Malaysia’s Hotel Wildlife Warriors

Five guests are lingering over their dessert. The last spoonfuls of a decadent chocolate cake are slowly picked at while a hot breeze drifts across from the beach. From a beachside, candle-lit dinner at Tanjong Jara Resort, the South China Sea is dark in the distance. Aside from the buzz of a mosquito or two, and the hum of couples at dinner, there’s silence.

Suddenly a phone rings. “It’s turtle time,” calls the hotel manager. “Quickly, quickly, you must hurry.” This is the only time I’ve ever heard a hotel manager rush guests away from dinner. Cake forgotten, we scramble from the table to the lobby, stopping to spray more insect repellent and grab our cameras.

Each year the beaches of Terengganu, on Malaysia’s eastern coast, are the birthplace for hundreds of turtles. And each year Tanjong Jara Resort’s employees volunteer to take guests out to watch giant Green, Hawksbill and Leatherback turtles undertake the arduous task of laying their eggs in the sand.

It’s 10pm by the time we’re in the minibus. By 10.05pm we’re hurtling down the main road. The turtles are on a strict timeline and the delivery doesn’t wait for anyone. Our driver Isis is a valet by day, passionate turtle conservationist by night. There’s no official association between the resort and Terengganu’s turtle sanctuary, but according to Isis the men who spend each night trawling the beach looking for turtle tracks don’t mind a few spectators.

The road to the beach is well lit – at first by fairy lights from roadside bars, then by giant spurts of flame, erupting from the town’s large oil refinery. When we turn off onto a dirt track the sky is a dirty orange, lit up as the balls of flame spurt out.