Chillin’

I need to start from thankin Amanda and Ivan for telling me to go to Bukit Lawang. It was the best choice ever!

I arrived to Medan in the evening. Quite a shock to the system, from the ultra modern, shiny Singapore airport to the messy and pretty shabby airport in Medan. I got my visa and found the driver who was to take me to Bukit Lawang. At 8pm the place still felt like a sauna. The road was fascinating – this world is really different from what I’m used to in Europe. All the stories are true, cars driving where they want and how they want, people walking and running between them, dozens of people selling stuff on the street, groups just hanging about on the pavements, millions of motorbikes, most houses looking really run down, lots of noise from people and the constantly beeping cars… Overwhelming. On the road I learned the local car semantics. Flash road lights – I’ll be overtaking; one short beep – a general ‘I’m here, look out’; one long beep – ‘how are you driving, idiot?!’; a series of short beeps – used to reinforce any of the above.

In a two hour drive we slowly passed what was several other towns but, since there were no visible breaks between them, what looked like never-ending suburbs. More and more narrow roads, more street vendors, more neck breaking overtaking, until we finally go out of the urban area. But the best was yet to come. After we arrived to Bukit Lawang it turned out that the car can go no further – instead there was a guy on a motorbike waiting for me, and off we went through the narrow paths of broken concrete that used to be pavement through constant bumps and ups and downs, between houses and through a market towards the jungle. What an experience! I wanted to laugh out of sheer joy.

When we got there, several of the friendliest people on Earth were hanging about the veranda of the Green Hill guest house. It didn’t take five minutes and we were all chatting away, joking and just having a great time. My room turned out to be on top of the guest house, which itself is built on a hill slope. I have a huge bed with a mosquito net and a bathroom with water from the nearby stream coming out of a bamboo tube in the wall in place of a shower. And lots of ants walking all over my toilet – I need to wash it with the bucket meant for flushing before I use it. I went to sleep listening to the sound of the river and the music of the crickets.

Bukit Lawang is a holiday spot which is mainly used by the locals. It’s based on the edge of a national park and an orangutan reserve. There are many guest houses around, people come here for jungle treks, water rafting and tubing, or just to chill out. At the moment it’s pretty quiet, because the season won’t start until May. The Green Hill is run by Andrea, a British woman who moved here years ago to study orangutans, but in practice everything is manned with Indonesian people – jungle guides, cooks, vendors, crafters and general hangers-about. And seriously, when I heard the stories about the openness and friendliness of people here, I found it hard to believe. But I don’t know of any other place where I felt so welcome, so relaxed and just in the right place so quickly as here. Everyone I meet wants to chat and hang about for a bit, tell me something, hear about me… Amazing.

Syafii on the bridge to the jungle

Apparently not only cables do that

Lianas rock!

On the next day I woke up to see several macaques running about on the roof of the guest house. Although I couldn’t sleep (jetlag), I was totally up for a short trek in the jungle, just to check it out before I go for longer. But wow how ridiculously hot it was! We are about 300km from the Equator and you can feel it. But it’s not just the constant 40 degrees, or even the sun that’s worst – it’s the humidity. Sauna, the air is so thick and heavy! OK, the sun is pretty hardcore as well. I don’t know how those people ever get anything done here – I want to rest after five minutes of just walking.

Anyway, the trek was great. The highlights: I saw a female orangutan with a young one, a gibbon and some more macaques, a couple geckos, huge fire ants, amazingly huge trees, cinnamon, clove and quinine trees, rattans (one of which tried to take my eye out with its long spiky tail), we crossed a river barefoot, I had a swim in a pool under a waterfall, a leach decided it wants my blood, and I learned a great deal of general info about the jungle from my awesome guide, Syafii. There was a liberating point at which I stopped caring about the sweat and just went on with it. Fortunately, in the jungle it’s a little bit less hot since no sun gets through, but the constant scrambling up and down on really steep slopes was pretty exhausting in this heat. The swim in the waterfall came just in time and was fantastically refreshing. By the end of the trek it started raining and we got back just before a serious downpour.

Spot a gibbon

Spot a gecko

Spot a Simon

Some goats, photo for Suzi and Charlie

The late lunch I had after coming back was one of the tastiest things ever – a simple mie goreng, but done so well! And then the rest of the day was spent on wonderful lazy chilling out, chatting with people, meeting new people, hearing about crafting things from bamboo and coconuts, hanging about the veranda, checking out the river and smoking. And most importantly, music! Pandi (Mr Roses, or The King) has a collection of guitars and is pretty damn good at jazz improvising and fast solos, and pretty much everyone else can play guitar or djembe, so for a large part of the evening we were just exchanging instruments and coming up with new tunes to play. My favourite long and amazingly positive Indonesian song they played ends each verse with ‘everything’s gonna be OK’. This is exactly the spirit of this place: don’t worry, be happy, everything’s gonna be all right. It’s wonderful.

Amat on the way to the cave

Today I managed to sleep at least a bit better, waking up as late as 5:30am. I stayed in bed until later, writing this up, but as I went down to the veranda at 8:30, everyone else was still asleep. Sunda. I got some breakfast and people started slowly showing up. And then I went with Amat to check out… The Bat Cave. Yes.

But this wasn’t a cave like those one Waitomo. A bit smaller (though still huge, a kilometer long and with big spaces), with many open parts and sunlight flowing in, but mainly without any of those nonsense paths and pavements or lights for tourists – just walking on rocks, in a stream, jumping over pits, climbing and squeezing through tight passages with a torch… proper cave! And of course bats, lots of bats. Fantastic place!

This is how long my shadow is at noon

Since it’s Sunday today, many people came over for the weekend from Medan and other cities, so down the river in the village it’s really busy. Lots of people swimming, rafting, hanging about in bars, everyone very chatty, many people stopping me to say hi or comment on my beard, and a group of girls just had to take a dozen photos with me. After a lunch I’m going back there to check out the market and net to post this. But now – swim in a river. Mmm…