Brian and I continued our adventures in Sumatra with a jungle trek in Gunung Leuser National Park in Bukit Lawang to hopefully catch a glimpse of one of the 7000 wild orangutans that live there. Wild orangutans can only be found in Indonesia, on Sumatra or Borneo, and the jungle trek in Bukit Lawang is one of the most popular ways to see them. The trek did not disappoint. A couple hours into the trek, we saw a huge male orangutan swinging through the trees. He settled into a tree for awhile and allowed us to get pretty close to him for some great close-ups. He was really fascinating to watch – he had a very expressive face, and whenever he moved from tree limb to tree limb, the branches would swing so low, and just when you think it’s about to break he’s already onto the next one. Soon after the encounter with the big male, we came across a female with her baby. The mom was just hanging out in a tree, and the baby was just swinging and climbing around on the branches all around her. We probably got within 15 feet or so of the mom and baby, which I couldn’t believe she allowed us to do. Clearly, they are used to seeing trekkers around. We stayed there for 15-20 minutes and just watched the baby orangutan play on the branches. The mom didn’t seem to concerned with our presence, although when her baby got a little too close to use she would grab its hand and pull it back nearer to her. It was an incredible experience, and it still makes me smile when I think about it.
Our final orangutan encounter was with the infamous Mina and her baby. We were warned about Mina before we started the trek, she was a “naughty monkey” who always tried to steal backpacks in hopes of some free food. Sure enough, as we were sitting on a log eating our lunch, an orangutan with a baby on her back came lumbering up the trail. All the guides yell “Mina” in the same tone you would use with a child about to stick his hand in the cookie jar when he thinks your back is turned. They all recognize her because she is the only orangutan that moves over ground rather than through the trees. They hurried us trekkers up the trail a little ways and handed her a pineapple to keep her away from all of us. She sat on our log and ate her pineapple while we watched from a safe distance and tried to get as many pictures as we could, but as soon as she finished, she got up and started moving toward us again. This resulted in a gift of a couple bananas from the guide. This appeased her for awhile, then she got up and started moving toward us yet again, resulting in more bananas for Mina. This went on until the guide exhausted his supply of bananas, which she seemed to recognize, because as soon as there were no more bananas, she headed back down the trail the same way she came. Very smart ape…she’s got the guides wrapped around her little finger (or opposable thumb, if you wish).
Besides the orangutans, we also a huge group of macaques, a couple elusive gibbons (all from a good distance, as they’re pretty shy around people), a giant squirrel, a huge hornbill, and a monitor lizard. Definitely a good day’s work. The evening was good camping fun – good food, fun games, and a big group of smelly people sleeping together under a plastic tarp. The next day was pretty chilled out – we went swimming in a waterfall after breakfast, then rafted back to the village after the “second breakfast”. The “raft” was about 5 inner tubes tied together, and we sat 2 to a tube, with a guide in the front and the back. There were actually some pretty decent rapids, and although the guides were good at navigating them, we did manage to hit a rock which deflated Brian’s and my tube. No problem, this had clearly happened before, and the guides got the “raft” (and us) rearranged quite quickly for the remainder of the ride.
Although we were back at our bungalow that afternoon, our monkey adventures were not over. We were reading on our balcony, watching all the monkeys playing in the trees nearby and on the lawn, when we suddenly noticed a couple of them had decided to join us. They were sitting by the windows of our bedroom, poking their arms inside the room (thinking we probably had food in there). We start yelling at them, and I go inside to close the windows. I went back on the balcony, looked around the corner, one of the monkeys saw me, and then started moving toward the balcony. I freaked out and ran back inside, where I was admonished by Brian for leaving the camera and the computer and the water bottles out on the balcony. So we go back out to reclaim our stuff before the monkey did. He was sitting awful close to us on the rail, and Brian tried the “assert yourself as the alpha male” technique you might use on an aggressive dog. Turns out the monkeys aren’t so easily intimidated, and this one actually started to charge at Brian, who in turn threw the hammock at it, and it ran off. They then proceeded to jump around and make a lot of noise on our roof for awhile, but that was the last we saw of them. However, they did take their revenge…I am now minus one pair of underwear that was hanging to dry outside our bungalow. (I can’t say for sure it was the monkeys, but there wasn’t any wind, and I don’t know what person would want to steal someone else’s underwear).
We met up with our trekking group for expensive Indonesian beers later that evening, which ended up being an absolute riot. The Indonesians love music, and it wasn’t long before all the locals hanging out at the restaurant broke out the guitars and bongos and started singing. They play a lot of local music which is fun to listen to – it’s the kind of music that you find yourself dancing to while you’re sitting and listening without even realizing it. They mix in a lot of songs from the western world for the tourists, though, and they had the entire restaurant singing along to John Denver and Jason Mraz, a little “La Bamba”, a little Blind Melon, and even some James Blunt. My personal favorite was the song they adapted to the tune of “Jingle Bells” –
Jungle Trek
Jungle Trek
In Bukit Lawang
See the monkeys
See the birds
See orangutan, Hey!
There’s more, but I can only remember the chorus. With their accent, they manage to make “Lawang” (La-wong) rhyme with “orangutan” . It was fun night, and we stayed out late enough that we decided to stick around one more day in Bukit Lawang in order to put off our night bus to Banda Aceh for one more day. The next day we went to the orangutan feeding at the rehabilitation center, where they are preparing orangutans to be released back into the wild. They provide milk and bananas twice day, which is considered a pretty bland diet, in order to encourage the orangutans to forage for their own food. Although the feeding was a bit disappointing after having seen the orangutans so close in the wild, it was still fun to watch them swing in from the jungle to the feeding platform, and drink their milk from cups and climb around the trees (baby orangutans appear to have about the same attention span as a human toddler). That evening we enjoyed dinner and another concert involving guitars and bongos at our guesthouse, although this was a little less raucous and more of a ‘coffeehouse’ setting…quite enjoyable all the same.
The next day we hopped on a bus to Binjai, where we caught one of the most uncomfortable night busses yet to Banda Aceh. We had planned to extend our visa in Banda Aceh before taking a ferry over to Pulau Weh for some scuba diving. However, upon checking into our hotel, we noticed more than an expected number of policeman with some really big guns roaming around the hotel. We didn’t think much of it, until we headed to the immigration office and saw the street it was on was blocked to traffic (and guarded by more of the policeman with big guns). Then the closer got, the more yelling and chanting we heard, and it soon became apparent that there was a demonstration going on very close the immigration office. We later found out it was a political rally for a change in governor, but we still figured it might be best not to put ourselves in the middle of it and to just wait on the visa extension until we got in Jakarta. This left us with an afternoon in Banda Aceh, which was one of the hardest hit areas from the 2004 tsunami - over 140,000 people died. We missed some of the wreckage sites (there’s a boat on a house, and a huge ship that got washed inland), but we did check out the Tsunami Museum, which is in a really architecturally impressive building. Most of the exhibits related to the actual tsunami in 2004 did not have English subtitles, but there was a lot of educational exhibits (in Indonesian and English) on the geology involving tsunamis and volcanoes. Indonesia is just a hotbed of earthquake and volcanic activity, it’s amazing you don’t hear about even more major natural disasters here. We also saw (from the outside) the Mesjid Raya Baiturrahman mosque, which is a huge, beautiful mosque that was left intact after the tsunami (despite a great amount of destruction surrounding it). I will admit, although the Buddhist temples are beautiful, after 6 months of seeing them, the mosques are a nice change of pace. I love listening to the prayers here, also…prayer time is 5 times a day, and they appear to sing them over a PA system for all to hear…it’s truly a beautiful sound.
After our brief stop in Banda Aceh we took the ferry to Pulau Weh, where we settled ourselves on Iboih Beach. Pulau Weh is supposed to be one of those hidden treasures in the scuba diving world, and it’s not hard to see why – just looking down at the Indian Ocean from our bungalow, the water is turquoise and crystal clear. We dove with Rubiah Tirta divers, a pretty laid-back operation with all Indonesian guides, which was pretty cool (all the dives we’ve done in Thailand have had Australian or Western guides). We celebrated my 31st birthday with 2 dives. The morning dive was the better of the two, with lots of colorful fish, moray eels, coral, and black-tip shark sighting. The afternoon dive was broken into two parts; the first was a tugboat wreck, which was alright (the wreck dive we did in Phuket, Thailand was more interesting), and the second part was an underwater volcano. There were tiny holes in the bottom surface of the ocean which bubbled up hot, sulfuric water. Sitting back at a distance, it looked like hundreds of lines of bubbles floating up toward the surface, it was quite a stunning visual. You could hover over some of the larger holes and it felt like you were in a hot tub. However, the best dive we did was this morning. It was a pinnacle dive they call The Canyon, and it rivaled the beauty of Richlieu Rock in the Similan Islands, Thailand we dove five years ago. We didn’t see any big sharks or turtles today, but the coral formations were incredible – as we swam through around large rock formations we saw huge sea fans, tons of color, and fish everywhere darting in and out.
After our brief stop in Banda Aceh we took the ferry to Pulau Weh, where we settled ourselves on Iboih Beach. Pulau Weh is supposed to be one of those hidden treasures in the scuba diving world, and it’s not hard to see why – just looking down at the Indian Ocean from our bungalow, the water is turquoise and crystal clear. We dove with Rubiah Tirta divers, a pretty laid-back operation with all Indonesian guides, which was pretty cool (all the dives we’ve done in Thailand have had Australian or Western guides). We celebrated my 31st birthday with 2 dives. The morning dive was the better of the two, with lots of colorful fish, moray eels, coral, and black-tip shark sighting. The afternoon dive was broken into two parts; the first was a tugboat wreck, which was alright (the wreck dive we did in Phuket, Thailand was more interesting), and the second part was an underwater volcano. There were tiny holes in the bottom surface of the ocean which bubbled up hot, sulfuric water. Sitting back at a distance, it looked like hundreds of lines of bubbles floating up toward the surface, it was quite a stunning visual. You could hover over some of the larger holes and it felt like you were in a hot tub. However, the best dive we did was this morning. It was a pinnacle dive they call The Canyon, and it rivaled the beauty of Richlieu Rock in the Similan Islands, Thailand we dove five years ago. We didn’t see any big sharks or turtles today, but the coral formations were incredible – as we swam through around large rock formations we saw huge sea fans, tons of color, and fish everywhere darting in and out.
Tomorrow we take a flight from Banda Aceh to Jakarta, and will attempt to make across Java by land. We’re a bit sad to leave Sumatra (which has been incredible) - we hope the rest of Indonesia is this nice!
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