Orangutan City

Trip Start May 15, 2004

Trip End Aug 20, 2004

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Flag of Indonesia Bukit Lawang, Indonesia
Friday, June 4, 2004

June 2/3 (Bukit Lawang)I travelled to Jakarta, spent the day checking out some local sights and then flew to Sumatra, then island NW of Java to do some jungle trekking. Anyway, I went off on this two day, one night jungle trek (you have to take a local guide to get into the rainforest national park) with another solo traveler, Justin from England. Almost immediately, we came across a mother and baby orangutan that were just so chilled that we were within arms length taking pictures and videos and they were happy to just let us. Anyway, we spent about 6 hours trekking through this rainforest and made camp. Justin and I took a dip in the nice clear river and the guides cooked some Indonesian food for us and we sat around a small fire chatting. The next day we hiked to this great waterfall with a nice pool for us to swim in. We climbed up trees and rock walls and dove into the pool and cooled off. Then we did some great hiking/climbing through muddy 65 degree slopes and came across this huge male orangutan, maybe 90 kg/190 lbs, and he came down to check us out and see if maybe we had some food for him and when he realized we didn't, he wandered off and proceeded to tear this termite mound off the side of a tree and pound it with his massive fist and eat the honey and termites from the inside...I got a great video of it

1Baby O

!
After several days of trekking, Justin and I decided we had both had enough of Indonesia and decided to head into Medan to catch the ferry to Malaysia the next day...so we travel from BL to Medan in a minivan built to carry 13 at most. Well, being Indonesia, this van is also the local bus and we proceed to stop every few minutes down the gigantic pot-holed road to stuff passengers inside, so for an appropriate picture think about the circus and the tiny car that the clown drives around and when it stops 30 clowns pop out of the tiny car and this gives you an idea of our van ride because there were 23 people jammed into this van built for 13 and then the torrential rain storm begins! Rain is pouring in from all sides, apparently Indonesian weather stripping is rather lacking, there are 2 guys riding on the roof who now want to come inside making the count 25 people in the van and I'll give you one guess where the two rain-drenched guys get seated...yup, practically right on top of me! So, now I'm also wet and I can't move my legs b/c of the crowd and my butt cheeks and feet are on fire b/c of blood depravation and there're 2 more hours until we get to Medan! Oh yeah, and our backpacks are on the roof getting soaked, doubling the weight of them because of the water retention! Finally we reach Medan and then erroneously decide to go ahead and take a taxi to the port town, thinking that we'll outsmart both Medan and Indonesia...well, I guess Indonesia wanted to mess with us one more time because if Medan is sumatra's sphincter, then the port town, Belawan, must be its sister city! The pseudo-hotels there charge double or triple and the same thing goes with the restaurants. The toilet in our room looked like something out of a horror flick with creeking noises, the sounds of animals you can't see moving, broken lights, and so dirty you dare not touch anything for fear of infection. haha Sleeping was also difficult with the drunks outside yelling, the damn roosters crowing all night (apparently Indonesian roosters don't know what sunrise is), and worst of all, the stench from our 3 days of jungle trekking sweaty and rain soaked hiking clothes that we had laid out and were trying to dry!