Indonesia - the most friendly place in the world

Bananas hanging in the market

This is our very last week traveling! We are counting down the days now to when we'll be back in New Zealand and onto familiar soil yet again. No more back packs! No more of the totally unknown and having to find our way around. We'll be back in the land of hot showers and flushing toilets too. But it does mean no more new and exciting sights and dinners out, No more fascinating wildlife or hot tropical days. These things I will be missing.

Exquisite jungle flora

At a huge 400-year-old tree in the jungle

Indonesia has been full of surprises. The first being how friendly everyone here is! Maybe it's because we're western and fair-haired, but within our first minute of arriving in Medan people wanted to help us and everyone smiled and wanted to say hello and ask our names and to introduce themselves.
We got a bus from Medan airport which took us through the city to the last stop, a huge mall, where Josh wanted to get a pair of glasses as his fell apart back in Holland; they are cheaper here.
We had all our luggage with us, and so already we were a sight; walking through the mall heavily laden with our tramping packs, suitcases and day packs. We plonked them down against a wall to wait for Josh to find the optician and Noa, Fern and I went off to find the toilets. We had only walked a few paces when a woman, with eyes wide, saw Noa and Fern and nudged her friend and pointed, 'Look, look!' We went up the escalator and everyone turned around to stare at us, and smile and say "Hello!" and "Where you from?" It felt like we were celebrities! As we walked around the mall people would reach out to touch us and call out to us. We got back to Esmae and Phoebe who were watching our stuff, and we both started saying at the same time "How crazy is this!!"

While we had been upstairs, Esmae and Phoebe had been asked by dozens of people to have selfies with them. When we joined them, we were only standing there for a few minutes when a crowd of people, mostly women, started taking our photos and asking for group photos with them and us, putting their arms around us like we were long-time friends! And it's been that way the whole week. Wherever we go, whether we are walking, eating, or just hanging around, people are treating us like we are famous people. I'm so glad we're not in our ordinary life!

We took a bus from Medan to Bukit Lawang, a small river-side town north and inland of Medan. The roads here are pretty bad, full of holes and un-tarsealed, so it made us feel, after our journey in a small van type bus, rather sore and exhausted from all the bumping and jostling we got sitting in the back. It was an interesting journey though as we passed through the bustling city of Medan, and then further into the countryside, passing banana trees, rice paddies, coconut trees, many palm oil plantations and little houses with mud surrounding most of them and chickens free ranging outside and sometimes inside too.
After the 3 hour journey on the bus, we were dropped off at the local marketplace, which was not running then, though there were many men hanging around, sitting on the unused tables, chatting and smoking. We were met by a man from our hostel to show us the way there, and we took a tuk tuk to the little village which is on the edge of Sumatra's huge national park (Gunung Leuser, 7, 927 square km).
The village is made up of two main roads. One where you can drive a car around and another that is a small foot path that runs directly along the river. This is where we are staying. It has a really nice community feel here, where everybody knows each other and trades with each other and helps each other out. The first day we met many people along the path, which is made up of small family restaurants and clothes and trinket shops. Some good craftsmen too. And from that day on, we are often stopped to have a chat and pass the time of day. Not because they want something from us, but because they are genuinely friendly and kind. It's rather refreshing!

We found a guide (Adi) who took us on a 3-hour trek through the jungle to spot some Orangutan. The morning we were supposed to go out it was pouring with rain and so he told us to come back in the afternoon, as the Orangutan cover up with leaves when it rains and it's very hard to see them high in the trees. Adi sent some scouts out into the jungle before us that afternoon to try and spot the Orangutan, and we were very lucky that they found some after we had only been walking about half an hour.
There was a female with a baby of about 3 years old. Following stealthily behind her was a big male. The female didn't want to have too much to do with him by the looks, as whenever he came close she would always put at least one or two trees between them. He was rather patient though and didn't push her boundaries.

The female and her baby. She would shift her weight effortlessly from limb to limb, and in doing so she could climb through trees that looked like they had no way of supporting her.

The male. Isn't he handsome! He had a bright orange beard, and eyes full of expression. He had longish hair on his head too, that parted in the middle. His arms were so long!  Much longer than his legs, with a span of over 2 meters.

The female being the center of attention among the tourism students.

We stood in awe, watching the three for over an hour, enjoying the magnificent sight of the beautiful creatures in the wild. The female didn't seem to mind us being there. She came down out of the trees to have a good look at us too. The baby and she foraged for leaves close by us, munching silently on them while keeping an eye on us too. It seemed that she was showing off her baby to us, as when the baby wanted to hide his face from us, she would shift him to a different position so that he was facing us and we could get a better look at his face.
Later, a big group of students arrived who were studying tourism. The female Orangutan quickly crossed to some trees in the center of the pathway, so that she was in the middle of the group. It looked as though she wanted everyone to have a good view of her and her baby. She wasn't worried about the humans at all and looked like she was enjoying being the center of attention! It would have been easy for her to have moved into the jungle and away from the path, but she purposely chose to hang out close to the path. The male was a little shyer though, only wanting to keep the female in sight.

After our trek, our guide and the scouts gave us a wonderful spread of fruit they had bought along. The pineapple here is so good! The best I've ever eaten.

The scouts made quick work of cutting the fruit expertly and displaying it so nicely for us.

The following day we went back to our guide Adi's house. He took us to the market in his car where with his help, we bought ingredients for three different Indonesian meals that his wife Sorta taught us how to cook. Indonesian food is so delicious, and we were already fans of it because Josh's family are great at making Indonesian food too. So now hopefully we will be able to make some for them in return! It was such a nice evening with Sorta, Adi and two French tourists that we befriended and invited along to share the meal.

Sorta is a fabulous cook, though she doesn't really have a kitchen to prepare food! Her house consisted of a washroom, where the squat toilet is and a concrete basin where water is stored. They don't have a shower, but take water from the basin to pour on themselves. This is also where all the cooking pots and implements are stored. Then there is a storage room off to that with shelves that hold food and such. This is where she normally does her cooking, although this is done on the ground. There is no bench to work from. And this seems to be the normal way to cook in all the domestic houses we've seen. Because there were a few of us there, she shifted her gas cooker into Adi's office, which was a room with some wooden plank chairs and a desk, and we all chopped food on the ground using Stanley knives and baskets to put it in. 

I liked the experience of cooking this way. So different from western cooking! Everyone in Indonesia squats down on their haunches to work, so they are all very strong and even though quite a lot of their food is deep-fried most people are very lean and muscular. They are a good-looking nation!

Wonderful displays of fruit at the market

Look at all those chilli!

Banana stall

All the stalls are like this one, spread out on the ground on top of a tarpaulin. The ground is very muddy and there is a lot of rubbish lying around. Plenty of chickens too, and the odd cow wondering around. We saw a cow eating someone's cabbages!

A beautiful family we saw. Everyone wanted to say Hello! Even that little baby said hi.

Stiring the tempeh in the makeshift kitchen, while goats wandered outside to eat from the rubbish pile outside Adi's house.

The feast Sorta taught us to cook. Look at that spread!

A view of the village from the bridge. These huts in the middle are used by picnickers on the weekend. The river is very swift and sometimes the huts get swept away. In 2003 there was a terrible flood here in which 1000 people died, including Adi's daughter. Many people lost their homes and businesses and are still living in temporary housing.

The place we are staying in is further up river.

In this village, there is a menagerie of animals. Many, many cats and kittens, dogs, goats, birds, gecko, butterflies and monkeys. On our first day here we were very lucky to see an Orangutan female and her baby feeding on bamboo across the river. Apparently, it is quite rare to see them this close to the village.

Long-tailed Macaque monkeys are numerous too and sometimes come into our housing area. The other day we were given some home-made chips, and Noa and Fern were eating them out on our veranda when a monkey who had been sitting on the roof watching the girls, jumped down, sprinted across the path and with teeth bared he grabbed the plastic bag with the chips and lept back onto the roof!

He quickly ripped open a bag and stuffed a few chips in his mouth, all the while looking to and fro to see who would stop him. One of the staff saw what had happened and ran over. The monkey saw him coming, shoved some more chips into his mouth and then the plastic bag, and scooted up onto a higher roof out of reach. The dog who lives here joined in the chase and ran up the outside stairs to the highest point he could go. He barked at the monkey and the monkey yelled back. Later on, the monkey climbed onto another spot where he could reach the dog through the bannisters and gave him a smack around the face! It was like a funny cartoon, watching that monkey hit the dog, knowing the dog couldn't reach him.

The monkey and Mopi contesting dominance.

It's a common sight to see many of these buses jam-packed with school children on the road. They cram them onto the roof too. The drivers zoom through the muddy and pot-holed roads like there is no tomorrow.  So dangerous! There are many children on motorbikes too, from about the age of 8. No license needed here! 

It is refreshing to be in a place where there is little 'red tape'. People have a lot more freedom and can do things much cheaper here because of that. For example, they can build their own houses and can place sheds or dwellings wherever they want without having to pay astronomical amounts for consents like we have to do in NZ. We also were able to go into a beautiful three-chambered cave, teeming with life.  (We saw three different types of bats, scorpions, huge spiders, horned toads and giant centipedes) and only had to pay a small fee and were given a tour by two teens. There was no lengthy safety briefing or hard hats needed. And we were allowed to touch the walls and walk wherever we wanted.

But of course there is a flip side to the no regulations we found here, and that is that people are allowed to do things we think are dangerous or harmful to the environment with no direct consequences. Such as what they can do with their rubbish (throw it on the path, burn all the plastic and any other waste or chuck it in the river - out of sight out of mind type of mentality) and there are no regulations about keeping their beautiful river clean, so people wash and do their laundry in there every day, discarding waste water into it too. Consequently, people downstream have a hard time of it. We have heard from a few people that the officials are very corrupt too, and can be bought fairly easily. There are always two sides to every coin, so they say.

A porter carrying tubes for the river rafting that is about an hour up river. 

Just up the path from our accommodation

Sorry if this blog has been a bit too long! There is so much to tell you and so many pictures to share! 

We are leaving this beautiful place tomorrow with sadness, but also happy to be going back to lovely New Zealand. 

One more blog to follow to show you all that we've arrived home safely.