Bukit Lawang
Door: Ammara
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Ammara
24 September 2006 | Indonesië, Batavia
Bukit Lawang; The Oerang Oetans:
We toke the local bus to Pukit Lawan (the place the Oerang Oetans are), so glad a driver toke us to the bus station because we couldn’t have found it on our own (it’s such a big city and so many buses, you really have to know which bus you have to take). We sat in the front of the bus; I was so amazed by the bus, it looked like it was about to fall out of each other, when I looked down at my feet there were all electrical leads hanging out and the plate my feeds were standing at was about to crack and fall outside. (The bus was really old and crapy). So not a real nice feeling to sit there and relaxed for 3 to 4 hours. First they put our bags by our feed, so you can imagine how we must have been sitting there with these big bags under us, with our legs up and squezed against each other (not how I imagined it). Than there was an other person coming to sit with us, yes just crazy, because we were already squeezed in the front with 3 persons but with 4 it was really small (and the man was wearing a whollen sweater, and I was already sweating a lot, it was so hot!!! so you can imagine how hot I was when I had to sit against this whollen cotton sweeter and it was irritating my arm). But when you think well now the bus is full they put in even more and more people, some on top of each other, some hanging out of the bus (it looks like they find it the normalest thing in the world!).
Than the driver says to me that I shouldn’t lean against the door because it might fall out, whaaaaa!!!! So I changed seats haha
Everybody had warned us about the road, because it would be really bad and hard to ride on, but we were used to Simeulue so that was alright for us (for other tourist it would have been really bad). When we were about half way we got a flat tire, but they fixed it very fast, just by putting a stone under it, so it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.
The man who was sitting next to us suprisely was a guide at Pukit Lawan, later we find out it wasn’t a coincident after all because every single tourist we spoke in Pukit Lawan had a guide in there bus who told them to go in the jungle with them. Okay so in the beginning it was okay when he started talking about all he knew and information about Pukit Lawan, but than ‘ oh man, can’t he just shut up! Whaaaa” I got crazy, I was so hot and so uncomfortable and than this man just starts over and over again talking about what we should do and what are options were. We told him that we already knew a guide (Ron told us a good one) and that we were not interested, but as if they are just def, they don’t listen and go on try to convince you.
Even when we got out of the bus he got us a betjak and said to which hotel we should go and he would bring us, he just crapped our bags and wanted to show us a place at the other side of the river (the river was really wild and brown by the way and the bridge was so so scary we didn’t dare to go over that hanging thing with just a few wooden plates) Than when we told him that we had already booked a hotel he was really pissed and angry that we didn’t told him. Even in the hotel he staid and his friend came and sat with us, also started to ask us were we wanted to go and that they would bring us. We said there, tired, sweaty and waiting for our room to be ready, zucht….
Sitting in these beautiful ecolodge, amazed by the nice room for only 8 dollars, finally relaxing with a fresh fruit juice and making plans what to do for the next day. Because I was sick before we thought about making a 3 hour trip in the jungle, if it wasn’t to hard or just go by ourself and see the Oerang Oetans feeding place, but than we found out that wasn’t possible because of the loads of rain that had fallen we couldn’t go over the wild river by boat anymore. There were a lot of dutch groups coming there, but they had there own guide and schedule, than we met two dutch guy’s and asked them what they were planning to do, because maybe we could go all together (that would be nice and we didn’t have to go with these stupid guides). They were going on a two day’s trip, that was a pity because that would be to much for me but in the end they did convinced us to go with them (they were just really enthusiastic and also a English girl would come along, they would take it easy and just stop if we wanted, so it sounded like lots of fun! Lets just stay in the jungle for one night, why not?!! Lets go and find the Oerang Oetans in the mighty jungle!
Not as planned we toke of on a two day’s trip in the jungle. The guide who was with us told us a lot about all the different plants ( the jungle is just one big pharmacy and medical shop), those plants all serve to heal different diseases. It was really interesting to hear about all these things and weird to think that we make medicine out of these plants and that these people just go to the jungle when they have something.
First we went steep up and had a beautiful view over the oil palm tree plantations and than we went into the jungle; it’s amazing how many different kind of plantation there was in the jungle. It really felt as if we were all alone in that big jungle, only Liane and monkey’s around us…..
Than in front of us the guy’s suddenly stopped, they were all making pictured and looking at something, I couldn’t see what it was, but than when I came closer I saw something orange and than I saw it was a Oerang Oetang with a baby eating a banana.
I toke my camera out and started filming, first you only see Ben’s ass on the video but than you can definitely see the Oerang Oetang, wow! So close, just sitting there in front of your face eating a banana; whow! Than suddenly they all start shouting that we have to move, ‘run across to the other side!’ we had to go passed this Oerang Oetang, Mina we found out; this was the aggressive one (we had spoken to a dutch lady who was attacked by Minda, yeah she really had a stretch and her clothes were been thorned apart). One of the guides had an elastic hold out just in case she would get aggressive (by she I mean the Oeran Oetan). So that was a nice experience; the aggressive mother Oeran oetan the first we pass. But I think the guides sometimes were even more scared than we were, you could really feel the tension.
It’s amazing how these guy’s know all the monkey’s and Oerang Oetans.
It was a beautiful walk in the jungle, it felt so peaceful, but also a bit scary because we were just people walking in the jungle, so small compared to this big place were all these wild animals live. If you go on a 5 or 7 day trip you come far into the jungle and there are many animals, also tigers and elephants, yes the real big and dangerous ones (eeekkk!!! Glad they didn’t find us)
When we went on walking the road just got worse and worse, the whole road was gone because of the rain and at some places it was really steep and slippery (we were lucky it didn’t rain when we walked because you would definitely had slept and fallen down). So we all thought it would be a nice, peaceful and easy walk, well….we were all so wrong! It was really hard and steep up and down; a lot of the times we had to climb with both of our hands. The only persons who walked up easily were the guides and not to forget Ben, yes he really had some energy left (HDHD), he brought almost everything with him in his backpack, so it wasn’t a light backpack and he just ran up and down (so we just let him run). Oh I almost forgot at one point we stopped at a river side and than the guide had all leeches on his legs so he just takes them out and says we had to check our body (Hello there! As if it’s the normallest case in the world), so we checked, thank god I didn’t have one, but Ben got one in his belly well he just passed out, totally in shock, haha yes this guy who isn’t afraid of anything (not even tigers) but hell he is from leeches. So every time we walked somewhere he asked if there were no leeches.
So after walking and walking and all very tired, we saw a lot of Oerang Oetans. One with a baby came really close and you could touch her; I didn’t because they had warned us that you should not do this, because Oerang Oetans are a dieing specy and they can get diseases very quickly, but you could if you wanted to. So imagine how close she was and she didn’t do anything, she just stared (almost the same as the Indonesian people aren’t they?! Haha) and the baby played and was swinging around on the mothers arm (real fun to see).
Finally we got to the waterfall were we had lunch and could take a swim. Ohhhh never thought it could be so nice to take your shoes out and take a nice bath in the river; so refreshing and wonderful; you feel so free and peaceful having a swim in the nature. We eat rice with vegetables and an egg on a palm leaf with our fingers and it felt so natural eating like that in the nature. After our break we all didn’t really feel like walking anymore and because they had said it was close by and they told us every time it was just an hour away we didn’t believe them anymore, but we were all looking forward and curieuse how our sleeping place would look like.
When we got there I was actually really in shock, I could hear the others say how wonderful it was to stay at this place and sleep in the middle of the jungle, but I was just in shock, they must be kidding! This couldn’t be the place we were sleeping! The whole night, you know on this mats. And were was the tent by the way? I only saw a stick and some plastic rubbish back put over it, was this it? Were they sure?!
Ok my mother had warned me it would be primitive, but this? I didn’t thought it would be like this! So we had to sleep on a mat, which you can’t really call a mat in my eyes but just sleep on these stones, yes it was actually really just sleeping on rocks.
So you can imagine it wasn’t much of a sleep, with all these rocks sticking in your hip and as if it couldn’t get worse it also started to rain and I got wet and than this guide started to touch me in the middle of the night (that was really terrible, I don’t know what he was thinking?! Bah)
Ok now it sounds like hell, well the bet was, but it was really an experience sleeping in the jungle, I had never thought I would sleep in a jungle in my life, but I did and it was great. So dark in the middle of the night and than all these sounds of animals and the idea of sleeping there were the animals also sleep.
A funny story; before we went to bed Chris ask why the Oerang Oetans slept in the trees, because they make nest in the palm trees and sleep there at night. So the guide answerers well that’s because they are afraid of the tigers. Whaaa!!!!! And there we are sleeping on the ground!
There were two more guides who carried the tent (if you can call it a tent) and brought the food and who cooked for us. The food was just great! We got loads of food and all very good food. The cooked it with only one pan !!!!(so yeah we already tried to convince them to come with us to Holland and cook for us there, that would be nice won’t it?!) So you sit there in the jungle with your plate and lots of food and than when you look up there are those wild Oerang Oetans sitting there (they must have smelt the food). I felt like I was in a movie or in the zoo, the Oerang Oetans were just sitting in the trees and staring at us (yeah who is in the Zoo now?)
The first thing I saw in the morning was also an Oerang Oetan in the tree just staring at us.
At night we play some really funny games (if I think of it now it must have looked stupid this grown ups sitting on mats in the jungle playing these silly games). We did some cart games and some games were you have to sing and give a cup to the person next to you, really funny and stupid cames, so we laughed a lot and had fun (if you would do this in Holland they will just laugh at you)
The guilds talked about costs and spirits and what they believe, and the really believe a lot, also feel and see things. So they did some acupressure on us and the next day also a massage which was really nice and they are really good at it (they are more into these things and so use to giving each other massage and taking care of there body than we are)
The way back was much faster than we expected, we didn’t saw the other monkey’s but we were lucky we saw so many Oerang Oetans. At the end also on other wild and aggressive one (they become like that because people feed them and they want more, so if you don’t have any they get angry) and we really had to run because he chased us, Help!
When we got back at the ecolodge it was so nice to have a normal shower and a nice bed. At night they made a party just for us, so they brought there guitars and drums and we all sang.
We toke the local bus to Pukit Lawan (the place the Oerang Oetans are), so glad a driver toke us to the bus station because we couldn’t have found it on our own (it’s such a big city and so many buses, you really have to know which bus you have to take). We sat in the front of the bus; I was so amazed by the bus, it looked like it was about to fall out of each other, when I looked down at my feet there were all electrical leads hanging out and the plate my feeds were standing at was about to crack and fall outside. (The bus was really old and crapy). So not a real nice feeling to sit there and relaxed for 3 to 4 hours. First they put our bags by our feed, so you can imagine how we must have been sitting there with these big bags under us, with our legs up and squezed against each other (not how I imagined it). Than there was an other person coming to sit with us, yes just crazy, because we were already squeezed in the front with 3 persons but with 4 it was really small (and the man was wearing a whollen sweater, and I was already sweating a lot, it was so hot!!! so you can imagine how hot I was when I had to sit against this whollen cotton sweeter and it was irritating my arm). But when you think well now the bus is full they put in even more and more people, some on top of each other, some hanging out of the bus (it looks like they find it the normalest thing in the world!).
Than the driver says to me that I shouldn’t lean against the door because it might fall out, whaaaaa!!!! So I changed seats haha
Everybody had warned us about the road, because it would be really bad and hard to ride on, but we were used to Simeulue so that was alright for us (for other tourist it would have been really bad). When we were about half way we got a flat tire, but they fixed it very fast, just by putting a stone under it, so it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.
The man who was sitting next to us suprisely was a guide at Pukit Lawan, later we find out it wasn’t a coincident after all because every single tourist we spoke in Pukit Lawan had a guide in there bus who told them to go in the jungle with them. Okay so in the beginning it was okay when he started talking about all he knew and information about Pukit Lawan, but than ‘ oh man, can’t he just shut up! Whaaaa” I got crazy, I was so hot and so uncomfortable and than this man just starts over and over again talking about what we should do and what are options were. We told him that we already knew a guide (Ron told us a good one) and that we were not interested, but as if they are just def, they don’t listen and go on try to convince you.
Even when we got out of the bus he got us a betjak and said to which hotel we should go and he would bring us, he just crapped our bags and wanted to show us a place at the other side of the river (the river was really wild and brown by the way and the bridge was so so scary we didn’t dare to go over that hanging thing with just a few wooden plates) Than when we told him that we had already booked a hotel he was really pissed and angry that we didn’t told him. Even in the hotel he staid and his friend came and sat with us, also started to ask us were we wanted to go and that they would bring us. We said there, tired, sweaty and waiting for our room to be ready, zucht….
Sitting in these beautiful ecolodge, amazed by the nice room for only 8 dollars, finally relaxing with a fresh fruit juice and making plans what to do for the next day. Because I was sick before we thought about making a 3 hour trip in the jungle, if it wasn’t to hard or just go by ourself and see the Oerang Oetans feeding place, but than we found out that wasn’t possible because of the loads of rain that had fallen we couldn’t go over the wild river by boat anymore. There were a lot of dutch groups coming there, but they had there own guide and schedule, than we met two dutch guy’s and asked them what they were planning to do, because maybe we could go all together (that would be nice and we didn’t have to go with these stupid guides). They were going on a two day’s trip, that was a pity because that would be to much for me but in the end they did convinced us to go with them (they were just really enthusiastic and also a English girl would come along, they would take it easy and just stop if we wanted, so it sounded like lots of fun! Lets just stay in the jungle for one night, why not?!! Lets go and find the Oerang Oetans in the mighty jungle!
Not as planned we toke of on a two day’s trip in the jungle. The guide who was with us told us a lot about all the different plants ( the jungle is just one big pharmacy and medical shop), those plants all serve to heal different diseases. It was really interesting to hear about all these things and weird to think that we make medicine out of these plants and that these people just go to the jungle when they have something.
First we went steep up and had a beautiful view over the oil palm tree plantations and than we went into the jungle; it’s amazing how many different kind of plantation there was in the jungle. It really felt as if we were all alone in that big jungle, only Liane and monkey’s around us…..
Than in front of us the guy’s suddenly stopped, they were all making pictured and looking at something, I couldn’t see what it was, but than when I came closer I saw something orange and than I saw it was a Oerang Oetang with a baby eating a banana.
I toke my camera out and started filming, first you only see Ben’s ass on the video but than you can definitely see the Oerang Oetang, wow! So close, just sitting there in front of your face eating a banana; whow! Than suddenly they all start shouting that we have to move, ‘run across to the other side!’ we had to go passed this Oerang Oetang, Mina we found out; this was the aggressive one (we had spoken to a dutch lady who was attacked by Minda, yeah she really had a stretch and her clothes were been thorned apart). One of the guides had an elastic hold out just in case she would get aggressive (by she I mean the Oeran Oetan). So that was a nice experience; the aggressive mother Oeran oetan the first we pass. But I think the guides sometimes were even more scared than we were, you could really feel the tension.
It’s amazing how these guy’s know all the monkey’s and Oerang Oetans.
It was a beautiful walk in the jungle, it felt so peaceful, but also a bit scary because we were just people walking in the jungle, so small compared to this big place were all these wild animals live. If you go on a 5 or 7 day trip you come far into the jungle and there are many animals, also tigers and elephants, yes the real big and dangerous ones (eeekkk!!! Glad they didn’t find us)
When we went on walking the road just got worse and worse, the whole road was gone because of the rain and at some places it was really steep and slippery (we were lucky it didn’t rain when we walked because you would definitely had slept and fallen down). So we all thought it would be a nice, peaceful and easy walk, well….we were all so wrong! It was really hard and steep up and down; a lot of the times we had to climb with both of our hands. The only persons who walked up easily were the guides and not to forget Ben, yes he really had some energy left (HDHD), he brought almost everything with him in his backpack, so it wasn’t a light backpack and he just ran up and down (so we just let him run). Oh I almost forgot at one point we stopped at a river side and than the guide had all leeches on his legs so he just takes them out and says we had to check our body (Hello there! As if it’s the normallest case in the world), so we checked, thank god I didn’t have one, but Ben got one in his belly well he just passed out, totally in shock, haha yes this guy who isn’t afraid of anything (not even tigers) but hell he is from leeches. So every time we walked somewhere he asked if there were no leeches.
So after walking and walking and all very tired, we saw a lot of Oerang Oetans. One with a baby came really close and you could touch her; I didn’t because they had warned us that you should not do this, because Oerang Oetans are a dieing specy and they can get diseases very quickly, but you could if you wanted to. So imagine how close she was and she didn’t do anything, she just stared (almost the same as the Indonesian people aren’t they?! Haha) and the baby played and was swinging around on the mothers arm (real fun to see).
Finally we got to the waterfall were we had lunch and could take a swim. Ohhhh never thought it could be so nice to take your shoes out and take a nice bath in the river; so refreshing and wonderful; you feel so free and peaceful having a swim in the nature. We eat rice with vegetables and an egg on a palm leaf with our fingers and it felt so natural eating like that in the nature. After our break we all didn’t really feel like walking anymore and because they had said it was close by and they told us every time it was just an hour away we didn’t believe them anymore, but we were all looking forward and curieuse how our sleeping place would look like.
When we got there I was actually really in shock, I could hear the others say how wonderful it was to stay at this place and sleep in the middle of the jungle, but I was just in shock, they must be kidding! This couldn’t be the place we were sleeping! The whole night, you know on this mats. And were was the tent by the way? I only saw a stick and some plastic rubbish back put over it, was this it? Were they sure?!
Ok my mother had warned me it would be primitive, but this? I didn’t thought it would be like this! So we had to sleep on a mat, which you can’t really call a mat in my eyes but just sleep on these stones, yes it was actually really just sleeping on rocks.
So you can imagine it wasn’t much of a sleep, with all these rocks sticking in your hip and as if it couldn’t get worse it also started to rain and I got wet and than this guide started to touch me in the middle of the night (that was really terrible, I don’t know what he was thinking?! Bah)
Ok now it sounds like hell, well the bet was, but it was really an experience sleeping in the jungle, I had never thought I would sleep in a jungle in my life, but I did and it was great. So dark in the middle of the night and than all these sounds of animals and the idea of sleeping there were the animals also sleep.
A funny story; before we went to bed Chris ask why the Oerang Oetans slept in the trees, because they make nest in the palm trees and sleep there at night. So the guide answerers well that’s because they are afraid of the tigers. Whaaa!!!!! And there we are sleeping on the ground!
There were two more guides who carried the tent (if you can call it a tent) and brought the food and who cooked for us. The food was just great! We got loads of food and all very good food. The cooked it with only one pan !!!!(so yeah we already tried to convince them to come with us to Holland and cook for us there, that would be nice won’t it?!) So you sit there in the jungle with your plate and lots of food and than when you look up there are those wild Oerang Oetans sitting there (they must have smelt the food). I felt like I was in a movie or in the zoo, the Oerang Oetans were just sitting in the trees and staring at us (yeah who is in the Zoo now?)
The first thing I saw in the morning was also an Oerang Oetan in the tree just staring at us.
At night we play some really funny games (if I think of it now it must have looked stupid this grown ups sitting on mats in the jungle playing these silly games). We did some cart games and some games were you have to sing and give a cup to the person next to you, really funny and stupid cames, so we laughed a lot and had fun (if you would do this in Holland they will just laugh at you)
The guilds talked about costs and spirits and what they believe, and the really believe a lot, also feel and see things. So they did some acupressure on us and the next day also a massage which was really nice and they are really good at it (they are more into these things and so use to giving each other massage and taking care of there body than we are)
The way back was much faster than we expected, we didn’t saw the other monkey’s but we were lucky we saw so many Oerang Oetans. At the end also on other wild and aggressive one (they become like that because people feed them and they want more, so if you don’t have any they get angry) and we really had to run because he chased us, Help!
When we got back at the ecolodge it was so nice to have a normal shower and a nice bed. At night they made a party just for us, so they brought there guitars and drums and we all sang.
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