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Sunday 17 augustus 1997
After an 18 hours flight with Singapore Airlines we came to Medan where travelguide Ron P. of "LITO-reizen" ( a dutch travelorganisation) was waiting for us. We visited the mosque and the Sultanspalace. We were too tired to enjoy these things. By bus we drove to Bukit Lawang. There was a little lizzard in our bathroom. They call them cicak.(tjitjak)
Monday 18 augustus 1997
We had to get up at 6 and we felt good.
The breakfast was ok.
We had an omelet, fresh ananas, bread and a banana.
And we had a cup of tea. Then it was time to visit the urang
utans.
These apes learn to live in nature again, because at first they were
domesticated. First they have to live in cages so they can get
familiarized with the noises of the jungle. After that they have to face
the real life in the jungle. Because the diffeculty to find food
themselves people feed them once a day.
Tourists can watch the feeding of the urang utangs. When you'll see less
apes it means that they can find enough food themselfs and ofcourse that's
a very good thing.
We went with our whole group and a guide from Bukit Lawang, but without our
travelguide Ron,to the feedingplace of the apes.
apes in cages
It was a long climb up the hill. Besides urang utans we saw also other apes in the wood. I think we saw 6 urang utans. One of them had a baby and it was very cute to see. Some urang utans posed for our camera. Don't forget that these apes are wild and that they can be dangerous sometimes.
Together with Angelieke and Monique we went for a hike in the jungle. It
was a three our walk. It was a very exciting trip. We went up the hill
and down the hill on small tracks. The nature was beautiful. In the
beginning there was a very poisonous snake in a tree. The guide got rid of
it and we could walk further.
We saw some urang utans very nearby. I gave one a banana.
We also saw very big
ants.
We had to put our trousers into our socks for protection to all those scary
animals.
The hike was not too long probably because we went with a little group.
I felt very dirty and we took a cold shower at the hotel. We washed
our clothes and we walked through the village to take some pictures.
Thuesday 19 augustus 1997
We had to get up at 5 o'clock. We had a little breakfast because you have
to eat before you can take your malaria-pills.
We just drove away from Bukit Lawang when a woman went to lay down in
front of our bus. We had to stop ofcourse. The village-people were
laughing a little bit.
Then the woman went under the bus. We just couldn't leave that place. At
the end the people hit the woman so she had to go away. We live in a
strange world.
We drove further to a rubber plantation to see how they cut into the trees
and collect the rubber from the tree. Very slowly the rubber comes into a can.
Every day they empty the cans and they make a new cut in the tree.
I don't know how long these trees can live. It looks very strange at first
when you see all these trees with little cans at the trunk.
We enjoyed watching the environment.We drove the same way as the first
day, but now we went to Medan. We were too tired at first
to watch and enjoy. It was so very green. Much greener
then Holland. People live here in very small houses.
Thomas at a rubbertree
Our next stop was at a palmoil-plantation. The fruit of the tree grow behind
the leaves and to get them you have to remove the leaves. That's
because the trunk of the tree lookes like the skin of a fish. When you see
how big the palmoil-nuts are you can imagine that everyone needs a helmet
to protect themselves. Unfortunately not everyone has enough money to buy
a helmet.
In Medan we met our new group mates. They were just married and this was
their honeymoon. Elly and Machiel were a little older then we are but we
liked them at first sight.
In
Medan
we had the time to change money and buy stamps. It was very easy to buy
the stamps, but changing money took us half an hour. We had to change
traveler cheques into money at a bank. The rest of our group was waiting
in a hotel during this time and had a cup of coffee. We had to drink our coffee
very fast.
We also made a stop at an old shed where rusty steamlocomotives were
standing. It was nice to see. We also saw round points.
In a strange restaurant we ate chickensoup and white rice. It was the
first time from many times we should ate this same meal. It is a very safe
meal because the soup and the rice have to be hot.
At a cocoa-plantation we had our next stop. These fruits are growing at the
trunk from the tree. We tasted them and it was very sweet. In the fruit
is very soft pulp and the beans we couldn't eat. These trees can only grow
in the shadow. That's why you see all the other trees too.
We had the chance of our life to taste a durian. This is fruit with a very strong taste and smell. In some hotels it's forbidden to take them with you because the smell is very very bad. Ron liked them very much, but Thomas and me didn't like them. After the durian we drunk some springwater from a bottle. After a few days the bottle still smelled of durian. It smells a little bit like onions. Our tea-stop was at Pematang Siantar. At a luxury hotel we could use the toilet. We also walked in the park. The trip went further to Lake Toba. In Parapat we took a boat and we went to Samosir Island where we should stay in Tuk Tuk.
Lito-travel hired a ferry-boat especially for us and that was a good thing when you know that two months ago a ferry-boat loaded with people sunk in the lake. Lake Toba is very deep and that's why the boat still is on the bottom of the lake. It was fun to have the whole boat only for our group. Our hotel in Tuk Tuk was great. There were lots of stairs and little houses/rooms where we stayed. We had a view over Lake Toba. That night we ate with the whole group in the restaurant of the hotel. It was very cosy. We knew everyone by name now.
Wednesday 20 augustus 1997
On this day we could choose at what time we wanted to get up. We woke up at 8. We hired bikes to make a trip on the island. Hiring mountain-bikes was 6000 Rupiah. We had planned to go to Tomok, but after a short while we were completely lost. We left our map in the hotel so we went back to take it with us. At one moment a boy said something to us. " Are you Dutch?" he asked. Yes we are Dutch so we started a little chat. He was married with an Indonesian girl from Medan and together they run a business with fruit-juices. He asked us to drink something at his place. Biking makes thirsty so we both drunk watermelon-juice and it tasted well. His wife Ita also came to talk to us.
We made a few pictures and with the help of Herman we went biking again.
The mountain-bikes were not bad, but the road was. Many holes and big
stones.But the environment was very beatiful.
In another restaurant we saw Elly and Machiel.They walked that day
to Tomok. Tomok was not as far as we
thought it would be. We were looking for the kingsgraves. At the end we
found them, but there was not so much to see. The tourisic shops were
very fine however. We met Ans and Piet and the rest of the day we spent time
together. We bought some souvenirs en we had to haggle and we did a
good job (at least that's what we thought).
Ita and Herman
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Ans and Piet bought a lot of things. Together we bought snakefruit and rambutans. We ate them at one side of the road. The skin of the snakefuit is familiar to the skin of a snake. They also call it salak. A rambutan is red and had prickles at the outside. It tasted sweet. The salak tasted a little bit sour. I didn't like it at that moment because my stomach was a little upset of the paludrine ( malaria-pils). But it's very common to have the first week. We cycled back to Herman and Ita to drink another fruitjuice. Thomas took mixed fruitjuice with papaya, ananas and banana. I took a avocadojuice. It was a very green creamy juice. We also eat good macaroni and I had ginseng-tea. I didn't liked the tea, but it seemed to be very healty for I don't know what. While we were sitting and chatting to eachother it began to rain very hard. I think the rain keeped going on for 1 hour. The sky was grey, just like the sky in Holland can look. When the rain was over we went to our hotel again. We ate in the hotel and hotelfamily was singing for us. The sound was very beatiful.
Thursday 21 augustus 1997
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We had to get up at 7, because we had to do a boat-excursion at 8.30. First we went to Amarita, where we saw tables of stone. In earlier days canibalism was done there. They told us how things where going on then. Very important were the batak-calenders, because a (onthoofding) depended on the good day of the month. We watched all the souvenirs and found lot of nice things. |
| Then we had a 1 hour sail to Simanindo.There we saw the original Batak-dancing and at the end we had to dance ourselves. The sun was shining and that felt so good. In a strange restaurant we drank something. After that we went to another island in Lake Toba. It seemed not so small for us as it was. On the island was one restaurant and that was it. We walked around and enjoyed the view over the lake. |  |
After 45 minutes relaxcation we went back by boat. We had to sail more then one hour to get back in Tuk Tuk. At 14.30 we wereback. Much clouds were in the sky and it was very windy. We took our towels to lay down at the side of the lake, but it was not so fine.
Because Ans was ill this day we talked to her when we went to our hotelroom. She was sitting outside and advised us to take ORS instead of some diacure. We went to a chemist's shop and bought ORS. We also drunk tea somewhere with chocolatecake. It didn't taste like chocolate. That evening we had a goodbye-dinner.There was nasi goreng, white rice, two vegetarian dishes, sate and croepoek. We also listened to the famelyband. It was very cosy again that evening.
Friday 22 augustus 1997
Again we had to get up at 6 and at 7.30 we left Tuk Tuk by boat. The whole hotelfamely waved at us. At night there had been very windy, but when we sail the lake it had been better.
In Parapat we went to the postoffice. We wanted to post our cards, but we
hadn't enough stamps on it because our cards were a little bit larger
then standard cards. On a normal card we had to put 700 Rupiah ( they
told us before we needed 600 Rupiah each card) and on the larger card we
had to put 1400 Rupiah. Stupid isn't it? Anyway they didn't took back our
stamps of 600 Rupiah to change them into stamps of 700 Rupiah. We had to
calculate which stamps we need. We had to do four stamps on each card.
Two of 300 R., one of 700 R. and one of 100 R.
It was a lot of work to do so, but some other people of the group helped
us. We're gonna make al other cards smaller.
| We watched the way ananas, coffee and ginger grows. We also saw the market of Balige. It was very dirty inthere. Fruit is the only thing I dare to buy. We ate a peanutcooky in Gur Gur. We had a very beautiful view over Lake Toba. Our last view that trip. Our next stop was a hot water spring. It looked a little bit like Pamukkale in Turkey. The spring was magnificent to see. In a little cave was a pool with very blue water. It smellt like rotton eggs, but that was because of the sulphur. The water was hot but in spite of it children walked through the water to collect stones to sell to the tourists. |  |
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Our luch was in Taruntung. We ate mihoensoup. The coca cola was very dirty, because of the dust in the straw. We were not alone in the restaurant. Other travelgroups were also lunching there. Those people were not nice. We were very glad we choose our travelorganisation. Because of the rain we went further directly after the lunch. We had to drive 100 kilometres to Padang Sidempuan, but the road was that bad that we drove half the day to come there. It was a very exciting road through the jungle. We made one toilet-stop and then drove nonstop to the hotel. |
There was much rain on our way to the hotel, but sometimes the sun was shining and then everything looked so beautiful. Our hotel looked good. Even de toilet flushed good. Alas there was only cold water at the shower and it was not warm outside. In the evening we went on scooters to a restaurant. It was amazing how two people good get in in such a small vehicle. The scooters made a lot of noise and have not much light. We wished we could reach the restaurant. We ate nasi goreng. I tried to call with a scopecard, but it didn't work. At the hotel we tried again to call home. It didn't work again because there was no international calling in the hotel. We searched for a Wartel, because that's a good place to make international phonecalls, but we couldn't find it in the dark. Of course we asked several times to the lokal people where to find a Wartell, but they also didn't know because some people said we should go to the right and others told us to go to the left. We gave up.
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