I think it was a she (or a he, I'm not quite sure!) - kept in this tank here. So no way
the turtle could have got out on its own. Somebody took it
So we just hope that poor Jo, who is a blind turtle, is doing okay somehow...
We've just done a nice little cruise over to the east side of the island, and we've come back west.
And we thought we'd go up north, north from the west side.
Now I don't know if it's very clear in our blog but we were once anchored just
there and we've actually moved down. I think I'll mention a couple of reasons why.
One was the smell of the rubbish which I think's right there. The other thing
are these little b------s. You can probably hear them, they are fruit bats.
And there must be about 20 pine trees that these little critters are living in.
They have an average wingspan of 1.4m ...and how many thousands are there of them?
These trees are littered with them. I'll point the camera up and we can have a closer look at them.
Noisy b------s, aren't they?
We've had a great day just cruising around the island.
It's been a real eye-opener. Having a scooter
is, I think, one of the best ways to see an area. Just because you're
exposed to the elements you know. The trip back over the mountain, though, that one
up there which you can't see, was a little bit sketchy. It's very, very steep.
The signpost said 45 degrees. Anyway we're going to wrap up
today's little jaunt with a trip to our favourite restaurant, and this one's
called the Sarang Seafood Village. I'm only mentioning this because we've
eaten here so many times now. We've tried a few other restaurants in Tioman, one
in particular (and I'm gonna mention the name) they called Cabana and they're
on the beach. Complete f----. The moodiest people you will ever meet.
Never go there. They're w------! But this place is probably the
best food on the island. We've eaten at a few of the restaurants here, but this
one's definitely our favourite. Liz is already tucking into one of our
favourite starters, which is a ikan bilis, basically anchovies
fried up with hot chilli and also with onion. It's extremely tasty.
And the other thing with this place is that right next door is the off-license,
where we buy our beer. Don't forget it's all duty-free here so it's nice and cheap.
You pick up your beer from here and you come and eat over there.
Let's go. I'll show you what what this ikan bilis is like, it's absolutely delicious.
Well I was going to show you the ikan bilis, but it looks like someone's eaten it all.
There it is. Fried with onion and hot chilli. It's absolutely delicious.
It goes very well with a beer and a vape...Oh and a Sommersby, a little cider.
One of Liz's favorite temples
Well it is D-day. It's time to leave for the Anambas. So we're just doing a bit of
a quick tidy up. Got some pasta on the go. We should fill our tums.
Most importantly Millie has found her sweet spot
[Miaow] Sorry!
What d'you think Mills? It's blowing quite hard out there, we're expecting a good 15kts
of wind, maybe 20. And it should be on the beam, so exciting stuff.
OK, we're weighing anchor and we're ready to rock and roll!
Wind is quite strong actually, haven't checked, but it's gusting quite strong
through here, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. Got about five miles to go up
the side of the coast. Might run down wind with the head sail, we'll see how it goes.
Anchor seems to be okay which was a bit of a
worry because there's lots of coral here, but I think we're in sand...
blah blah blah blah blah... let's go.