Trip to Cherating: Day 1 (Part 1)

Yes, for readers who read the previous blogpost, Mommy was actually packing up for a trip to Cherating. This was not exactly a holiday trip for Mommy but was an off-site Annual Programme Review Meeting trip organized by Mommy's faculty. It was because of preparing for this meeting that Mommy was so busy and stressed up in the weeks approaching 12th November 2010. *This explains why Mommy 'dissappeared' from the blogging scene for that period of time* By the way, the tentative programme set out by the Dean allocated about 95% of the time for meetings and faculty-related activities, so this is more of a working trip rather than a leisure trip for Mommy. *Sigh!*


We started our journey at 5.20 am from home (whereas other colleagues who started their journey from UCSI only started moving at 10.30am, i.e., one-and-a-half hours later than their scheduled time of 9.00 am due to some technical problems!). Because it was that early, Papa took a 'slow' (driving at 80-100 km/h) and rather unobstructed drive. By 6.17 am, we reached the first toll of the Karak Highway and the second toll by 6.52 am, and then entered the East-Coast Expressway at 7.22 am and finished at 9.57am. Then we went on a long stretch of trunk road in search of Cherating Impiana Resort, but along the way, we saw the Cherating Turtle Sanctuary, so we stopped by to have a look since it was still early (the meet-up time at the resort was set at 12.30 pm.

We entered the sanctuary's compound and saw the sanctuary in the form of a traditional Malay house.

Admission was free but there was a donation box for visitors to donate. Or visitors could donate by buying their souvenirs. To enter the 'house', we had to remove our slippers....

and sign the guestbook. Only Papa signed to represent all three of us.

The house stored a preserved dugong......

....and a model of a turtle's life-cycle.

Next was a flight of stairs that leads you out of the house but into the real turtle exhibit area. Funnily though, visitors are 'expected' to go to the real turtle exhibit area barefoot, yet when Mommy asked the personnel on duty, then only did she say that visitors are allowed to carry their footwear with them when they are still in the house. But the funny thing was the entrance only has the signboard that requested visitors to take off their footwear when entering, yet there is no extra signboard to indicate that visitor can carry their footwear with them!

"Uh-oh! Slippers are left at the front entrance, but this way to the turtles are already going out of the house! Go barefoot!? No way, it's so sandy and dirty!"


It was at this section that we saw adult turtles, .......

.....preserved turtle, ....

....and baby turtles.

Juan Or had a  fun time posing for Mommy too!

There was a small cosy garden in the compound too, and Juan Or was supposed to pose for Mommy, instead he was distracted by some plants and went on to pull out the plant! *Shake head*

Just outside the sanctuary's compound is the Cherating beach, so we went there to have a look too.

The sand here in Cherating is golden brown unlike over here in west coast where the sand is white (and boring! ^_^). And the waves in Cherating are bigger too than what you normally see at west coast. We managed to snap some photos at the beach.

We also saw this warning notice at the beach - warning visitors not to come to this beach without any permission from 7.30pm to 7.30am and visitors are not supposed to disturb or take the turtles and the eggs.

Mommy also managed to do a video recording of the beach and the sound of the waves, but too bad, Mommy's handphone can only do that much.

After the beach, we explored the trunk road and saw lots of stalls selling keropok lekor (wet type of fish crackers) and satar (the local Malay fish paste 'dumpling'). Papa was longing to eat satar (we first tasted this in a tourism carnival in Malacca and immediately liked it at first taste!) but too bad, none of the satar stalls seems to have opened for business but all the lekor stalls seems to be opened. So Mommy simply picked one lekor stall and bought some dry crackers and lekor. The difference between lekor stalls in the east coast and west coast is that in the east coast, the seller will deep-fry the lekor as and when the customers buy them whereas in west coast, the lekors are all readily deep-fried and left in the open air for customers to choose.


This is the stall that Mommy chose to buy from. It is the stall nearest to the arch structure that marks the boundary between Cherating and Kemaman of Terengganu. 

See....this boy was so happy that Mommy stopped over to buy something.

And finally, we ate the not-to-be-missed item - keropok lekor - selling for RM1 for every 5 pieces (in deep-fried form). The lekor here was much, much tastier than the ones sold in Klang Valley. This one had fish taste and tasted pure whereas the ones sold in Klang Valley had very little fish taste, instead had more flour in them!And the chilli dipping tasted good too! Yum-yum!

After that we went on our way to look for the turning into the Cherating Impiana Resort. So stay tuned!
By the way, while driving along the Cherating-Kemaman trunk road, Papa noticed the local people tend to want to overtake our car even though it was double line and the distance between Papa's car and the car in front was not too far away. Hmmmm.....that probably explains why it is common to read in the local dailies of head-on collisions happening in the east coast roads.