Good Old Town

Old Town Hostel is as nice as I remembered. Nothing fancy, but clean and in good location. Warm shower, free wi-fi and tea&toast breakfast. That's all I need.

Phuket Town has clearly more tourists today than year ago. Many new shops, cafes and restaurants have opened in the area and where ever I walked, some other farang were around too. And that's fine as long as the town does not become a circus like Patong. At least the bars are not the girly-bar type, although a lot of the cafes and restaurants are western.

I also noticed that tuk-tuks have become bigger. New tuk-tuks are huge. I wonder if that is because the old ones could not carry the big westerners anymore. Or maybe people are becoming more wealthy and now they can afford bigger vehicles.

I visited Phuket Marine Biological Centre yesterday. They are located behind the Phuket Aquarium and there you can see some sea turtles. I had a chat with couple of the researches that work in the endangered marine species division. Really nice people. In the sea turtle project we will be collecting some skin samples for them and also we will provide all our information to them as well.

Then I got a guided tour around their sea turtle area. They have one fairly large pool with a beach for olive ridley captive breeding program, which unfortunately has not produced any eggs in 10 years. But apparently there is a small mating area in the pool, so maybe some time in the future there will be eggs also. They are also working on artificial fertilization project. Which is also very difficult.

They had few injured turtles, mainly green turtles and olive ridleys. Most problem being fishing hooks. Injured turtles are fed with sea weed and additional vitamins. There are 4 smaller pools with couple hundred green turtle babies from 3 months to little over 1 year old. These little fellows were very active swimming around the little pool.

The survival rate is about 50% even in captivity where protected from predators. It is not problem free to breed turtles in captivity, but their belief is that these turtles have a better chance of survival as they will be released to the sea when they are bigger. I nature only 1 hatchling in a 1000 survives to adulthood. But do the turtles raised in captivity behave the same as the ones born on the beach is the big question or do they lose some of the natural insticts. Researhers are studying this, but it will propably take a long time to get results. Sea turtles mature in 15-25 years depending on the species, so it is a long wai to see if they return to the beach to nest successfully.

In our sea turtle conservation project in Thailand, we let nature take its course as we believe that this is the best way. We protect the nests on the beach and by education out in the sea.

Today I will move to one of the Northern beaches of Phuket, Nai Yang beach. I will stay at Pen Siri House near the beach. But the beach is not why I am going there. I will volunteer two days at a dog rescue centre Soi Dog near by. Yes, this is my holiday week before the project work. Doing nice things, like volunteering to help dogs, is my kind of holiday. Beaches and pools and things are boring. :)