"You look like an Orangutan in Bukit Lawang..."

When we flew into Medan, Indonesia, and made it through Customs, we walked out into flooded streets. The paved roads could in no way absorb the rainwater that had gushed out of the sky the night before, but our taxi driver slugged through the water anyway and dropped us off at the bus station, where we avoided all the hecklers trying to sell us a mini-bus and took the hot, stuffy public bus to Bukit Lawang.

Ah, Bukit Lawang. How I loved it! The walk along the riverside to Nora’s Rainforest Lodge was beautiful enough and our bungalow room was comfy. I ate a homemade bowl of tomato soup while Amar, a trekking guide, showed us his album of photos. The tour he offered was expensive, and I was somewhat reluctant to pay for it initially, but it was completely worth it. We booked a two-day trek for the following morning and had a delicious night of sleep before departing on our trek with Amar’s son, Haidir, and Andy, a local who worked at Nora’s. Rick from Holland and Emily from Canada were also a part of our tour, and here and there we met up with a group led by Hendri. There was a couple in our group who only stayed with us for a part of the day, but the black man was quickly nicknamed “Obama.” Indonesians LOVE Obama. We discovered this in the short time that we were in Medan and en route to Bukit Lawang. Whenever anybody asked us where we were from, we would tell them America, and they would respond, with a huge smile, “America! Obama!” This happened every time, without fail.

Anyway, I have to admit: the first hour or so of the trek was pretty miserable. It was hot. We weren’t completely in the rainforest yet so the sparse shade didn’t offer much relief and mosquitoes were flocking to me like Christmas shoppers to the mall on Black Friday, despite applying and reapplying bug spray. But we learned about the mango tree and the rubber tree and saw the white-handed gibbons—the same ape that I had held, diapered, in Phang Nga.

We were sitting on the trail, eating a snack of bananas, oranges, and passionfruit, when Haidir disappeared for a few minutes, then returned and told us to leave our bags where we sat and bring only our cameras. We followed him back the way we had come to see four orangutans. There was one large female and three smaller apes hanging in the trees. Their rusty fur against the green foliage is a striking color combination and we watched them swinging through the trees, as limber as if their arms and legs were made of rubber, their bellies big and round. To switch from tree to tree, the apes would hang on to the edge of a branch and let their weight bend the tree until they could reach the branch of a second tree. Then they would pull this branch toward them, grab on, and go for a ride, causing the tree to swing and shake back and forth, sending leaves and sticks to the forest floor.

We watched for about half an hour before continuing on our trek. We ran into a flock of long-tailed macaques on our way back to our packs. There were so many babies—skittish and falling out of trees. They were all eating leaves. A male was trying to get with one of the females; he would approach from behind, lift up her tail to take a peek, and then she would run away. Does this sound maybe a little familiar to anyone else? Or am I anthropomorphizing?

 

Moving on from the macaques, we kept hiking and came across another orangutan hanging from a tree above the trail. After finding a safe way to move past her, we continued to a clearing where we stopped for a delicious lunch of fried rice with peanuts and vegetables and fresh tomatoes and cucumber that Haidir and Andy had prepared the night before. We sat on logs, eating our rice with our hands, when all of a sudden Haidir and Andy told us to pack up our food and move up the trail. We did, as out of the woods and into the clearing emerged a male orangutan. We ran up the path to get out of his way; he had been drawn by the scent of the food. In groups of two, Haidir took us down the path to get a closer look at the giant. In watching the orangutan, I had equal feelings of wonder and fear. It was hard to believe how large he was and how close I was. He was the last orangutan we saw on our trek.

That afternoon, we kept hiking. It was exhausting; to the top of the ridge and up and down and up and down. We finally reached the riverside campsite. Haidir took our bags across the river while Hendri ferried us to the other side in an inner tube. When we reached the campsite, we immediately went into the water. I was so sweaty, so muddy, and so itchy, and cold water never felt so wonderful, even though the current was strong. I went swimming in all my clothes but before I could hang them to dry, it started to rain. I dried off and was given a cup of hot tea as I sat under a tent, watching the rain fall down and the river run by. There were white seeds of some plant floating by in the rainy sky and the tall trees grew wet and the night sky darkened.

Four Days in Penang

Our next stop was Penang, an island off the western coast of Malaysia. We took a ferry there, found a place to stay, and ate dinner. The next morning I found something that I had long been missing… a bagel with cream cheese. It’s the simple things in life! I referred to this find in my journal as “like, the highlight of this trip” and “I’m having the same breakfast tomorrow…and the next day, and the next day.” I guess I had really been missing Western food.

We spent the day walking around historic Georgetown. The Hindu temple that we went to was closed, but we went into a very beautiful reconstructed Buddhist temple—the Teochew Temple—built in 1870. We went to the first mosque I’ve ever been to—the Kapitan Keling Mosque, where we donned the veil and a long robe to enter. A man with terrible teeth taught us about Islam and its similarities to Christianity. The main part of the mosque was for men only, and we were guided around the outskirts, not allowed to enter the inside, then taken to a small, closed-off room where women can pray. It seemed pretty patriarchal and was a bit unsettling for me. We also passed by a Christian church and the Goddess of Mercy Temple—another Buddhist temple built between 1728 and 1800 and enveloped in clouds of burning incense. The city really is an intersection for various religious cultures.

We spent about an hour in the Penang State Museum, which was filled with information about British occupation of Penang, the island’s role with the East India Company, World War Two, and more. My favorite part of the museum was a small art wing with paintings of the island during British settlement. The bottom floor was devoted to Malay culture and customs, detailing the practices of the different ethnic groups of Malaysia. After the museum, we walked along the Esplanade to Fort Collins, a historic site on the island.

Our second day in Penang was not as interesting. It rained most of the day, and we spent the majority of the day trying to get tickets to take a ferry to Indonesia which was advertised at many businesses and in the Lonely Planet guide. It turned out that the last ferry had run on June 16, 2010. So we had to book a flight to Indonesia instead, for $70. This was one of the more frustrating experiences of the trip, and showed us that even though Lonely Planet comes out with a new edition of their travel book each year, that doesn’t mean that they’ve actually updated anything. Following that debacle, we took a bus to Penang Hill, which offers an excellent view of the city, only to find that it was closed, so we took the bus back. The third day was also a rainy, uneventful day. We spent some time at the mall and went to see Rango. It was the first movie we’d seen the whole trip, with the exception of movies on the plane on the way there. It’s interesting what you go without on a long trip and to discover what you miss (bagels) and what you don’t really miss (movies).

Our last day in Penang ended up being sunny. We took a bus to Batu Feringgi, a beach on the north coast of the island. The beach was beautiful—broad with pebbly, soft sand; flat, clear, blue water; forest-covered hills in the distance; blue sky and finally some sun; and best of all, quiet. There was hardly anyone there. We rented chairs for 5 ringit each and I sat in the sun and read. Malone and I swam for a little while. I was about to get out of the water and was swimming back to the shore when I was stung by a jellyfish. I could feel its individual tentacles swirling around my leg and I tried to swim away from it, but I just swam into it again, its tentacles spikily swarming on me. I ran out of the water and looked desperately in my bag for Benadryl, which, of course, wasn’t there. The welts on my leg began to swell rapidly. Then a stranger appeared (from I don’t know where) with a leaf of aloe vera. He peeled the outer leaf aside and rubbed the cooling goo on my stings. I continued to use the aloe on my leg as a strange, constricting pain—worse than the pain of the sting itself—moved up my leg, into my stomach, my lower back, my chest, my upper back. I was pretty nervous and felt immobile; all I did was sit there for about an hour, enduring the pain, until it went away. When I finally got up, I ran into somebody else who gave me a peppermint oil that really helped ease the pain. I spent the rest of the day in the shade, eating fried rice and reading Tom Robbins.

Shortly before we left the beach, I took a walk. The sun was getting lower in the sky, making everything glittery and warm-colored. The sky was one of the bluest I’ve ever seen, even after all that rain! I picked up a lot of sea glass on the walk and enjoyed the sun on my skin. We got ice cream before taking the bus back to the city. The next morning, we got up early to catch our flight to Indonesia, the last phase of our trip.

Malaysian Towns

We arrived in Melaka just in time for bed. The next day, we spent the morning in the hostel and then took the town bus to the zoo. We saw macaws, small primates, rhinos, birds, tapirs, giraffes, deer, cattle, tigers, leopards, cassowaries, sun bears, monkeys, apes, a reptile house… The coolest part about the zoo was that you could go into some of the enclosures with the animals, like the lemurs, flying foxes, and birds. The tigers and the giant gaur were some of the Asian animals we saw in the zoo that we never would have seen in the wild. We spent a long time resting on a bench and contemplating the giraffes.

It was a hot day, and walking around the zoo tired us out, so we rested and read back at the hostel before heading out at dusk for a romantic Melaka River Cruise. The sky was beautiful, but blackened quickly as we set out in the boat. The river was very flat, because it is dammed at the mouth, and lined on both sides with new and old buildings, whose many-colored lights created beautiful reflections in the dark water. We floated under several bridges, past the giant, historic waterwheel, past the town square and clock tower area, past the carnival-like area with a pirate-ship ride and Ferris wheel, and past cottages built in the 1920s for boatmen and fishermen. Their wives rolled cigarettes for sale while the men worked on the river. The lights, the dark, soft water, and the hot air cooled to a warm and breezy temperature created quite the atmosphere, so afterwards, Malone and I continued the romantic evening by sharing two pasta dishes in town.

In the morning, we walked briefly around the historic part of town before getting on a VERY crowded bus to Port Dickson, where all of the locals were headed for the weekend. Port Dickson wasn’t really a place that catered to tourists, so we ordered food without really knowing what we would get. The next day, we had a breakfast of fried rice in the food stalls along the beach and then rented an umbrella, chairs, and a table for 20 ringit for the day. The beach was really pretty—clear water and reddish sand—but it was also really crowded. The water was filled with anchored motorboats and jet skis and the beach was filled with tubes, banana boats, and umbrellas and tents. We were the only foreigners there for a good part of the day, so it was cool to have a really local experience. However, because it was a Muslim population and everyone at the beach was fully clothed, we didn’t feel comfortable wearing just our bathing suits.

Malone flew a kite that she had purchased while I read Tales of the South Pacific and sustained myself with watermelon, a grilled cheese, fried bananas, and a vanilla ice cream cone, all purchased at the various food stalls along the beach. We watched the sun set over the water. It was beautiful—balmy air, lots of clouds lit by the sun, and the waves breaking on the muddy sand.

Cameron Highlands

The next day, I woke up in the Cameron Highlands to a very quiet town, but after a slow morning, I embarked on a full-day tour with our guide, Spencer, a young man from Japan, a Dutch woman and two German women. We piled into the back of a Jeep and drove to our first stop, an Orang Asli (“Original People”) village, where government funding has provided the people with houses, running water, and other amenities. These people still use many traditional subsistence methods, like planting crops such as beans and yams and hunting for wild pig, deer, and porcupine in the jungle with blow dart guns. A man from the village demonstrated how to use the blow dart gun—a long, bamboo stick through which a dart is blown to pierce an animal. Traditionally, poison from plants or frog skin are used on the darts. A piece of “jungle cotton” is stored at the opening so the darts don’t fall out. I was given the chance to try the dart gun and was surprised to land my dart quite near the center of the target!

 
We brought an older Orang Asli man with us on our next part of the trip as a guide. It was a good thing because after only about five minutes of driving up the muddy, rutted road, we got stuck. I’m not really sure why Spencer thought he would be able to make it up this road. He only got the vehicle more and more stuck. Finally, he gave up, and the Orang Asli man took us into the jungle while Spencer walked back to town to get a tow.

I never got the name of our guide, but he led us on a vigorous hike in search of the Rafflesia, the world’s largest flower at up to a meter wide. We walked along the muddy road, where large clusters of bamboo grew tall, curving to the sky. From the gaps in the vegetation we could see a forest-covered mountain peak shrouded in mist. It was humid and I was sweating before too long. I saw a few leeches on the ground but, luckily, none on my body. We hiked over a bamboo bridge, through trails, over fallen trees, across a sandy spit and a small creek, and took a small side trail to find a few dead Rafflesia, fungus-like, dark brown and decaying, and one that had not yet opened but sat like a red cabbage on the forest floor. We then continued to make the longer trek to the flower that was in bloom.

 

 

 

On the way back to the main trail, our guide stopped and cut into a piece of bamboo with his machete. “Water bamboo,” he told me, and I looked inside the long tube, which was filled with water. He told me to try it, so I tipped the long tube back. “Slowly, slowly!” he warned, but the water sped down the chute and landed all over my chin and chest anyway. We continued down the trail, where butterflies flew about the rainforest, umbrella-like tree ferns grew, and bamboo predominated. We reached a raging, muddy creek, where we took our shoes off and our guide led us across the rocks to the other side with a walking stick. Once we crossed the river, we soon left the main trail again and headed up a steep, slippery path, grabbing the trunks of small trees to keep from sliding back down to where we had started. Our guide chopped down branches in our way, and he soon revealed the giant Rafflesia before him.

The flower was perched on the hillside, rusty red and beautifully bright amongst the brown, leaf-strewn forest floor. Its petals, thick, uncurled and unfolded themselves along the ground. Its center was like a hollowed-out gourd, inside of which a spiky heart sat. Insects buzzed around the spiked center. Near the flower, two baby buds claimed their spaces on the ground, and several more dead Rafflesia decayed.

Once we were finished marveling at the flower, we headed back down the muddy slope, reached the trail, and continued back down to the road. I led the way, walking as the hot sun came out. The bottoms of my pants were wet with mud and water from the creek. Butterflies hovered over the path, and at one point, after hearing a rustling in the bush, a wild pig—smaller than I would have expected one to be—sprinted across the path. As I walked toward where the pig had been, I noticed its digging in the mud, where it had been looking for worms.

 
When we finished the hike, Spencer was waiting for us, the Jeep pulled out of the mud but still muddy. We piled in, despite how dirty we were and how much we smelled, and dropped our guide back off at the village before continuing to the tea plantation. The scenery there was absolutely stunning. The sun was briefly out, but everything was misty and wet. We drove by rolling hills, covered with rows and rows of neatly trimmed tea bushes. The greens were brilliant—jade, emerald. We wound around the hills of tea until we reached the Boh tea factory, where we went on a very brief tour and saw the machines and workers breaking the leaves down, drying, and sorting. Then we had a light lunch—apple pie and vanilla tea—at the tea shop. Malone had gone on a different half-day tour, and her group was visiting the tea factory at the same time, so I got to sit on the misty porch with her, overlooking the green tea fields.

I bought some black tea soap (which I have yet to use!), some green tea (which was delicious), and a postcard before we left and headed for the strawberry farm. There wasn’t much of the farm to see—just a few rows of strawberries growing in a large greenhouse—but we got to sample strawberry jam and dried strawberries and I bought 5 ringit worth of fresh strawberries, which were delicious.

Our last stop was the Butterfly Garden, which also housed insects and reptiles. I held a leaf-bug, a lazy gecko, and a leaf frog and got a closer look at a rhinoceros beetle and some red palm weevils when Spencer took them out of their tanks. The orchid praying mantis was particularly beautiful. There were tanks and tanks of snakes, some with ten or more tangled together, making it impossible to tell which body belonged to which head! Other tanks held geckos, chameleons, and other reptiles. There were beautiful butterflies and flowers in the butterfly garden. Between the butterflies, flowers, Rafflesia, strawberries, and tea leaves, it was truly a colorful day!

 

For dinner I had mushroom soup (it was actually Campbell’s soup, which isn’t something I normally eat, but it was nice to have some Western food for a change!) followed by a quiet evening. In the morning, we packed and got on a bus to Kuala Lumpur. It was an unpleasant bus ride down the windy mountain roads, but we got off in the capital city for lunch. Our bus to our next stop left later in the evening, so as our bus departed, we got to see the city skyline at sunset.