Medan; the end of my Sumatra trip

I headed to Medan, one of Indonesia’s bigger – and therefore more horrible – cities, to fly back out to Singapore then onwards. I ended up spending a lot more time in Indonesia than I’d planned, and had a great time. But in my last few hours there I finally cracked… all sense of patience and compassion was lost and I started getting angry at everyone. In my lowest point ever in traveling, I even ate at McDonalds to avoid the real world. So it was with a lot of relief that I got back to Singapore for a couple of hours to reaquaint myself with personal space, hot water, flush toilets, and all that good western stuff. Then 12 hours later, jumped on another plane to take me to Istanbul!

More monkeys in Bukit Lawang

In north Sumatra is an orangutan rehab centre at a place called Bukit Lawang. They take the apes that some people keep as pets and teach them how to be wild again. They also let lots of tourists come and take pretty pictures of the ones who are still learning. Since they’re semi-tame you can stand really close and they don’t mind. There are also a lot of monkeys around the town and some cool caves to explore. I went off by myself to find the bat cave but apparently batman has a good memory because there weren’t good signposts, luckily as it turns out. I had to go back and hire a guide to take me there. We cruised through the cave for a while, climbing over and under stuff, looking at all the thousands of bats, exploring. My guide suddenly stopped then walked slowly backwards and pulled me back… a cobra had just reared up in front of him! We exited the cave pretty fast after that. I am very glad I wasn’t there by myself, I wouldn’t have known what to do. Apparently you have about 30mins to live if one bites you… yikes.

Weh Island: so many fish, so little time

With the days running out till I need to be in Europe, I skipped over to the tropical island paradise of Palau Weh off Sumatra’s northern tip for a quick couple of days. The snorkeling was awesome! So many fish! This is just a snapshot off the wharf:

I don’t know why I was kicking round in the rainforest for so long to see not much; here I was able to swim out 5 metres, look down, and see hundreds of fish of different shapes and sizes. I even saw a turtle… it was all too easy: I asked where I could see one, got told to go to the next beach and ask again, went there, got told where to swim, went there, looked down, and there one was. Simple. It let me swim around with it for a while. There were a lot of divers on Palau Weh comparing notes on sharks and manta rays and octopuses, all of which I missed, but I saw a turtle and was quite content.

A little slice of paradise:

Banda Aceh

Continued north through Aceh province for 2 days (yes, 2 days. you’ve got to see these roads) to reach that famous good-time city, Banda Aceh. I got a big culture shock there… after a few weeks in the hills it was very strange to see family cars and real shops (ie with doors and signs and displays etc) and supermarkets and normal white-picket-fence-life again. The people there are much more used to seeing westerners too, from all the NGOs, which was a huge relief. Far fewer random friendly interrogations, fewer ‘hello misters’… the celebrity thing is fun sometimes but after a while even coquettish girls always nudging each other and smiling at you giggling in the street was tiring. Strange but true. (Relative) anonymity was very welcome.

The city seemed to be humming along ok from what I could see… there has obviously been a lot of reconstruction since Dec 04 and a lot more is still happening. The mosque is huge and awesome from the outside but they wouldn’t let me go in. Here it is:

Oh, and Kilroy was here:

Aceh

I continued north again, into Aceh province and a place called Ketambe. Aceh is all good these days. I felt safe the whole time there, and couldn’t even see any signs of the recent conflict.

The trip took even longer than all the others… the road was so bad that the buses’ suspension broke so there was quite a wait for that. But it was worth the trip because the next day I got out into the rainforest for a spot of monkey-hunting. There’s a massive national park in the north of Sumatra called Gunung Lueser full of exotic animals like tigers and elephants and rhinos… and orangutans. I found a guide (easier done than said; there are guides everywhere but no tourists) and we headed out for the day. Orangutan hunting is tiring business – you march through the rainforest, which is hot and humid and wet, watching the tops of trees looking for movements. When you see something you charge towards it then crane your neck to try and spot something. It’s almost always a monkey. Once it was a black gibbon which was exciting. We also saw a bunch of hornbills. After 5 tiring hours I was starting to give up hope… seeing monkeys wasn’t special any more, the leeches crawling under my socks were getting harder to ignore, it was stinking hot and tiring… but then all of a sudden we heard a loud strange desperate and unmistakably simian sort of panting noise. We ran. I don’t know how we ran through the thick undergrowth so fast… afterwards I could hardly walk through it. Anyway, luckily the noise continued for long enough, and I could look up and there was a large male orangutan high in the boughs above. He was eating lunch, so we sat down to do the same. Afterwards he lay down between branches and had a sleep. We continued walking, and after only a few minutes saw another one! This was much more co-operative and swung through the branches in front for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. It was too scared to let us get close but great to see it nonetheless.

Rainforest:
And here’s the orang:
Yeah, I don’t know why nat geographic haven’t hired me yet either. Seriously, my camera is small and my skill smaller. I could see it much better in real life.

Back at the village everyone was partying to celebrate some poor boy’s circumcision. As far as I could tell, the celebration involves staying up all night listening to the Vengaboys. Loud. I was very glad when on my second night there there was a massive storm and power went out – it meant I could get some sleep.

This is from a town called Takengon I stayed overnight in on the way further north to Banda Aceh: