Advertisement
Published: September 29th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Arriving in Sumatra After the home comforts of big town, developing Malaysia (Starbucks, flushing toilets and efficient public transport) we arrived in Sumatra and quickly realized we were back in country where just day to day survival is the main concern for most people. The roads are full of mopeds and potholes, cattle happily wonder alongside the traffic and buildings are mostly constructed in an abstract fusion of concrete and tin.
Sumatra is one of the poorest countries in the region and this hasn’t been helped by the natural disasters they’ve had to cope with in the last few years. The 2004 Boxing Day earthquake (magnitude 9.3) and tsunami that followed left approx 167,000 dead and over 500,000 displaced. Following this they’ve also had devastating earthquakes in both 2005 (magnitude 8.6) and 2007 (magnitude 8.5). This combined with political instability in the far north means Sumatra doesn’t get many tourists and only hardened backpackers like us seem to visit!
However, what Sumatra does have, and the main reason we’ve come here, is the chance to seeing wild Orangutans.
Welcome to the jungle There are only two places left in the world where Orangutans still
live in the wild and that’s the jungles of northern Sumatra and Borneo. Currently the wild population is estimated to be only 7000 and, due to deforestation, this is declining each year. The deforestation is fuelled by the palm oil industry and as we were driving towards the jungle we went through mile after mile of palm oil plantations. Since 1985 Sumatra has lost 48%!o(MISSING)f its forest and until keeping the forest in its natural state becomes more viable than palm oil plantations it doesn’t look good for our ginger friends.
Bukit Lawang Bukit Lawang is a small village at the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park and this would be our base for a couple of days. Our room, whilst basic, had a nice balcony overlooking the rainforest and we regularly had Thomas Leaf monkeys’ swinging in the trees overhead.
Keen to see the local wildlife we signed up for what we thought would be an easy trek. Unfortunately, this ‘easy’ trek actually turned out to be a very difficult walk through thick, remote and leech infested jungle! There were no paths and our guide, when not hacking through the jungle with his machete,
would constantly walk off ahead without waiting for us. We were also flicking leeches off us every few meters. After 3 hours of scrambling, slipping over in mud and leech exterminating we reached our lunch stop which was a nice spot by a small river. The photos look great but we can’t exactly say we enjoyed the moment!
We set off after our lunch break, comforted by the knowledge we were now over half way and our jungle ordeal would soon be over. However, after a couple of hours walking and us thinking we were nearly back at the car, our guide admitted that we were lost and would have to backtrack all the way to our lunch stop and then walk back the way we’d originally come! We were so angry with the whole thing and as it was getting late we were also worried about being forced to stay out in the jungle overnight.
So at 5pm, after a 3 hour detour, 40 minutes wading through the river and walking almost constantly for 7 hours, we were back at our lunch stop. It was at this point that we spotted a wild female Orangutan with a
baby! Awesome! Unfortunately, with several hours of walking still ahead of us and darkness approaching we couldn’t hang around for long and had to keep moving. Shame…
We made it back to the car at 7pm. We’d been walking for 9 hours and it was now almost pitch black. We were both exhausted, covered in mud and poor Liz was also covered in leech bites. We counted 9 in total - they must have really thought she was deleechous….
Leeches also inject their victim with an anti clotting agent so the bites just kept on bleeding, and bleeding. She looked like a victim from a horror film!
On the second day after a long (cold!) shower and a good sleep we went to the Bukit Lawang Orangutan feeding platform. This is where they offer food to rescued Orangutans that have been released back into the jungle. Whilst these are only semi-wild and rely on the additional feeding to survive, they do at least have the freedom of the forest to live in. It was great to see them so close and their agility swinging through the trees is impressive.
Medan Medan is the capital of
Sumatra and this is where we’ve been for the last couple of days. As it was Liz’s birthday we decided to treat ourselves to a 5* hotel for a couple of nights. After the hardship of the jungle it’s been great to be back in a room with TV, air-con, hot water etc. We’ve even been super lazy and ordered room service a couple of times!
However, as with all things Asian there’s always a twist and you can always expect the unexpected. Whilst sitting watching a film in our room we heard a noise from the bathroom. We thought that maybe a glass had fallen off the side, but no, the water drainage cover had exploded and the floor of the bathroom was covered in smelly drain goo. Yuck!
Another twist was the discovery of a desert called a ‘Durian pancake’. Now a Durian is a type of Asian fruit and we all know what a pancake is, so we were expecting some sort of fruit pancake. What we got was a more of a thick, sticky grey moose covered in some sort of sloppy yellow sponge. It smelt disgusting (like burning rubber combined with gone off
milk) but that was nothing compared to the taste. Never, ever, eat anything with Durian in the title!
Other interesting foods we saw on menus but avoided were an avocado flavoured cappuccino, a chocolate & cheese pancake and a broccoli & honey milkshake.
There’s not really a great deal to see or do in Medan so we’ve spent most of the time enjoying the facilities in the hotel. I went to the gym yesterday but quickly realized how unfit I’ve become - no PB’s for me for a while! On the couple of occasions we’ve ventured out into Medan everybody has been very friendly but we sensed the eyes of people staring at us - two pale blonds seems to be an unusual sight for the people here!
Australia We’re both excited about getting to Australia. We leave Medan on the 28th and after a few hours stopover in Singapore we arrive in Darwin early on the 29th. It’s at this point we’ll officially become Australian permanent residents!
Update 29/09/10 - since writing this blog we’ve actually now arrived in Darwin. It was a long day getting here, getting up at 5am in Medan and
not arriving into Darwin until 2.30am after a full day exploring Singapore. The highlight of the day in Singapore was going for a Singapore Sling cocktail at Raffles hotel. A bit extravagant but had to be done!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.35s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 18; qc: 84; dbt: 0.0736s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
deleted_49612
deleted_49612
Hello Reach and Go :) Congratulations on your first Featured Blog, on TravelBlogs Front Page. You are also this weeks Blogger of the Week. See http://www.travelblog.org/Topics/26098-1.html Mel TravelBlog Moderator