Living the Good Life: Bukit Lawang

Hey everyone,

Apologies for the lack of timely blogs- better get all these SE Asia guys put up before the next adventure.....

So here we are in Bukit Lawang, Sumatra, Indonesia. One of the most remote/exotic places I never thought I would land myself. We flew from Bangkok to Medan and then had a hired car pick us up at the airport and drive us the 3 hrs to Bukit Lawang. It was pricey by Indonesian standards, but so worth it because we were able to get up early the next morning and walk right into the jungle! This place was so awesome, I really don't know why more people don't come here (however I won't complain having this paradise to ourselves). It's such a wonderful conservation story too, there is an estimated 6600 orangutans in the Gunung Leuser National Park, the last stronghold of the Sumatran orangutan. While this still classifies them as critically endangered, these numbers are on the rise as people have started to see the value of protecting these amazing creatures. There is now a stiffer penalty for killing or trapping orangutans with the intent of selling them on the black market for pets. The park is almost 8000 square kilometers, and while that may seem huge, the problem is there are palm oil plantations encroaching on its every side. These plantations are no good for any wild-life, a real 'green desert' if you will. There is no food to eat in these trees, and they do a terrible job of protecting you from the searing Sumatran heat so animals wouldn't even choose to make a home here and forage for food elsewhere. The world's thirst for palm oil is voracious, but if we all made an effort to read food labels it would help the orangutans a great deal. This website can help: http://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil

Back to our jungle trek. In the morning we set out with our guide, Dani. He may have been a 50ish year old man but we had a tough time keeping up with him. He spent 25/30 days a month in the jungle, and could scrabble up a hill with little to grab onto, carrying his pack and a load of firewood. The guy was impressive. He also regaled us with tales of the jungle, the animals and the tourists he had taken on treks over the years.

We saw this White Faced Gibbon right off the hop as we got into the first bit of denser jungle. He was swinging through the trees, making the howling-like noise they make.

It wasn't long before we were seeing orangutans either. The semi-wild orangutans tend to hang around closer to the town, as there is a feeding station there. About 230 orangutans have been brought back to the jungle from captive situations where people were keeping them as pets. They don't really know how to fend for themselves but they remember how to cruise around the jungle, swinging through the trees. So they show up to be fed and go back out into the jungle to sleep and be social. If you keep an orangutan as a pet I hope you are reincarnated as a tapeworm.

Momma and her baby boy.

'Jengot', one of the semi-wild males, poses for a shot. Jengot means beard in Indonesian. Jared had a pretty epic jengot at this point, and people would actually stop us on the street, rub their chins and say 'jengot, very good', and continue on. Jared was like a mini-superstar in Indonesia.

Jengot vs. jengot

Look how lush the vegetation was! The jungle actually did an amazing job of shielding you from the sun. Yes, it was hot, and yes we were always sweating, but I never got a sunburn.

Would have been an epic picture if this ridiculous guy and his hat would have stayed home

Lunch break with NaNang cutting fruit, Dani in the yellow shirt and Jengot, I mean Jared standing behind him

At the first night's camp site I saw a monitor lizard slinking through the water. They can get to be up to 2 m long. They aren't dangerous, I'm pretty sure (?). Dani told us they sprinlke salt all around the lean-to we sleep in to deter snakes. He said they do it once a year. Seems a little ridiculous to me considering the place gets 120 inches of rain a year, but oh well.

That night we played some camp games with NaNang before hitting the hay. And by hay I mean hard ground. Would have killed for hay. Certainly made it easy to get up in the morning.

We had breakfast and parted ways with NaNang and the two Danes we had been touring with. Dani, Jared and I continued on further into the jungle. We were staying one more night.

We stopped for lunch after a healthy bit of uphill climbing. Nice place to take a dip.

Long tailed macaques stealing our leftovers.

Hey buddy!

Our digs the second night. As you can see, everything is hanging to dry as we got caught in a torrential down pour as we walked into camp. This was rain on steroids. It was crazy.

Nice little spot down by the river.

We walked out that day and tubed down the river to get back to town. It was white water and lots of fun. We also stopped to see one of the semi-wild orangs nursing a 3 month old baby. It was so little and cute, by far the cutest animal baby I've seen in the flesh.