Answer: Jane Goodall and Matthew Pepper

Question: Who works with monkeys and likes to hear stories about orangutans?

Endless Lake Toba

Monkeying Around Bumpy Indonesia

In one of our earlier entries, You Can Have Your Apple Juice – And Eat It Too!, I mentioned that three major religions coexist in Malaysia peacefully. It’s actually four, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu. Makes it even that more impressive. Thanks to Hien for pointing it out to me.

I am now here in Penang, Malaysia, having just returned from Sumatra, Indonesia, while Nadine is back in Omaha, Nebraska spending quality time with her family and obtaining some necessary commodities, i.e. one can of Dr. Pepper and a package of Reese’s cups. Not too prevalent here in Southeast Asia so far.

The Solo Adventure Begins

As soon as Nadine departed Krabi International Airport back to Omaha, I was officially on my own to explore. Immediately, I went down to the highway and hailed a sawngthaew under the rain. What is a sawngthaew you may ask? A sawngthaew is a small truck with two benches in the back that serves as a taxi. I safely arrived back to my hostel. First solo trip in the books!

Next morning, I jumped on a van that returned me to Penang, Malaysia via Hat Yai in southern Thailand. This is the same route we took less than a week earlier. What made this trip even more special is that this time I shared my seats with two really large Kazakhstan guys. They are studying Thai boxing for the time being. I’m pretty sure that they won’t find anyone in their weight range. Thais tend to be pretty thin.

From Penang, I was going to jump on a ferry and scoot over to the sixth largest island in the world, Sumatra. This locale also served as the answer to the previous blog’s question. As a result Pepper’s name in the title. Also, I wanted to visit a few orangutans on one of the largest islands of the roughly 18,000 of them in Indonesia. That was the entire reason I was going to Sumatra, wild orangutans in the wild Sumatran jungle.

Indonesia happens to be the fourth most populated country in the world with a population of 250 million people trailing only China, India, and the U.S. Indonesia is 90% Muslim, thus making it the largest Muslim country in the world. Ironically, Sumatra also has a large Christian population making it roughly a 50/50 division between Muslims and Christians. Sumatra is one, and the largest, of approximately 18,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago. Sumatra has lately experienced a lot of tragedy though. In 2003, a flood ravaged the town of Bukit Lawang. In a span of 10 minutes, a large wall of water rushed down from a broken mountain lake. It swept through, plucking 325 homes and 280 lives along with it, including six backpackers. A year later in December, the 2004 Christmas Day tsunami hit the northern Aceh region and killed innumerable people. Combine this with the Bali bombings on the other half of Indonesia, tourism suffered. As a result, the island of Sumatra was practically void of tourists and backpackers. Thus, there lay the appeal for me, absence of people. Nadine was never keen on Sumatra with possible malaria according to government websites. Thus, while she was with her family, I went to the “island.”

Bumpy Passages

Seated on a ferry for six hours, I looked around and noted that I was one of two tourists. Amusingly the only other tourist was American as well. We haven’t met many Americans in our travels, so running into one on this indiscriminate ferry was surprising. Upon our arrival into the port of Belawasi, immigration officials ushered the obvious tourist to the front of the line to get my Indonesian tourist visa. From that point, I would be subjected to a genuine Indonesian nuisance, public transport! I boarded the sun heated bus packed full of other passengers, a common theme for my time in Sumatra. The result was instant sweat, a sticky body, and a feeling of fatigue and exasperation. That wouldn’t be the first time. Our bus took another two hours over uneasy roads to Medan.

On the bus, Adam approached me. Initially, Adam was a friendly enough guy. He joked with these two newcomers about orangutans, the traffic we were stuck in, and Indonesians. Adam was a tout. Considering myself a travel veteran, I never saw it comingd. I went with him to visit a nice hostel, exchange money, buy a mosquito net, because there wasn’t any mosquito nets where I was going in Bukit Lawang (there were plenty of them!), and a place to eat. Like at the end of any bad date, I was ready to skedaddle. When I woke up at 7:30 the next morning, guess who is waiting for me down in the lobby? Yep, Adam. So if you see Adam in Sumatra, don’t follow him to buy a mosquito net.

Finally away from Adam and his buddies, I was on my first, of way too many on this five-day trip, mini-vans to Bukit Lawang and subsequent resident orangutans. Let me explain these mini-vans. These mini-vans stop often to pick-up and drop off passengers along the way, like combis in Latin America. These mini-vans are not air-conditioned, honestly not expected, but they are crammed full of people. Just imagine your small Chrysler van with an extra row of torn plush seats. Now add an extra person in each row, place a few outside hanging on the door, and a couple more on top of the van for safety, and now you have an accurate picture of this mini-van. Now add four hours and quite possibly the worst road ever, and you have the setting for a good story. I can’t say for sure that it is the worst road ever, because on our honeymoon, Nadine and I rode with Gonzo to the village of Cusmapa, Nicaragua and bounced around there too. At least then, we didn’t have 18 people in the van. This road resembled the target area for bombers having recently completed a bombing run. Our van danced around the potholes in the road like it had pumped up hydros with a love for pop music and disco.

Why am I complaining? Public transport looks like this across the majority of the globe.

Chasing Apes

Life in Bukit Lawang was slow. No one was around. There was plenty of time to watch the river flow by AND sign up for a morning trek into the jungle. The perfect setting to simply be in the moment.

Next morning at seven, I took off with Siyan into the jungle. We had made an agreement that if I didn’t see any orangutans I didn’t have to pay. As we walked, I heard gibbon monkeys in the distant, saw gray mohawk monkeys passing overhead, and the calls of distant birds, but no orangutans.

After an hour and a half Siyan found what he was looking for, a set of orangutans. In order to actually see these apes, we had to leave from the trail and tramp along the jungle floor. There in front of us, a female orangutan was hanging from a tree branch in all her hairy glory. Siyan told me that there were two orangutans. Oh, and the other one was a male. And it’s mating season. After my first photo of the female, then the male peeked out from the other side of the tree. Suddenly, Siyan instructed me to run as the male advanced towards us.

You can imagine this situation, excitement at seeing my first orangutan in the wild, immediate alarm having to flee from the “jungle people” with a backpack across my chest and a camera fumbling in my hands. As we backtracked, now on the trail, we saw the male in full form with his arms hanging the length of his torso. Once again, he threatened to charge us and once again we backtracked. As this transpired, I have to say that I had immediate respect for this creature. Graceful, amazing, yet powerful and wild. They also looked like a few women I knew from New Mexico. This cat and mouse game persisted until Siyan grabbed three mangos from his satchel he retrieved along our hike and threw them to Abdul and Sasah. This kept the male, Abdul, at bay for the next twenty minutes.

After the male was pacified, it was time for Sasah to show off for us two hairless monkeys. She climbed up trees, swung from branches, slid down tree trucks upside down. I just sat there and soaked in this unique moment. I also ventured to take a few decent photos. That was until the female, five feet in front of us, hanging from a branch suddenly crashed to the ground. The branch broke and this female orangutan fell on her back and sulked over to Abdul while Siyan and I had a good laugh. Minutes later, Sayah returned with renewed confidence. Calmly hanging from a different branch, she abruptly took a swipe at my head. Fortunately she missed. Thirty minutes observing orangutans in Sumatran nature and noting their physical similarities to us humans, all the way from their heads down to their feet past hands and arms, we began our track back to town and another mini-van to Berstagi. It was definitely worth the money Siyan earned and much more.

Along the way back to my hostel, we saw three more orangutans. A mother with a young child and an infant orangutan. Interestingly enough, the word “orangutan” comes from the Bahasa language. Orang means person or people while utan means jungle. Jungle people. This one interaction made the entire experience to Sumatra, Indonesia well worth the crowded mini-vans.

Foggy Surroundings

On the four and a half hour mini-van back to Medan, at one point, I counted a total of 25 people in, on, and around our mini-van. Once in Medan, I joined another crowded bus to the town of Berastagi and its large green statue of a cabbage dedicated to their ability to grow said vegetable. I’d be proud too. I also attended Mass at unparalleled looking Catholic churches I’ve ever seen. At Saint Francisco Assisi, this church combined Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian architecture, while the interior housed wooden pews to the far left, plastic blue chairs to the far right, and mats laid down the middle. I pulled up a mat next to the Sumatrans on the ground.

From Berastagi, I rode three additional mini-vans to the port town of Parapat. From Parapat, I would jump on a ferry and leave the next morning to Tuk Tuk, a small town on Samosir Island in the middle of Lake Toba. Of note, alarmingly Indonesia’s man-made fires and destruction of their forests has now blanketed parts of Indonesia and well as countries east of Indonesia in smoke. It even made international news. The sky was an eerie gray. In the morning haze aboard the ferry, our ferry captain even got lost in the cloudy surroundings. He literally swerved back and forth across the lake searching for land. He found it. Tuk Tuk gave me a chance to relax and swim in the gray horizon for a day.

My time here has come to an end and I can characterize my solo adventure to Indonesia with three unique items, the grandeur of seeing orangutans in the jungles of Bukit Lawang, the solitude of Lake Toba, and the heinous act of taking public transport daily in Indonesia in five rushed days. With my visit to Indonesia complete, I scrapped my return ticket by ferry to Mayasia and splurged on a $35 Air Asia plane ticket. Easiest $35 I’ve ever spent.

My departure from Indonesia at the Kualanamu International Airport was the perfect bookend to this journey. As I waited at the airport, a security guard walked over to a souvenir shop and completed an act I am sure he has done hundreds of times. He picked up the chess set. As he walked back to his security station, I offered to play him. I sat there playing chess with a security guard while people passed security undeterred and unchecked. There were more important things going on, an international friendly chess competition. We finally played to a draw and he returned to insuring the safety of the airport terminal.

Life is good. Nadine is still in Omaha. When she comes back to Thailand, I will be waiting for her with open arms and a big kool-aid smile. I should probably make my way back to Thailand soon.

Question – What is the fifth most populous country in the world?

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
– Serenity Prayer

Les souvenirs s’agrippent a nos âmes comme le lierre se cramponne à la pierre.

Peace
JW