Aceh and Medan, Indonesia - Gura Amin spends 12 hours a day, six days a week packing boxes in a Malaysian factory.

The 22-year-old Rohingya refugee makes about 2,400 Malaysian ringgit ($510) a month, which he uses for his daily expenses and to pay off a 10,000 Malaysian ringgit ($2,123) debt to the people who brought him across the sea from Indonesia.

Four years ago, living in the sprawling and crowded refugee camps of Bangladesh, getting to Malaysia had been Amin’s dream.

He thought his life would improve if he could get to the majority-Muslim country that is already home to tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees.  “But I can’t find any good opportunities or improve my education or career. It was really my mistake [coming here],” he told Al Jazeera.

Gura Amin sitting in his room holding up a copy of a new English book 'English Text, Grade 9', He looks pleased. He is sitting on his bed. The walls are bare. There are pots and a rice cooker on the table behind him
Gura Amin, a Rohingya refugee, learned English with the help of humanitarian agencies and volunteers [Aisyah Llewellyn/Al Jazeera]

Amin's journey to Malaysia began on March 27, 2020, at the Unchiprang Camp when he boarded a small, wooden boat at a jetty known as Dock Six in the hope of finding a better life away from the camps of Cox’s Bazar where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya had fled after a brutal Myanmar military crackdown in 2017.

“I felt so sad looking at the boat because it looked very small and I wanted to cancel the trip and go back to my home in the camp,” he said later. “But then I thought that many, many people had already travelled to Malaysia by this boat, so I would also be OK.”

As they ventured out into the sea, Amin recalls the vessel being tossed around in the strong winds. The refugees, numbering about 90, according to Amin, could see nothing in the dead of night and had no idea the direction in which they were headed. While Amin often asked the smugglers where they were, he was ignored. “I had no idea what was happening to me,” he said.

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A woman and her child in the Unchiprang camp in Cox's Bazar where Gura Amin lived until he boarded the boat he thought was taking him to Malaysia [File: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images]

Once they entered international waters, Amin and the other Rohingya were ordered onto a larger ship. As the vessels rolled together and apart, the refugees feared they would fall into the sea.

“The small boat was low in the water and the big one was much higher, so the boatmen had to catch people by their hands and pull them up,” Amin recalled of the desperate and dangerous scramble from one boat to the other.

It was “really terrible”, he said.

They remained on the larger boat for hours, as the traffickers waited for more refugees to arrive, saying they would only leave when there were some 950 people on board.