After another long and bumpy night, I stirred to the
intrusive sound of a baby crying and an old lady throwing up aggressively into
a plastic bag. The skies had cleared and the heat of Medan was obvious, it was
nice to see the sun again. A short ojek ride took us to the Pinang Baris bus
terminal, in which we negotiated a fare of 70,000rp (roughly £5) to take the
two of us on the 3 hour drive to Bukit Lawang, pronounced "buk-kee
la-waang", as Sarah was corrected.
Smugly sitting on our bus, we assumed we were on our way.
How wrong we were... After circling Medan and the blistering heat for 45
minutes, looking for locals that might, on the off chance want a bus to Bukit
Lewang, we parked up on a cross road and waited a further hour as our driver
shouted "Buckie! Buckie!” to passers-by. Buskers climbed aboard the bus,
some failed attempt at Indonesian punk rocker strummed away on his ukulele in
our face. We didn't give him any money.
2 hours later, picking up people, packages and motorbikes
constantly along the way, we finally pulled up to Bukit Lawang. By this point I
was getting fed up. A guy jumped on the bus as we pulled up and introduced
himself, we had been forewarned of the amount of tour guides that will befriend
you and encourage you to take a treck with them - I didn't even have the effort
to shake him off.
He offered to show us to the guest house in which we would stay, I gracefully accepted, declining all of his attempts to take a tour with him. Eventually he lost interest, pointed us in the right direction and them set off in search of his next victim. We approached the Rainforest Homestay, a charming place by the river; the small rooms were above the restaurant, looking over the fast flowing river towards the dense jungle.
Panoram of our house
Making friends
Identical twins
Jungle explorers
No comments:
Post a Comment