With Indonesia containing 17,000 islands, you can imagine the difficulty we faced in choosing a destination here. The decision making process was also hindered by the free ice cream and wine in our hotel in Penang. Eventually though, we had made up our minds: we were to fly to Medan in Indonesia as there were a couple of places highly recommended in the Lonely Planet, and it was easy and cheap enough to fly there. At this stage we were unsure if we would head to the Sumatran Jungle from here, or if we would head to Lake Toba - a volcano just south of Medan.
I can't say that our first impressions of Medan and indeed Indonesia were positive. Matt was still feeling ill and the city itself didn't live up to expectations. It felt busy, dirty and there was building work going on everywhere; we wondered if it was perhaps due to the recent earthquake. It took us much longer than expected to arrive at the hotel too, and once we did, we realised that it was situated inside a train station, bizarrely. It was fine for one night, but was noisy and had a bad smell. There seemed to be little to do around there - even finding somewhere for dinner proved to be a challenge.
We started to wonder if we'd done the right thing in leaving the comforts of our nice hotel in Penang, and reached a unanimous decision to foreshorten our stay in Medan. And we are so glad we did, as one night was most certainly enough! After much deliberation we decided that we would love to have the chance to see some orangutans, and booked a taxi to Bukit Lawang, which is the only place other than Borneo in which these rare apes can be found. We would later be grateful of this decision - as we discovered a few days later that the volcano Mount Sinabung erupted whilst we were in Bukit Lawang, leaving a few people dead and many evacuated from the area around Lake Toba; very sad.
The journey to Bukit Lawang took around 3 hours and was an adventure in itself. Leaving Medan felt like a breath of fresh air - it was so nice to see the countryside again, and the tropical landscape only got better as the journey continued! Parts of this were a struggle for our cab driver as the roads were rife with pot holes and uneven road surfaces. But, we finally made it to Bukit Lawang in one piece, feeling more optimistic about Indonesia.
There's no doubt in out minds that this turned out to be one of our favourite places, and it exceeded our expectations on many levels. Bukit Lawang has a peculiar kind of charm and I think we fell in love with it straight away. Our guest house played a big part in this. Immediately we were greeted by a friendly man who guided us to our home for the next few days. We crossed a river, using a dodgy rope bridge, and had a small walk until we reached Junia Guest House. It was lovely, and had everything we needed and more. It overlooked the river, with the Sumatran jungle encroaching behind us. There were hammocks outside each of the rooms and cats lounged around everywhere. The communal area was filled with life every night, as guides played popular classics on acoustic guitar, along with some of their own tunes. This was more like it! To make matters better, the weather was a stark contrast to the forecast and remained sunny for most of the time here, with a few storms later on in the day but nothing unbearable.
Initially we wanted to find out more about how to see orangutans as I now had my heart set! There is in fact a rehabilitation centre for the orangutans in Bukit Lawang, which is where a lot of the rescued orangutans are sent in order to learn how to survive in the wild, as many of them lack the necessary skills. The aim is to fully rehabilitate them, so that they can survive independently of humans in the jungle. There's a feeding station at the centre which tourists can visit, too. However, we discovered that this is currently out of action as all of the orangutans have been rehabilitated successfully, which is great news! A lot of them hang around this area still though, probably associating it with food and human comfort.
The second way to see orangutans is to trek in the jungle, and that's what we did. According to our guide, the numbers in the wild are now increasing in Sumatra, which is just fantastic. We went on two jungle treks, which both turned out to be amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. A guide is absolutely necessary, mostly so you don't get mauled by the animals. They do not guarantee orangutan sightings, but I feel that we got very lucky with our experiences across the two days. We saw lots of different types of monkey, including rare White-Handed Gibbons, Thomas Leaf Monkeys (which are exclusive to Sumatra), poisonous snakes (not sure I liked these), and lots of creepy crawlies, including giant ants. The jungle is also home to the Sumatran tiger, elephants, rhinos and different types of bear; we didn't see any of these though!
The most amazing thing we saw was definitely the orangutans, and we feel incredibly lucky considering they are so close to extinction, (mostly as a result of deforestation and poaching). According to our guide, Sumatran orangutans are quite different to Borneo orangutans as they are smaller and prefer climbing. This is due to the fact that they are prey to the Sumatran tiger. We saw 7 orangutans on our first 3 hour trek, and then 8 on our second day, which was a full day trek. There were a mixture of rehabilitated and fully wild orangutans, which was nice to see. There were a couple of young males (like King Louie from the Jungle Book), and lots with babies with their mothers - it was so cute! Apparently the mothers stay with their young for up to 8 years, in order to teach them the skills they need to survive in the wild. This meant that there were plenty of adorable baby orangutans around for us to ogle!
Our guide was extremely knowledgeable, funny and had lots of interesting knowledge about the jungle. He kept us safe, and took us to all the right places. He quickly found us our first orangutan - and claims he is able to smell them out by their fresh poo, but we weren't entirely convinced! Our first orangutan encounter can only be described as magical: meeting Sandra (one of the rehabilitated orangutans) and her 1 year old baby, both swinging from the trees. Her baby was learning to climb and her mother was trying to build independence, but there to help her when necessary. The stories about the great apes were fascinating, and made us realise the close relationship they have with human beings, sharing over 96% of our DNA.
That day, we met a couple of other orangutans in a relatively short space of time, and this was just fascinating. After seeing a few, I didn't think we could top it. However, I had an incredible moment on our first day, where a wild orangutan (called Junie), climbed down from a tree with her baby with her. Instinctively, I held out my hand, unsure of what she would make of this. And to my surprise, she reached out to hold my hand, too! I can't tell you how amazing it was to be so close to her and the little one, and to make eye contact with this wonderful animal. She had a very strong grip, and she effortlessly pulled me towards her, which shouldn't have been too surprising as they are 5 times as strong as humans!
Her grip tightened and the guide handed me a banana to feed her. She politely accepted, and swapped her grip on my hand, from her hand to her foot. We were just staring at each other: me, the mother and the baby. It was a mixture of nerves and amazement that kept me there. I could feel the hair on her arm - which wasn't soft and furry as expected, but actually quite wiry! Once she'd finished chomping on her banana, she put my hand in her mouth as if she was about to bite it! I panicked a little, but according to the guide, she's never bitten anyone; it's simply her own way of getting food off humans (whatever works, I suppose!)
The guide later joked that orangutans jaws are incredibly strong, and they can bite through bone if they want to! I'm lucky that Junie was one of the more sociable orangutans who seems to like people. Understandably, they generally become protective after they've had a baby, but Junie was fine with me being so close, and didn't feel threatened. Matt even got a picture of her lovely baby, which I simply adore!
We learnt that Junie is the daughter of one of the orangutans in the jungle who has a reputation for all the wrong reasons! Her name is Mina and she is one of the orangutans who has been successfully rehabilitated into the wild. She's 40 years old, (which is quite old for an orangutan) and is now a grandmother! Her fearsome reputation in the jungle is based around her aggression towards humans. In total, she has attacked over 400 people, including guides, rangers and tourists. Rather than climbing in the trees, she does a lot of walking, which means she is harder to hear. She has a very distinctive scar above her left eye brow - like a true Disney villain. Lots of the jungle guides here are afraid of her and claim to have scars from injuries that Mina has given them - the guides from our guest house all showed off their injuries and past scars they'd obtained from her!
Despite this, the injuries are rarely serious and she tends to bite people in order to scare them away. She could easily kill them, but chooses not to. The guides think that she has perhaps been badly treated by humans in the past, and that's why she's so aggressive towards them, but they don't know for sure.
Despite the fact she is aggressive towards people, she's afraid of a lot of the other orangutans here in the jungle, and tends to keeps her distance as a result. Mina is an excellent mum though; she's had 4 babies in total and her current baby is confident and healthy. Sometimes she lets her baby have play dates with the other baby orangutans. Apparently it's quite funny to see the mums sitting apart and not interacting, whilst the babies are busy playing together!
Anyway, after hearing the legendary stories about Mina, we were quite scared about meeting her in the flesh and blood, as you can imagine! On our second day of trekking, we went to the area that she likes to hang around in, and a guide had to go and scout out the area first to make sure it was safe. But Mina was there! After some time we heard our guide. We saw her silhouette over the hill, slowly following him. She was huge! And had a baby on her back. I was simply in awe of this huge creature, and we also had a healthy level of fear!
Amazingly, the guide told us the coast was clear and she came and sat beside us, busy a few metres away. The guide told us that she was in a good mood, but to keep a safe distance. He fed her some fruit (probably to maintain relations), and we all watched in amazement, taking photos of her expressive face, which was now staring right at us!
Her baby also started enjoying the fruit (very cute) and then climbed up a tree whilst Mina sat and watched us cautiously. The guide got a great picture of her with Matts camera!
These were the most amazing experiences we had in the jungle, without a doubt. But not to be outdone, was seeing many of the other flora and fauna and biodiverse wildlife, which were arguably equally amazing. I'm so pleased with all of the animals we managed to see in such a short space of time. Perhaps my only request would have been to meet Jackie - the orangutan who enjoys cuddling humans - but maybe we can save this for next time!
On our second day of trekking we ended our day with rafting, which took us right outside of our guest house from the jungle. It was so much fun, quite similar to white water rafting but in strange tubes that were tied together.
After our two days of trekking we felt fairly exhausted and spent the next two days going at our own pace, fuelled by chicken satay and pancakes. We visited the bat cave, a local highlight quite close to the village. Again, a guide was necessary for this, and he took us up a difficult path to get through three cave areas that contained all kinds of weird and wonderful wildlife. It was impressive but eerie, especially given that we were the only people in there, and had the foisty smell of bats lingering around.There were thousands of them, not to mention thousands of insects, some bigger than our hands, with very long legs and feelers. Really, it was the stuff of nightmares. Nesting swallows seemed to have claimed one of the caves, and crabs and unusual fish swam around in the shallow waters there. Getting around was a challenge as the rocks were slippy and one wrong move could have definitely resulted in a broken leg. Matt joked that it was like those films about policemen getting shot one day before retirement. But we made it out in one piece!
After stopping for lunch nearby, we had a stroll into the village, crossing another dodgy rope bridge. We bought some interesting wooden monkey souvenirs here, and had a nice stroll around. Everyone says hello and wants to chat - mostly to practice their English, as many do not attend school. We had a chat to an eccentric lady who told us about the 'medicine man', and some local tribal beliefs, and got approached by some English students who interviewed us for a project. We spoke to one group and had our answers to questions recorded on their phones. We even had to give our signatures and email addresses for them (not sure why, but seemed harmless enough), and had our pictures taken with them. After one group left, it wasn't long before we bumped into more students who wanted to interview us. Then some more. And more! In the end, we must have spoken to about 15 groups, giving the same answers to the same questions. I've been recorded saying "my favourite food in Indonesia is chicken satay" so many times. At one point one of the students asked Matt to sing, and he gave a rendition of Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash for them. It was so funny! We also kept having to read these promotional speeches off scripts for their website that went something like this:
"Hi, my name is Zoe, we've just been speaking to Master English students. They can speak English really well, just like natives! If you wanna be like them, register yourselves on the Master English Course. See you!"
Then, crossing the bridge back to our guest house went at snail pace because we got stopped by about ten locals, who all wanted to take pictures with us for some reason! We felt like celebrities.
It's fair to say our initial impressions of Indonesia were wrong and we ended up loving it. The food was great, the people were friendly and the landscape was beautiful (these still sound like answers we gave to some of the Master English students' questions!). We were by no means living in luxury in Bukit Lawang, but it did not hinder our enjoyment.
And so after saying our goodbyes to Bukit Lawang, we headed back to Medan to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We would stay here a night before flying back home, having some comfort in a hotel in the middle of the city centre. We will most definitely come back to this part of the world again.
I can't say that our first impressions of Medan and indeed Indonesia were positive. Matt was still feeling ill and the city itself didn't live up to expectations. It felt busy, dirty and there was building work going on everywhere; we wondered if it was perhaps due to the recent earthquake. It took us much longer than expected to arrive at the hotel too, and once we did, we realised that it was situated inside a train station, bizarrely. It was fine for one night, but was noisy and had a bad smell. There seemed to be little to do around there - even finding somewhere for dinner proved to be a challenge.
We started to wonder if we'd done the right thing in leaving the comforts of our nice hotel in Penang, and reached a unanimous decision to foreshorten our stay in Medan. And we are so glad we did, as one night was most certainly enough! After much deliberation we decided that we would love to have the chance to see some orangutans, and booked a taxi to Bukit Lawang, which is the only place other than Borneo in which these rare apes can be found. We would later be grateful of this decision - as we discovered a few days later that the volcano Mount Sinabung erupted whilst we were in Bukit Lawang, leaving a few people dead and many evacuated from the area around Lake Toba; very sad.
The journey to Bukit Lawang took around 3 hours and was an adventure in itself. Leaving Medan felt like a breath of fresh air - it was so nice to see the countryside again, and the tropical landscape only got better as the journey continued! Parts of this were a struggle for our cab driver as the roads were rife with pot holes and uneven road surfaces. But, we finally made it to Bukit Lawang in one piece, feeling more optimistic about Indonesia.
There's no doubt in out minds that this turned out to be one of our favourite places, and it exceeded our expectations on many levels. Bukit Lawang has a peculiar kind of charm and I think we fell in love with it straight away. Our guest house played a big part in this. Immediately we were greeted by a friendly man who guided us to our home for the next few days. We crossed a river, using a dodgy rope bridge, and had a small walk until we reached Junia Guest House. It was lovely, and had everything we needed and more. It overlooked the river, with the Sumatran jungle encroaching behind us. There were hammocks outside each of the rooms and cats lounged around everywhere. The communal area was filled with life every night, as guides played popular classics on acoustic guitar, along with some of their own tunes. This was more like it! To make matters better, the weather was a stark contrast to the forecast and remained sunny for most of the time here, with a few storms later on in the day but nothing unbearable.
Initially we wanted to find out more about how to see orangutans as I now had my heart set! There is in fact a rehabilitation centre for the orangutans in Bukit Lawang, which is where a lot of the rescued orangutans are sent in order to learn how to survive in the wild, as many of them lack the necessary skills. The aim is to fully rehabilitate them, so that they can survive independently of humans in the jungle. There's a feeding station at the centre which tourists can visit, too. However, we discovered that this is currently out of action as all of the orangutans have been rehabilitated successfully, which is great news! A lot of them hang around this area still though, probably associating it with food and human comfort.
The second way to see orangutans is to trek in the jungle, and that's what we did. According to our guide, the numbers in the wild are now increasing in Sumatra, which is just fantastic. We went on two jungle treks, which both turned out to be amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. A guide is absolutely necessary, mostly so you don't get mauled by the animals. They do not guarantee orangutan sightings, but I feel that we got very lucky with our experiences across the two days. We saw lots of different types of monkey, including rare White-Handed Gibbons, Thomas Leaf Monkeys (which are exclusive to Sumatra), poisonous snakes (not sure I liked these), and lots of creepy crawlies, including giant ants. The jungle is also home to the Sumatran tiger, elephants, rhinos and different types of bear; we didn't see any of these though!
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| Thomas Leaf Monkey with distinctive mohawk! |
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| A long tailed macaque in deep contemplation of his lunch |
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| Chowing down on a passionfruit |
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| Poisonous snake |
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| A pig tailed macaque taking particular interest in our lunch |
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| Spot the gibbon |
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| Some kind of giant fowl |
The most amazing thing we saw was definitely the orangutans, and we feel incredibly lucky considering they are so close to extinction, (mostly as a result of deforestation and poaching). According to our guide, Sumatran orangutans are quite different to Borneo orangutans as they are smaller and prefer climbing. This is due to the fact that they are prey to the Sumatran tiger. We saw 7 orangutans on our first 3 hour trek, and then 8 on our second day, which was a full day trek. There were a mixture of rehabilitated and fully wild orangutans, which was nice to see. There were a couple of young males (like King Louie from the Jungle Book), and lots with babies with their mothers - it was so cute! Apparently the mothers stay with their young for up to 8 years, in order to teach them the skills they need to survive in the wild. This meant that there were plenty of adorable baby orangutans around for us to ogle!
Our guide was extremely knowledgeable, funny and had lots of interesting knowledge about the jungle. He kept us safe, and took us to all the right places. He quickly found us our first orangutan - and claims he is able to smell them out by their fresh poo, but we weren't entirely convinced! Our first orangutan encounter can only be described as magical: meeting Sandra (one of the rehabilitated orangutans) and her 1 year old baby, both swinging from the trees. Her baby was learning to climb and her mother was trying to build independence, but there to help her when necessary. The stories about the great apes were fascinating, and made us realise the close relationship they have with human beings, sharing over 96% of our DNA.
That day, we met a couple of other orangutans in a relatively short space of time, and this was just fascinating. After seeing a few, I didn't think we could top it. However, I had an incredible moment on our first day, where a wild orangutan (called Junie), climbed down from a tree with her baby with her. Instinctively, I held out my hand, unsure of what she would make of this. And to my surprise, she reached out to hold my hand, too! I can't tell you how amazing it was to be so close to her and the little one, and to make eye contact with this wonderful animal. She had a very strong grip, and she effortlessly pulled me towards her, which shouldn't have been too surprising as they are 5 times as strong as humans!
Her grip tightened and the guide handed me a banana to feed her. She politely accepted, and swapped her grip on my hand, from her hand to her foot. We were just staring at each other: me, the mother and the baby. It was a mixture of nerves and amazement that kept me there. I could feel the hair on her arm - which wasn't soft and furry as expected, but actually quite wiry! Once she'd finished chomping on her banana, she put my hand in her mouth as if she was about to bite it! I panicked a little, but according to the guide, she's never bitten anyone; it's simply her own way of getting food off humans (whatever works, I suppose!)
The guide later joked that orangutans jaws are incredibly strong, and they can bite through bone if they want to! I'm lucky that Junie was one of the more sociable orangutans who seems to like people. Understandably, they generally become protective after they've had a baby, but Junie was fine with me being so close, and didn't feel threatened. Matt even got a picture of her lovely baby, which I simply adore!
We learnt that Junie is the daughter of one of the orangutans in the jungle who has a reputation for all the wrong reasons! Her name is Mina and she is one of the orangutans who has been successfully rehabilitated into the wild. She's 40 years old, (which is quite old for an orangutan) and is now a grandmother! Her fearsome reputation in the jungle is based around her aggression towards humans. In total, she has attacked over 400 people, including guides, rangers and tourists. Rather than climbing in the trees, she does a lot of walking, which means she is harder to hear. She has a very distinctive scar above her left eye brow - like a true Disney villain. Lots of the jungle guides here are afraid of her and claim to have scars from injuries that Mina has given them - the guides from our guest house all showed off their injuries and past scars they'd obtained from her!
Despite this, the injuries are rarely serious and she tends to bite people in order to scare them away. She could easily kill them, but chooses not to. The guides think that she has perhaps been badly treated by humans in the past, and that's why she's so aggressive towards them, but they don't know for sure.
Despite the fact she is aggressive towards people, she's afraid of a lot of the other orangutans here in the jungle, and tends to keeps her distance as a result. Mina is an excellent mum though; she's had 4 babies in total and her current baby is confident and healthy. Sometimes she lets her baby have play dates with the other baby orangutans. Apparently it's quite funny to see the mums sitting apart and not interacting, whilst the babies are busy playing together!
Anyway, after hearing the legendary stories about Mina, we were quite scared about meeting her in the flesh and blood, as you can imagine! On our second day of trekking, we went to the area that she likes to hang around in, and a guide had to go and scout out the area first to make sure it was safe. But Mina was there! After some time we heard our guide. We saw her silhouette over the hill, slowly following him. She was huge! And had a baby on her back. I was simply in awe of this huge creature, and we also had a healthy level of fear!
Amazingly, the guide told us the coast was clear and she came and sat beside us, busy a few metres away. The guide told us that she was in a good mood, but to keep a safe distance. He fed her some fruit (probably to maintain relations), and we all watched in amazement, taking photos of her expressive face, which was now staring right at us!
Her baby also started enjoying the fruit (very cute) and then climbed up a tree whilst Mina sat and watched us cautiously. The guide got a great picture of her with Matts camera!
These were the most amazing experiences we had in the jungle, without a doubt. But not to be outdone, was seeing many of the other flora and fauna and biodiverse wildlife, which were arguably equally amazing. I'm so pleased with all of the animals we managed to see in such a short space of time. Perhaps my only request would have been to meet Jackie - the orangutan who enjoys cuddling humans - but maybe we can save this for next time!
On our second day of trekking we ended our day with rafting, which took us right outside of our guest house from the jungle. It was so much fun, quite similar to white water rafting but in strange tubes that were tied together.
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| Makeshift raft - created from the inner tubes of tractor tires |
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| Tasty food |
"Hi, my name is Zoe, we've just been speaking to Master English students. They can speak English really well, just like natives! If you wanna be like them, register yourselves on the Master English Course. See you!"
Then, crossing the bridge back to our guest house went at snail pace because we got stopped by about ten locals, who all wanted to take pictures with us for some reason! We felt like celebrities.
It's fair to say our initial impressions of Indonesia were wrong and we ended up loving it. The food was great, the people were friendly and the landscape was beautiful (these still sound like answers we gave to some of the Master English students' questions!). We were by no means living in luxury in Bukit Lawang, but it did not hinder our enjoyment.
And so after saying our goodbyes to Bukit Lawang, we headed back to Medan to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We would stay here a night before flying back home, having some comfort in a hotel in the middle of the city centre. We will most definitely come back to this part of the world again.
