Sunday in Bukit Lawang February 17, 2008
Posted by Rebecca in Sumatra.add a comment
It is Sunday today. Yesterday the “local” tourists from Medan started moving in. A group of 20 young people rented the 4 rooms below us and we watched them carry in their supplies. Cooking gear – a portable stove, a big pot, a wok. A DVD player and large speakers. Two big jugs of water. Firewood. Beach mats and tarps. A tube for floating in the river. A guitar. I don’t think they slept at all. When we got up at 6:00 AM they were still out by the river. The rooms were just for storing their stuff.
Now the families are arriving. They are met at the taxi park by local people wanting to rent out their shelter and mats. The families spend the day swimming in the river, doing their laundry, bathing, cooking food and washing the dishes in the river. In the evening they pack everything up and make the 4 hour bus ride back to Medan.
I plan to work on my blog, but the electricity at the hotel isn’t strong enough to run the transformer for my laptop. We go down to Papa Denmark’s to see if I can charge my laptop using his solar electrical supply.
In the evening we walk down to Nora’s Guesthouse along the opposite side of the river to join Papa for dinner. It begins to rain before we go down there, and while we are there it pours. It has rained every evening since we came to Bukit Lawang.
Orangutan feeding station visit February 16, 2008
Posted by Rebecca in Sumatra, nature.1 comment so far
One of the big draws to Bukit Lawang is the Orangutan rehabilitation centre and the chance to see “wild” orangutans in the jungle. (In the local language, ‘orang’ means people and ‘utan’ means forest.) The rehabilitation centre was established to re-introduce illegally held orangutans back into the forest. The Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program has a great website, explaining the whole process and the challenges – http://www.sumatranorangutan.org/site_mawas/UK/BACKGROUND/pag/back_general.htm
When an illegally-held orangutan is confiscated, it is brought to the rehabilitation centre and placed under quarantine. These animals are often sick and need to be treated and nourished before they can be released into the wild. Once released, they continue to be fed milk and bananas twice daily, until they have developed/learned jungle survival skills. Tourists pay 20,000 rupiah ($2) each to go into the National Park at feeding time to see the orangutans.
One buys a permit from the park office, then walks about a km along the river to the canoe-crossing point where one is taken by canoe across the river. Rangers then escort everyone up the steep hillside to a platform where they feed any orangutans that come around.
On our way to buy a permit, we pass the taxi drivers where one of the rangers is sitting. He asks if we want to see the orangutan feeding and if so, we can get the permit at the station upriver. Not sure about this, we continue on to the permit office and give our passports to the man there who disappears into an office to type up the permit. When he produces our permits, we see that under nationality he has typed “Indian” and for the passport number, he has put in our Indian visa number. We don’t bother correcting him on this.
Later we learn that the rangers pocket the money from the permits that are bought at the upriver station.
On our walk to the station, we are joined by a young man who asks where we are going and where we are from. He walks along with us, trying to help us climb the steps and warning us when areas might be slippery or treacherous. We know that he will expect a “guiding fee” at the end, so we try to tell him that we really don’t want or need his help. Just leave us alone! He claims that we asked him to guide us to the canoe crossing. We finally manage to get rid of him.
There are way too many young men hanging around Bukit Lawang, hoping to make a little money off the tourists. They seem to think that the world owes them something for doing nothing. This is quite a contrast to Malaysia and Thailand, where one is never hassled. I guess Indonesians are more desperate.
The canoe crossing looks interesting. We just get a little wet.
There are about 20 of us waiting to go along with the rangers up to the feeding station. I wonder how many of these bought there permit here instead of at the office.
We hike up steep stairs through tropical jungle – about a 10-minute hike to the feeding station. Along the way we encounter Mina and her big ‘baby’. Mina was one of the first orangutans to be released and still hangs around. She can be quite aggressive toward humans, especially women. Papa Denmark has told us lots about Mina, who comes by his bungalow quite often. He can take her by the hand and lead her away when she becomes aggressive.
The rangers give her some milk in a plastic glass and some bananas.
Market Day February 15, 2008
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Gotong Royong, the neighbouring village, has become the town centre for Bukit Lawang since the village was destroyed in the 2003 flood. On Fridays a market is held near the bus station. In the morning we walk the 2 km through a latex rubber plantation (the locals call the plantations ‘condom farms’) to the market for breakfast. We arrive there about 8:00, just as all the vendors are unloading their goods. This market doesn’t start as early as the ones in Chinatown – perhaps because the roads here are so bad and it is more difficult for the farmers to bring in their produce while it is dark.
At the entrance to the bus station we smell a really bad odour – rather like too much cow manure. It is actually coming from the bales of latex rubber that farmers have brought to the market to sell to a wholesaler, who then sells it to the government latex mill. By the time we leave a few hours later, the area is full of bundles of latex, with men milling about and buyers checking the quality and weighing the bundles.
We order breakfast from one of the women with a food stall in the middle of the bus station. Rice, hard-boiled eggs, something that looks like refried cornflakes with chilli peppers, and peanuts. Delicious. Really.
A small truck full of oranges pulls up near us. Motorcycle side-cars loaded with produce go down the narrow alleys between the stalls. Bundles of clothing, shoes, cloth. Toothpaste, shampoo, soap.
After going through the market, we walk down the main drag through the town. The villages here are long and narrow, with the most of the houses bordering on the main road and farm land behind. Motorcycle repair shops, tire repair, basic dry goods. There isn’t much here.
To Bukit Lawang February 14, 2008
Posted by Rebecca in Sumatra.5 comments
Valentines Day. It doesn’t appear to be a big deal here. Hallmark is missing out on a huge, untapped market in SE Asia.
We spend the last of our small rupiahs hiring one of the pesty touts to take us by motorcycle side-car a few blocks to catch the #64 minibus to the Pinang Baris bus station. It isn’t really far, but the sidewalks are full of obstacles, especially when you are dragging a suitcase, and the streets are crowded. Now we will have to pay our minibus fare with a 100,000 note. That’s like using a $20 bill to buy a 10 cent piece of candy.
We barely fit into the sidecar. Two suitcases, two backpacks, and two big people scrunched into a tiny space. We go south a few blocks, then make a u-turn around the meridian to go back the other way. This is where it gets interesting. The drivers making the u-turn slowly creep out into the oncoming lane – once there is a little break in the traffic, they creep out further until they force the oncoming traffic to slow down. Then they can make their turn. It’s bad enough doing it in a big bus, but you feel a little vulnerable when you are sitting precariously in an open side-car.
Fortunately, we don’t go far in this little contraption. The driver flags down the #64 mini bus and we load all our gear onto it and we are off for a 30-minute ride through Medan to the Pinang Baris bus station 10 km west of here.
Now we have to figure out how to pay the bus driver the 2,000 out of our 100,000 note. A friendly woman who is also going to the bus station offers to pay the driver for us. Then we search around at the bus station for a way to change our money. We buy two bottles of water and are then able to pay the woman and our bus fare to Bukit Lawang.
The bus to Bukit Lawang is almost full. Our luggage gets piled at the back of the bus and we claim seats on the 3-seat side of the bus, hoping that we won’t have to share it with anyone.
It takes about an hour to really get out of the city – Medan has a population of almost 3 million. By this time, the bus is full and we are sharing our side with a little woman. Our knees are smashed against the seat in front of us.
About an hour later and we are in to farmland – the miles and miles of oil palm. An hour later and we are starting to climb a bit. Now the road gets really bad in places and we meet lots of big trucks, hauling the palm oil kernels to the refinery. Not quite an hour later and we reach the bus station at Gotong Royong where we get down to go to Bukit Lawang.
On the bus, we met a young man who provides guiding service into the jungle. His sister runs a guesthouse along the river in Bukit Lawang, so he offers to take us there. We had wanted to stay at Nora’s Homestay, but no one else on the bus speaks English enough to understand us, so we go along with the guide, Asim. It is a 2 km motorcycle side-car ride to the village. This time we hire two and ride in comfort..
The Wisma Sibayak Hotel is across the river from the taxi park. The flood in 2003 washed out all the bridges across the river. This wooden, foot bridge was built by the owner of the hotel and ends directly at the front desk of the hotel. There are only two other bridges across the river – one that the government built that leads to nowhere across the widest point in the river, and one built by the owners of the Ecolodge, just down from our hotel.
Asim shows us a room on the second floor with a balcony overlooking the river. It is a large room with a bed, a table, and two plastic chairs. Private bathroom with western-style toilet and a shower. 30,000 rupiah. We learn later that they charge the local tourists that come from Medan 50,000, as they bring all their own food and don’t eat in the restaurant.
Amci and his wife Atik run the hotel for an owner who lives in Medan. When Amci learns that we are friends of Papa Denmark, he immediately calls him on his cell phone and tells him that his Canadian friends are here.
After settling in and having a bite to eat, we walk down the path by the river to Papa Denmark’s bungalow. Older people here are called “Papa” and “Mama”. Papa Denmark serves coffee to Papa and Mama Canada on the veranda overlooking his garden and the river in the jungle of Sumatra. Yes, it is very close to paradise.
Later, over dinner at our hotel, we watch the kids playing in the river. The current runs quite fast, but it is shallow with a few deeper areas along some large boulders. A perfect place for kids to play.
Photos of our trip to Bukit Lawang.
Georgetown to Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia February 13, 2008
Posted by Rebecca in Malaysia, Sumatra.2 comments
Today we will take the high-speed ferry from Malaysia to Sumatra, Indonesia across the Straits of Malacca. It is supposed to be a 4-hour trip, leaving at 9:00 AM. We had not planned to go across to Indonesia (not that much of this trip has been really planned!), but we met ‘Papa Denmark’ in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand and he convinced us that we had to visit Sumatra where he lives. He claimed that one should visit every other country before going to Sumatra, because after that, you won’t want to go anywhere else.
The north-west coast of Sumatra was badly damaged during the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, where 220,000 people in Banda Aceh lost their lives. We are going to Bukit Lawang, a village in the interior, next to the Gunung Leuser National Park and the Bohorok Orang-Utan Viewing Centre. This village also suffered a disaster in 2003 when a flash flood destroyed much of the village and killed 280 people.
We are down at the 24-hour restaurant along the main road through Teluk Bahang by a little after 6:00. Rice, deep-fried eggs, and cooked greens have become a standard breakfast in this town. And strong coffee with milk and sugar. After we eat, we walk a block down the street to the bus stop. The bus doesn’t come by until almost 7:00.
It takes close to an hour for the bus to get to the jetty. The ferry waiting area is busy with people rushing to get on the 8:00 ferry to Pulau Langkawi, a series of islands about 30 km off the coast. The ticket counter announces “Last call, Langkawi” so many times that one wonders if they will actually leave before we do.
Our high-speed passenger ferry starts boarding just before 9:00. We make our way through all the construction to the waiting boat, the Kenangan 3. I wonder what happened to the first two.
We manage to get down the narrow walkway with our luggage, then stow them in a luggage area near the canteen. I chose a window seat – not that one can see through the cloudy windows. Not that there is much to see once the boats get out into the strait.
Once we are underway, a steward comes by with bottles of water and a packaged pound cake for everyone and then with the Indonesian arrival and departure cards for us to fill in. There isn’t much wind, but the swells are quite large. The high-speed ferry cuts through the water quite smoothly. A DVD is showing on the tv at the front – fortunately the sound is turned low as it is in English with Malaysian subtitles.
After about an hour and a half, the captain suddenly cuts the engines back and we come to a stop. Now one can really feel the large swells as the boats starts to roll a bit. It appears that something/someone has gone overboard, as several stewards go out the door at the rear. Now we are going in reverse. Now we are going forward, but making a large circle. No one seems to know what is happening. I wonder what the procedure would be if someone did fall overboard. Would we stay out here until they were found? Or until a search and rescue crew came?
After about a 20-minute delay, we are once again heading south-west toward Sumatra. Galen goes to the rear to see if he can find out what happened. He comes back 20 minutes later, saying that he thinks someone dropped something overboard. Meanwhile, he found that there is a stairway at the rear to an upper deck that is really quite pleasant. I was wondering where all the people were going who went out the back door – the little deck at the back didn’t look big enough to hold everyone.
We have now been on board for over 5 hours and I keep peering through the window for signs of land. We are in the middle of the third movie – Blood Diamonds. Now I wish I could hear the sound, although I have seen the movie before – about illicit diamonds financing the armed struggle in Sierra Leone.
Occassionally we pass a big ship or see a fishing boat in the distance. Finally, after 6 hours, we are coming into the Berawan port. The water is crowded with ships and fishing boats.
We go up to the upper deck to take photos and see what we are coming in to.
Work Day February 12, 2008
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I spend the day on the veranda, trying to get caught up on my blog before we go to the next place and take hundreds more photos! But I am distracted by the school children going by on their bicycles. I have a great, concealed location with a view of the street through a tiny window between the trees.
The uniformed kids are riding bicycles, walking, giving each other rides. Families go by with two or even three on a bicycle and sometimes up to four on a scooter. Many of the girls are dressed in long skirts and tunics with headscarves. Every time I hear kid’s voices, I jump up and get ready to take a photo. So much for getting lots of work done!
In the evening we catch the city bus to Ferringhi, the next town, to get to an internet connection and send email and upload photos. I try to get some photos of the windy road to show how it curves around the steep cliffs along the coastline.
Ferringhi is the opposite of Teluk Bahang – the main drag through town is lined with vendors selling everything a tourist could possibly want. Restaurants and high-rise hotels line the side of the street next to the ocean. The street through town is narrow, with cars parked on one side and vendors on the other, and with lots of traffic and package tourists walking around.
When we board the bus on the way back to Teluk Bahang, one of the other guests from Ms Loh’s is on the bus. He has hiked up Penang Hill from the Teluk Bahang side, then down the other side to Georgetown. He said he ‘put his head down’ for the 1 1/2 hour hike up the hill, then took a break at the top, and then down the other side. Once he was ‘down’, he still had 10 km of hiking through the jungle, up and over hills, to reach the bus stop. He has done that trek several times a year for the past 18 years.
We stop by an outdoor Malaysian restaurant on our way home – a buffet of great food. A man is making rotis as we watch.
Penang Botanical Gardens February 11, 2008
Posted by Rebecca in Malaysia, nature.1 comment so far
The Penang Botanical Gardens are near to Georgetown, the main city on Penang Island. When we ask the other guests at the guesthouse which buses to take, they suggest that we take the bus that goes south out of Teluk Bahang and go around the island – the scenic route. Sounds like a good idea – a chance to see more of the countryside.
We walk out to the main road going south out of town – we don’t have to wait long – the bus comes along within 10 minutes. We are the only people on the bus besides the driver. The road winds around the dam and then up and around and over a ridge. Occasionally we pass a farm house tucked away on the side of the hill, but most of the way up is forested.
Once over the top, we can see the ocean again and a town below. A new road is being built here as this one is very steep and the curves are sharp.
Once down in the town, we change buses to go on in to Georgetown. On the way, we pass several new condo developments along the coast. Bulldoze huge tracts of land along the coastline and put up tall concrete structures. We are told they are being bought by Koreans and Taiwanese.
This scenic route has taken two hours.
Penang National Park February 10, 2008
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We are surrounded here in Teluk Batang by forested mountains on three sides and the ocean on the other. The Penang National Park is only a 15 minute walk away from our guesthouse. There are marked trails leading along the coastline to various beaches and several that go up and over the mountain to other points. Today we will do the 2-hour hike across to a beach on the other side.
We plan to leave early, but Malaysia is on a daylight savings time, so the sun doesn’t come up until 7:00 and we don’t wake up until the sun rises. Then we have to go find breakfast. It is Sunday morning and nothing is open. We walk down one street and up another until we finally find a food vendor. Rice and deep-fried eggs.
By the time we get to the park it is about 8:30. We register at the office and are given an entry ticket – no charge. A little ways up the path is a man at a table, checking the tickets. I guess they want to make sure that you register. If we don’t sign out on our way back, will they come looking for us?
The Penang National Park covers 1,213 hectares of coastal forest and was established in 2003. It contains a virgin jungle reserve that has been managed by the Forestry Department since 1928.
The paved trail goes along the ocean, past picnic tables built on little decks under large trees. We cross a bridge and come to a fork in the trail. We can’t remember the name of the place we want to go – these names are so foreign! But we think our trail goes to the left.
Penang Butterfly Farm February 8, 2008
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We walk down to the open restaurant on the corner for breakfast. I don’t think it even has a name. . . just a nice buffet of food and ‘pancakes.’ I order the egg pancake which comes with dahl, and Galen orders the pancake with eggs.
The Penang Butterfly Farm is just down the road from our guesthouse. It was established in the 80’s for research and development, breeding, education, and exhibition of over 3000 butterflies. The place is not only beautiful to walk through, it has well-done displays and exhibits, as well as a museum of Asian antiquities. The museum pieces were collected by the founder from the remote villages where he went for researching butterflies. Most of the pieces in the museum are also for sale – at a price.
Chinese New Year February 7, 2008
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It’s hot today. We are about 5 degrees north of the Equator. Somewhere in the last week we went from being in a “three season” region, where they actually have a cool season (cool would be below 30C) to a “two season” region. The seasons here are not determined by the temperature but by the direction of the monsoons. This is the ‘northeast’ monsoon season, so since we are on the west coast, it doesn’t rain that much, although someone said it usually rains every few days. Everything is lush and green. It is a tropical paradise. Just a little hot.
We could go to the beach, but it is about 1 km away and would require walking along a hot street. The garden here is lovely and our veranda is shaded. A light breeze blows through – just enough to keep the sweat evaporated.
Kids ride by on their bikes – it is a school holiday. They don’t seem to notice that it is hot. Most of them are riding two to a bike. The smaller kids will ride on the back with their feet sticking straight out. Kids that are a little older sit casually on the back, not even hanging on.
Families go by on scooters. They usually ride 3 or 4 to a scooter. Even kids who look like they are barely toddlers will be standing just in front of the seat behind the handle bars.
This morning Ms Loh and her maid came early to perform the Chinese New Year rituals. 5-ft high incense candles burn in front of the main door. The place is decorated with red Chinese lanterns and little red squares of paper hang in the bushes.
In the evening we go for a walk over to the Penang National Park, which is only a 20 minute walk away. On the way, we pass a family roadside stand selling local fruit drinks and homemade fish sticks.
