Jungle Trek in Bukit Lawang

After staying in Panang, we took a plain flight to Medan, Sumatra (Indonesia, Asia, The World).  From there we took a four hour drive to Bukit Lawang. (A small jungle town.)  Then we did a small walk at night in the pouring rain.  We first wrapped all of our bags in plastic. Then we put on ponchos.  After that, we walked to a rickety bridge with a lot of broken boards.  Under the bridge was a rushing river.  When we got to the end, we walked up 5 minutes worth of stairs and we finally go to our bungalows.  I thought that was fun, but in a scary way.

Then we went to the restaurant and ate dinner.  I had chicken satay and passion fruit juice.  My mom had curry and my dad had fish.  My meal was good, but the sauce on the satay was not my favorite (it's sweetness did not combine with the satay's savory taste for me).

After that we went to our bungalow.  It had three rooms: two bedrooms and one bathroom. Our porch had a hammock and two chairs.  The bathroom was pretty because it had rocks on the steps.

The next day we went on a tour of the town.  We saw stuff like rice fields, people making brown sugar and people making roofs.  The people working at the rice fields were replanting the rice in small groups.  I think they do that after a while so the rice plants have more room to grow out.  The people making the brown sugar were frying it in a pan, then shaping it into circle molds.  It was super sweet!  The people making roofs were doing a weaving type technique to make sturdy roofs our of bamboo and leaves.  I thought the tour was fun because we got to learn about how different things were made in Bukit Lawang and it was fun to see how different things work compared to America.

We were going to take a cooking class when we got back, but our guide for the tour took us to a restaurant with very filling soup and fried things.  We decided to move it to the next day.   On that day we just hung out  (and did the cooking class).

At the cooking class, a lady made soya sauce chicken for me and chicken rendang for mom and dad.  The lady making the food had all the amounts of the ingredients laid out, so we could not really "learn" how to make it, but we kind of got to see what they do.  My chicken was good but the soya sauce was sweet! (Again, it was not my favorite with the savory meat.)

That night was going to be the last night in the bungalow before the jungle trek! (Yay!)  We were planning to do a two day jungle trek, camping in two spots.  My parents said they met our guide the night before.  They said he was very nice.  We started hiking into the jungle and after a while we came across some other bungalows.  There we saw our first monkeys.  The people from our bungalows called them "punky monkeys" because they have a big black stripe on their heads.  We also passed a monkey with sharp teeth, like very sharp.  On the way to our camp, we passed orangutans too!  We passed an orangutan named Mina, she had two babies.  Mr Wong, our nice guide, said Mina was mean.  He was right.  We were almost to our camp when Mina started chasing us, looking for food.  It was scary! Mr. Wong went back to hold off Mina.  We got to the camp site alive though.  (Phew!)

The next day we saw monkeys stealing our food! One monkey baby came up to us and started screaming! ( "Back off!") We also saw a baby orangutan that was poking a monitor lizard with a stick!  They he went down and grabbed a rock and threw it at the lizard!  Then he went pee pee on him!  The lizard did not care and neither did the orangutan's mom.  We were going to camp at a big river for the last night, but we decided to stay at our little river camp.  The rocks at our little river were soft and Mr.  Wong carved an orangutan necklace for me out of one!

The next day we hiked up to the big river to go river rafting back to the bungalows.  The river rafting was fun, but the waves weren't too big (so big it is not fun anymore).

We stayed at our bungalows for a few more days, then it was time to go to our next place!

monkey 

                                                                    lizard

                                                                our hut

                                                            cows crossing!

                                                               rice farming

                                                           making brown sugar

                                                               

                                                                 

  frog!!!!!!!

                                                          punky monkey

                                                             MONKEY

                                                                    orangutan

                                                         

more monkeys