Jungle boogie

Sunday evening was even more musical than before. Some new people showed up, including Pandi’s band members, and we were playing Indonesian and English tunes until late night. The the guitars and djembe kept changing hands, some folders with lyrics showed up… At some point Karen said that Jaka, one of the guides I didn’t see before, looks a bit like Michael Jackson when he has his sunglasses on. And yes, totally! So I quickly brought my hat and wow, in the hat he was a total lookalike! We had a picture session, Jaka aka Jacko was posing and singing… Until he feel asleep from taking to much of his green medicine. I gave him the hat and make the man really happy – he looks too good in it not to have it.

Kitchen stalkers

Time for some assorted general observations. Cats and macaques everywhere. Very skinny cats who come over every time I`m trying to eat, hoping for some leftovers. Generally lots of animals everywhere, goats, sheep and chickens runing around.

It’s impossible to go down the ‘street’ without being greeted or chatted to twenty times – I’d say about 75% of people I pass say hi or ask something. Most children shout ‘hi mister!’ if I’m around, not even walking in their direction, and many of them stare and are really happy when I wave and smile at them. I picked up some Indonesian words, and I`m trying to at least greet people properly – apa kabar? I’m also learning to haggle, with reasonable effect.

There is a lot of hanging about going on here. At points it seems like this is the main thing people do here – sit on the veranda and chat with someone, or look in the distance, or read. It’s hardly a wonder in this temperature, and many people here work only when there is a job to do, e.g. jungle guides don’t have much to do between treks.

Beyond the more representative river front the village starts looking really poor – old cottages and hovels, brick houses are a rarity, everything looking very makeshift, more animals, while families bathing and washing clothes in the river, naked children running about.

Everything is happening on the outside – people eat on the veranda, sit around the pavements, there are no walk-in shops or restaurants, even the barber takes appointments outside. In most houses the veranda is a substantial part of the building.

It rains pretty much every night, and its proper rain or a thunderstorm. The river doubles in size after the rain, and the lightnings are spectacular.

Everyone smokes. Well, at least 90% of guys are smoking, women a bit less. Moreover, pretty much everyone smokes weed too. Nobody seems to care that in Indonesia you go to jail for 5 years if you’re caught – in fact most people think that five years is nothing anyway. But Bukit Lawang is pretty safe, police doesn’t go here much and there are tourists so they don’t want to scare them off.

Similarly, most people play guitar. Everyone says they don’t, and then grabs the instrument and bursts into a song. OK, not all play very well, but they still do. Also, they play many of the Western songs with some humor here, changing the text so it’s about Bukit Lawang and orangutans. By the way, the song I mentioned last time is called Bondan prakoso ya sudahlah, check it out:

Ketang ketang, still fresh!

Anyway, back to the story. On the next day I spent some time working on a conference presentation, and then Bra showed me how to make a ketang-ketang, an Indonesian instrument made entirely out of bamboo. The second one I made entirely on my own and it turned out pretty damn well. I’ve been practicing for some time and I`m discovering that the range of sounds it can produce is quite a bit wider than I initially thought. So this is now my souvenir from Sumatra! I’ll need to send it home together with some shopping I made before I leave back to Singapore.

The rest of the day was spent on more exploration of the village, checking out a rock garden and chatting with some randomly met people. After I came back to the guesthouse I discovered that some of the intimate atmosphere has vanished – some bloody tourists arrived and everyone was keeping to themselves more.

Humans playing orangutan spotting

nom nom nom

On the following day I set of for a two day trek. Baik, the guide, was great, but the Dutch couple who went with us were not. First they wanted to go for two days as well, but chickened out in the last moment and went only for a day. And lucky they did, because they were really slow and quite boring too. Anyway, highlights of this trek: another couple orangutans, including a female with a 3 yo baby right next to the campsite, a few gibbons jumping around and making a lot of noise it the treetops, a huge lizard (1.2m or so) next to the river, lots of hummingbirds, weird centipedes, more leeches, swimming and diving in the river, swimming and self-massage in another waterfall pool, sleeping in the jungle under a plastic tent in the rain, and rafting down the river on the way back. Games and fun were had in the camp, I met two cute French girls and some American tourists, and at some point Baik casually told me that there are orangutan brothels in Indonesia and he heard that they are really good. Go figure.

More gibbons

Lunch in the jungle

Campsite and the tents we slept in

Spot a lizard

After coming back I was just coming out, chatting with people and went for a swim with two pretty and lovely sisters who work in Green Hill. Igia told me I’m very handsome and sexy and said she has something for me and will give me tomorrow. I’m very curios and excited about it. In the meantime, another guy from Germany showed up and I had a nice chat with him too.

In the evening I met the local stoners and dealers- a group of guys dealing drugs to earn enough money to open a guest house. Baik met me with some other people and I had a great time with the locals. Some more guitar playing when I got back and another sleepless night – I just really can’t sleep in here for some reason…

Bukit Lawang at 6am

I spent the last day in Sumatra on going to a nearby village to post my katang-katang and some shopping to Scotland and waiting for Baik’s motorbike to be repaired. Fun fact: long eyelashes are a bit of a problem when you’re riding a bike at 80km/h without a helmet – it’s quite hard to keep eyes open. Anyway, things are sent and in the hands of a higher power now – I can only hope that some day my stuff will arrive. The rest of the day was just more of the good thing – strolling around, hanging out with people, swimming in the river, and some internet use to upload pictures to the previous posts. Took ages, since the net here is almost as bad as it was in New Zealand. In the evening it was awfully quiet, but we managed to squeeze in a couple hours of music and fun anyway. Sadly, I haven’t seen Igia all day, so I don’t know what the surprise was.

And finally, today. I woke up before 6am to catch an early bus to Medan, said goodbye to Pandi and Rasta and was on my way. On the way to the terminal I managed to hitchhike a motorbike ride, so I got there pretty quickly. The bus turned out to be an old run down van, the sort of thing that would fail MOT on every point. Seatbelts? What seatbelts? The road was fascinating. The driver told me we’ll leave in five, and I had to hurry him because he was just hanging out with some pals way longer than that. Then he started driving at about 10km/h and beeping to attract customers. Basically, there are no bus stops or scheduled times, simply if you hear van beeping in the village, you go out, stop the van and get in. So we were driving really slowly and stopping often. Did I mention that I`m working on my stoicism when it filmed to travel? On the way we stopped once so the driver could get some smokes from a stall next to the road, another time for him to get food, and some guy on a motorcycle said something to the driver while on the road, and he pulled over and went to check the back of the car, did something for five minutes and we went on.

We got to Medan surprisingly quickly considering all those stops. 90km in just over three hours, not bad. From the street where buses stop I caught a meze to the airport. The ride in the cabin attached to a motorbike was even better. Scooping between the cars and motorbikes, the stench of fumes and petrol – seatbelts, what seatbelts? Did I mention that the quality of road here makes every journey a rollercoaster? I guess it’s for the best, with better roads they’d be able to drive faster, and this chaos doesn’t need any more speed! Some more views of Medan on the road showed more of what I’ve seen before. What caught my eye this time were stallswith carpets – the rich soft lush coloured rugs in dirty half ruined sheds, an amazing contrast.

Now finally I`m at the airport, on time and in one piece. It’s an experience as well, with multiple makeshift solutions trying to mimic airport standards elsewhere – display monitors powered from a portable generator, check in counters with holes in the wall behind them in place of luggage rollers, souvenir stalls in place of duty free shops, glass screens dividing the departures hall from the rest of the airport, no monitors with departure schedule, and only one departure gate. Mind you, everything seems to run pretty smoothly. The shops are definitely an asset, way more interesting things here to buy than in the standard Western shops. There are three free WiFi networks, but neither works. I’ll be boarding my flight soon, and I hope to post this as soon as I get to Singapore.