Jungle days

This is Faye, an intern with the turtle project, taking photos for a “lightbox” project. The aim is to get good photos of the diverse creatures that live on this island. The photos will then be used in an exhibition to promote the turtle conservation project and conservation in Malaysia more generally. The critter in the lightbox is a very pretty, green and white, speckled grasshopper who didn’t jump around nearly as much as expected and actually stayed in the box when Faye opened the door here. She had two flashes, one either side of the lightbox but they weren’t working very well. She’s already shot quite a few different species, mostly insects and reptiles. More challenging will be the bigger creatures that won’t fit in the lightbox, like the monitor lizard, and the ones that are likely to destroy the lightbox in their efforts to escape, like the squirrel!

The camp is quite basic. There’s an open-sided sleeping hut with camp beds and mosquito nets, a kitchen hut with a gas stove and rat-proof cupboards, water comes from a well and is filtered before drinking and there’s a wooden picnic table under a mosquito net that’s the dining room. There are three solar panels which get put on the beach every morning to provide electricity. It’s enough to charge solar powered torches and mobile phones. There might be enough power to charge a laptop but it’s not guaranteed. That's when the neighbouring resorts come in useful.


In the afternoon I went for a swim. After two days out of the water because of my foot, it was lovely. In the evening the staff rigged up a ‘jungle cinema’. There was a sheet hung up across the kitchen hut to act as a screen, and a laptop and projector set up. We watched ‘Lion’. The sound wasn’t good – the small speaker didn’t have enough power – but we were still able to watch a film in the jungle! I missed the last few minutes of the film as I had to go to do the 10pm patrol on Turtle Bay.