Galen & Rebecca Kennel’s Weblog

We are planning to leave tomorrow to go back to Malaysia, so I spend the day trying to get caught up on my blog!! Galen goes out with the camera and takes “textures of the jungle.”

For lunch we go across the footbridge to eat at one of the shacks across the river. The young man who serves us tells us his story of the flood.

His family used to have a guesthouse across from the orangutan feeding station. It was totally wiped out in the flood. He barely survived as he was swept away by the logs and debris that came down with the wall of water. Somehow he managed to grab on to a float tube and get inside of it. At one point he was pushed to shore by the bend in the river and managed to get away and climb the hill. He took the tube with him to the top of the hill, afraid that he would need it again. It was two days before he was rescued. He lost 5 family members to the flood.

The young boy and girl who are playing nearby are his cousins, orphaned during the flood. They live with his family now.

The land where the guesthouse once stood has all washed away. They have built this little restaurant along the river near the taxi park. It is never very busy. They are ready and waiting for the thousands of tourists to come back.

In the evening we make one last visit to Papa Denmark’s bungalow. He takes us up the river a ways to his ’secret’ pool. We follow a small stream about 50 metres into the forest, and here is a waterfall and a lovely, private pool. We walk back past an abandoned guesthouse. I guess it is for sale for about $70,000, but it has deteriorated so much now it really isn’t worth anything.

As we head back to our hotel, it starts to rain a bit. Every evening it rains for an hour or two. We are having dinner at our hotel tonight with Imci and his wife, and Papa and Sri. They have prepared barbecued chicken, vegetable tacos, curry. Delicious.

It rains the whole evening, sometimes quite hard. I keep looking at the river to see if it is rising. No one else seems concerned. I guess this is common. At least the hotel we are staying in is one of the few buildings not taken out by the flood. It is in a good location on the inside bend of the river.

Photos from our last day in Bukit Lawang.