Turtle Alley

Today I have been mostly catching up with posting blips. I’d managed to get almost a week behind so it took a while. Click back to see the last blips of Melaka and some of Kuala Lumpur. I tore myself away from the computer and went out to explore a bit of Chinatown. Kuala Terengganu is different to KL and Melaka. The region is 90% Muslim with a small Chinese community. Chinatown isn’t much more than a few streets but it’s a very interesting area. Some of the old shophouses remain, there are temples and archways. It’s more functional than Melaka’s Chinatown which mostly caters to tourists now. Here there are everyday shops selling hardware and groceries as well as local cafes and restaurants. It’s also the only part of town where alcohol is allowed to be sold.


There are a few alleyways which run from the main street in Chinatown through to the riverside. In the past, these alleys were used for unloading goods from the river. Now one of them is called Turtle Alley and contains mosaics of turtles on the ground and walls (each picture is different) as well as information on turtle conservation written in 3 languages. Two species of turtle have already disappeared from this area and the other two are under threat from litter (plastic bags look like jellyfish and they eat them), getting caught in fishing nets, and egg poaching. I’m hoping that turtles will feature a lot in my next blips. Tomorrow I’m off to a small island to volunteer at a turtle conservation project for a week. If there’s mobile signal and my batteries last, maybe I’ll be able to post something while I’m there.