Brastagi- Land of the Volcanos

We left Bukit Lawang early Wednesday morning and headed off to Berastagi, which is only about 70 kilometers from Medan, but a five hour drive from Bukit Lawang.  The plan was that we would spend the night in Brastagi before finishing our drive to Samosir Island in Lake Toba.  We passed through the mountains and flew by (at an average speed of 30 miles per hour) many small villages and towns. 

 Berastagi (but pronounced and often spelled Brastagi) is 1220 meters high, close to Lake Toba, and comfortably nestled between two active volcanos:  Sibayak and Sinabung.  In September 2010 Sinabung erupted causing over 30,000 people to evacuate.  Both volcanos are still active and can be seen spewing smoke and ash.  



Mt. Simbayak





Mt. Sinabung

 Unfortunately we never got a good view of Sinabung because of cloud (and ash) cover.  

We stopped at a park atop another mountain, that gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the city, the volcanos and surrounding areas.  It has been a popular destination for hundreds of years first made popular by the Dutch.  The story is that the Dutch soldiers used to bring their girlfriends up to the area (sort of their Blueberry Hill) and they would tell the girls that they would love them always (in Dutch).  The local people heard the Dutch repeat this phrase so often on this hill that that became the name of the area (which I can no longer recall).  But it is a beautiful area and as you can see, very popular with the Indonesians.  You can see some of the traditional architecture in this area with the roof adornments of what appear to be a bull’s head. 

 

The area around Brastagi is the main fruit, vegetable and flower growing area for North Sumatra, and just outside of Brastagi we stopped to shop at a vegetable and flower market and purchased some fruit for our trip. 



      

They also sold puppies and rabbits at this market



We then stayed at the Hotel Sinabung which was a huge resort built maybe fifteen years ago or less on huge grounds with a swimming pool, imaginative playground, various gardens, tennis courts, and a go cart course.  But shortly after it was built, the tourist industry collapsed after the 1997 race riots in Indonesia, then the Bali bombing. 
 When we were there we were occupying two of the six total occupied rooms, out of a total of at least 200 rooms.  It is a real shame.  In keeping with the Indonesian sense of nature.  The grounds outside were much better maintained than the rooms within.

 
There are wonderful opportunities to see marvelous things and experience great adventures in Sumatra and the rest of Indonesia, but for a variety of reasons, which I will expound upon later.  This simply has not happened.  And so, we encounter a number of these sort of ghost resorts and desolate tourist destinations. 

The night we spent in Brastagi, however, Ralph and I decided to go on a Durian hunt.  The fruit was in season, and this area was very big on Durian. 

 For those of you unfamiliar with Durian.  Let me explain that there are some fruits that are a sight to behold like fresh rasperries and blackberries, tiny jewels of fruit.  There are some fruits which are a taste to behold like a fresh plum or peach that explode sweet juice into your mouth upon bite.  Then there are some fruits which tempt you with their sweet intoxicating fragrance like oranges and strawberries. Some fruits tease you with their texture like pomegranates and passion fruit.  The Durian is the opposite of these fruits.  It has no siren song to tempt you.  Instead it comes to you wrapped in a thick spiked husk and bludgeons you with its odiferous presence.  It is the Attila the Hun of fruits:  armored for battle and reeking from the stench of rot and decay.  You can smell it a block away, this sulfurous fruit from hell.  But just as Satan’s story in Paradise Lost is a far headier and heart thumping  read than the story of Paradise Regained, and Lola gets what Lola wants in Damned Yankees,  so too, many people are intoxicated by this Lolita of fruit.  Quite simply it smells like hell, but it has this enticing custardy texture that is sweet and savory, but neither too sweet nor too savory.  Like some heady narcotic, it plays games with your senses.  One is repelled and enticed at the same time.  It could be the patron fruit of masochists. 
It is banned on the Singapore subway.  Many restaurants refuse to serve it.  Airlines will not allow passengers to bring it aboard planes. 

Sign on the Singapore subway

 But Indonesians make a form of Christmas yule log with it (for the Muslims it is an Idul Fitri yule log), or they make Durian Ice Cream,  Durian cream cookies, and many other sweets.  They even make Sambal Tempoyak, which is a Sumatran dish made from the fermented durian fruit, coconut milk, and a collection of spicy ingredients known as sambal.  I shudder to think what that taste likes. 
But for the true Durian lovers, the fruit alone is not enough, even the pits can be consumed.  They can be roasted or stewed and mashed.  They are supposed to have the texture of yams or taro, and can be made into a sweet or savory dish.

So Ralph and I found ourselves in the back of a van driving down the dark night streets of Brastagi in search of fresh Durian fruit.  We drove through the city square and passed the night market which was filled with people on the street selling fresh fruits and vegetables, tee shirts, used clothing, used books, and just about anything else you could possibly need at 9:30 in the evening.  We drove down past the hustle and bustle of the city center along a street where the street lights were spaced further and further apart.  And then, there on the very outskirts of the city under the radius of a single sulforous yellow street lamp were two older women with several young girls huddled beside them.  The women were armed with these huge machetes with which they were hacking away at two huge dark piles.  The children were stacking the shattered remains to one side.  The windows to our vehicle were shut tight, but the smell was unmistakable:  Durian.  We pulled over and got out.  After some short negotiations with the older women, and a smile and nod to the children, a man stepped out of the shadows and drew up a wooden table and two chairs onto the sidewalk.  Ralph and I sat down and the old woman placed before us three huge Durian which she had cut in half.  The smell was overwhelming.  We were both a bit timid and frightened.  But the old woman smiled knowingly.  The table man laughed.  I picked up half a fruit and dug in with two fingers.  It had the texture of butter with  thin strings of over ripe mango.  The smell was horrible but ceased once the fruit hit your mouth.  The flavor was not bad, but it fell hard on my knotted stomach.  After several helpings I had had enough, but I had eaten only a quarter of one fruit.  Each fruit contained at least a quart of pulp.  I had eaten one cup and had five more to go to meet my quota.  And like some evil narcotic I found that I did not want more, but I could not stop myself from gorging.  I ate until I felt almost ill.  Yet the woman was cutting up more.  I protested: cukup- enough.  She did not hear me.  I looked to our driver for help, but he was standing across the street.  I waved him over to help us eat, but he firmly stood his ground.  He was not a Durian aficiando.  I called over to our guide, who professed a love of Durian, but he too begged off.  Ralph in the meantime had taken on the strange glow of our street lamp.  We were done.  The Attila the Hun of fruit had slayed us.

As we headed back to the hotel, I could taste the sulpherous fumes of this hellish fruit bubble up from my nether regions.  I needed a drink.  But our guide cautioned us.  Whatever we do, we must not drink alcohol after eating this fruit.  It can be a lethal combination.  Men have died eating durian and drinking palm wine.  Ralph and I dragged ourselves back to the hotel and each donned a pot of  kopi susu.  Thick black coffee made thicker still with sweeten condensed milk.  Having duly coated our stomachs and doused the volcanos of our gut we headed off to our rooms.  I brushed my teeth, gums, lips, mouth and throat for about fifteen minutes straight before climbing into bed.  The coffee kicked in.  I lay on my back staring at the ceiling. Eventually I drifted off and down the rabbit hole of dark and furious dreams.

Durian is a fruit everyone must experience at least once.  Come to Indonesia and I will guide you down that darken road.

   The next day on our way to  Samosir on Lake Toba, we passed a number of small resorts that offered hot sulpher mineral springs for therapeutic bathing around the base of Mt. Sibayak.  But we were anxious to get to Samosir, which was still a four or five hour drive, so we decided to pass on this opportunity.  Besides, I had experienced enough sulphery therapeutics for this trip.

Orangutown

It is the second day of our Sumatran adventure.  We are climbing up the side of this mountain in the jungle rainforest of Bukit Lawang in search of orangutan.  We have two guides beating the bushes for us and our little group consists of Irene and Miles, and Irene’s older brother Ralph, and myself. 

We are clawing our way up this muddy path by pulling ourselves up along tree roots and hanging vines.  We have seen no orangutan since leaving the orangutan rehabilitation feeding station (sort of a meet and greet juice bar for recovering primates). 

Our guide stops in the middle of the ascent and peers closely at the ground.  He gathers us around him we’re all atingle with curiosity. “ Look here” he says holding up a small twig, “we have some giant ants in the jungle here”.  Indeed it is a big ant, but we have some pretty big ants in the States too.  I am not impressed.  Our guide appears disappointed that I did not whip out my camera to document this magnificent specimen.  We trudge on.  After a little while he stops again and peers intently  into the forest.  Ralph stares with him.  Miles appears bored as Irene and I approach.  “What is it?”  I whisper to Miles.  He shrugs.  It is a red headed woodpecker.  I quickly pull off a shot before it flies away.

  Still no orangutan.  I am starting to wonder if the guide is getting a little desperate.  I feel his pain. 

A little ways on, I stop and stare at a tree top on the far side of a hill.  What is that big brown thing up there.  My eyes cannot make it out and I have no binoculars . . . but it very well could be . . .  I take a dozen pictures, thank God for flash memory cards.  They have some magnificent dead tree limbs in this forest. 

We push on and up.  As we pull ourselves up another muddy path, Miles cries out.  Something has bitten him on the hand.  I rush over but see nothing.  I tell him not to worry, he probably just was scraped by a sharp stick.  Maybe it was an ant.  But it was nothing.  He starts to whine that this really is not much fun and he wants to go back down.  We are not going to back down from this hike.  We are here for adventure I tell him.  He whines some more.  He is thirsty.  He is tired and he was bitten.  So I do what any good parent would do in such circumstances.  I give him a drink of water and bribe him.  I tell him that if he stops complaining, and hikes with a good attitude, and does not complain anymore during this vacation, and remains engaged with his surroundings, then I will give him twenty dollars towards a new starwars lego set.  With that his droopy eyes brighten.  “Deal” he exclaims and scampers up to our guide. 

I am very proud of myself for solving that problem.  I start to think about how I really should write a book entitled “The Banker’s Guide to Raising Your Child”.  Here’s how it works:  You simply bribe your child to do as you want, with small amounts of money and larger promises in the form of IOU’s when the small bribes are not enough.  Eventually you build up a huge debt load owed to your child which you can never repay.  By the time your child is ready to enter college you are forced to declare bankruptcy because you can not pay your debt to him or her.  Although your bankrutpcy is in the form of a re-organization, it really amounts to a no assets chapter seven.  Which means that you extinguish your debt but now qualify for government college tuition loans and scholarships.  You can now afford to send your (perfectly behaved) child to college, and because he is now (almost) an adult, he no longer is interested in playing with lego star wars and nerf guns.  You are off the hook on all those unfulfilled promises of future booty.  Then, when he is in college, you take all of those old lego star war sets (which are unopened because he had far too many to ever finish building) and you sell them on ebay for a small fortune thus recouping your initial investment, plus interest.  It is a win win for everyone. 

But in the meantime I am getting mud on my pinstripe suit as I claw my way up another mountain pass.  I look at my arm and see that I have two leaches just about ready to have lunch.  They are not the same type of leach that lives full time in the water aka the African Queen, but some local version with a thousand sticky little legs.  They are harder to remove.  This, I suspect is what bit Miles earlier and now I am feeling ashamed for telling him it was nothing but a stick.

But shame is not an emotion that lingers long for our guide now is pointing into the trees and has a big smile on his face.  This time I can see them for real:  Orangutan.  A mother and large son

   We take a bunch of photos.  The mother is apparently used to this type of event for she comes within a dozen feet of us.  When she realizes we do not have any food for her, she climbs back up higher into the trees.  We move on. 

Over the next rise we find another mother with a much smaller baby clinging to her. 

Again, the mother is fearless of humans.  As she should be.  She probably only weighs 70 or 80 lbs and the baby weighs probably only 5-7 lbs, but she can fling herself through the trees from one hand over the next with the greatest of easy.  I suspect she could dislocate my shoulder without blinking if we were to get into a tug of war.  After lingering around us for about five minutes, she and her baby swing on off down the mountainside.  We walk on and again encounter another mother and child. 

We then encounter Meena. 

Meena is a bit of a legend in these parts.  She is a rather large, somewhat schizophrenic orangutan, who is known to engage in unprovoked attacks against humans.  She was probably abused as a pet.  But there are several guides who have rather ugly scars from Meena as they tried to protect the tourists they had been guiding along the trails.  We were told before we began this trip that if we encounter Meena, we should give her a wide birth and do whatever the guide told us to do.  He tells us to walk quickly down a path and not stop.  As we do so, we pass by a Thomas Leaf Monkey. 

I quickly take a blurry photo, but do not stop. 
 Meena follows us and then runs ahead and cuts off our path.  We head back down the same path as one of our guides bribes Meena with bananas.  That does the trick.  Meena is sated and she climbs back up to the tree canopy. 

We push on, and we walk up and down the mountain for about an hour without encountering any more orangutans.  We have now been hiking for about three hours.  But then one of our guides goes off path and starts hooting.  The other guide tells us that a big male had come into this area last week in search of a new female.  Males and females will often bond long enough for the female to get pregnant and give birth.  Then after the baby is about four months old, the male moves on and the female is left to raise the child on her own.  I tell Miles that it sounds like a very sensible arrangement.  Luckily  Irene was not within earshot.

Our guide returned to the path triumphant, he pointed to the tree canopy and I could see two orangutans slowly descending.  One was a huge male who stood about five feet tall.  His girlfriend was about four feet.  Our guide cautioned us to give the male wide birth so we kept a good thirty foot distance from him, and we were in some pretty dense forest so I could not a clear shot with the camera. 

Nevertheless he was impressive.

After that we saw no more orangutans, but we had our fill and were ready to head back home.  It took us about fifty minutes to hike back out of the forest.  All in all we had been hiking for about four hours and we were all tired.  All except our guides who had another group waiting for them back at the stream crossing.  While we were all covered in dirt and grime from the hike, our guides were still clean and fresh.  They looked like they could have stepped into a happy hour at TGIF. 

 But it was time for us to head back.  We struck out on the path back to the Jungle Inn.  Miles thought I needed lunch and a beer. 

Next stop:  Lake Toba

Sumatra and Jogjakarta

As New York digs itself out of another massive snow storm, I thought I would take the time to write about our recent travels through Sumatra and Central Java.

Irene's brother Ralph came to Indonesia for a three week visit on the first of January and we all went for a six day trip to Northern central Sumatra.  We flew into Medan in Sumatra and then traveled by car to the jungles of Bukit Lawang/Bohorok for two days and then traveled to the mountains where we stayed at Lake Toba before heading back to Jakarta.

Medan is the capital of the North Sumatra province.  It is located on the northern coast of Sumatra and is the fourth largest city in Indonesia and the largest city outside Java.  The city was formed back in the late 1500s by Malays.  Some people think the name of the city, Medan, was a derivative of Medina and others think it came from the Hindi word, Maidan, meaning ground.  But there appears to be more Muslim influences to this city than Hindi, but like all things Indonesian, it is no one thing.  Back in the 1600s the Sultan of Aceh (a muslim) established an outpost here which became the Sultanate of Deli.  Yes, there is a Deli river flowing through Medan.  There is also a huge mosque in the city center, which we did not get to visit due to time constraints.  The Dutch came to this city in the late 1600s and maintained their presence here until independence in 1949.  However, there is not a lot left of the older Dutch architecture except for a few areas along some of the markets and some of the more massive governmental structures built by the Dutch.

What makes Medan of note to our family is the fact that after World War II, Medan was the staging ground for re-uniting the Dutch and British families who were separated by the Japanese into different prison and labor camps.  When the Japanese invaded Indonesia in the latter part of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, they moved all of the Dutch (and other non native peoples) into work camps:  the men in one set of camps and the women and children into another set of camps.  Before the war, Irene's grandfather worked for the Dutch Colonial Postal Service.  Irene's mother was born in Jakarta, and the family lived in many different areas of Indonesia, but mostly in Sumatra.  At the time of the Japanese invasion, the family was still living in Indonesia for, although they were probably well aware of the dangers this posed to them, they had no where else to go since Holland was under Nazi control.  Thus they were swept up by the Japanese and placed in internment camps.  Irene's mother's family (Irene's mother, aunt, uncle (who was maybe 6 years old at the time) and grandmother) were separated from Irene's grandfather and sent to a prison camp while the grandfather was shipped off to a labor camp.  After the war, the international red cross brought all of the freed Dutch people to the city of Medan where the families were eventually re-united with one another and repatriated with their country.  I believe Irene's mother and her aunt first went to Holland alone, and were then later joined by their mother, father and brother.

Thus Medan has special significance to the Koek family.  

But we were on a mission to get to the jungles and see the orangutans, so we did not linger much in the city.  However, as we blew out of the city I did take some pictures of the local bajajs, which is something like a rickshaw but powered by a motorcycle.  In Jakarta we do not have as many bajajs, but instead have becaks, which are small three wheeled vehicles powered by a small two stroke engine, which makes them the worst polluters in a very polluted city.  Here in Medan the bajajs are a little more modern than the foot powered vehicles found in smaller cities and moderate size cities such as Jogjakarta, but they are all colorfully painted by their owners and much cleaner than Jakarta's becaks. 

 

It was about a four hour drive over perhaps a 120 miles (the roads are horrendous) to Bukit Lawang.  We passed through many small villages and towns, but I recall one area where we passed three or four places all within several kilometers of one another where people had small cages filled with large bats the size of flying foxes hanging upside down.  Evidently bat is considered a delicacy in that particular area.  But despite the fact that we had not had anything to eat since lunch almost two hours ago, I could not get anyone particularly interested in stopping for a bite to eat at any of the roadside places at that time.  Unfortunately, I also did not have my camera available at the time we passed these places.  By the time I dug it out of the luggage we had passed the bats by.  I did take a picture of one stand which I thought had bat, but as I subsequently learned from a closer examination of the shot, it was a picture of hanging fruit not hanging fruit bats.  But you get the picture.

After a four hour trip over some rather bumpy pot marked roads, we finally arrived at Bukit Lawang, which is part of the Gunung Leuser nature reservation.  This is a huge National Park covering almost 8000 square kilometers in North Sumatra.  We obviously were not able to see the entire park, which is home to Sumatran tigers, rhino, elephant, orangutan and other exotic wildlife.  You can spend weeks in the park searching for Sumatra tiger and the closest you might come to a tiger is the soft squishy thing under your foot, for there are only about 500 tigers left in Sumatra.  But we knew we would be able to see some orangutan because Bukit Lawang, which is located inside the park, is a designated orangutan sanctuary where orangutans who had previously been kept as pets, work animals or zoo animals are kept and rehabilitated back to the wild and their natural habitat. 

While at Bukit Lawang, we stayed at the Jungle Inn, which is right in the nature preserve atop a wide stream and steep water fall.  It is accessible only by a one and a half or two kilometer foot path from the street.  So, after the four hour car ride, being all young and vibrant, we shirked the Sherpa and slogged ourselves and our bags to the Jungle Inn.  The walk to the Inn however, really was no big deal and the Jungle Inn really was worth the little bit of extra effort.  I had booked the honeymoon suite and the river view room for us based on all the advice I had received from other travelers.  The Inn is built into the mountain along a quick flowing waterfall that flows into the stream below. 

 

This is the waterfall which we reach by going out
the back door of our bathroom



The rooms are stone and wood in the old Malay style:  massive furniture which must have been constructed on location hewn from huge dense wood.  The bathrooms are huge garden type affairs.  Electricity and plumbing are not modern, efficient, or laudable.  But hey we were in the jungle.  We had to make sure we closed all doors and

This is the front door of the honeymoon suite- a private suite

windows when we left our rooms, otherwise the monkeys would run into the room and play with all our shiny stuff.  I understand they like to take your picture with your purloined camera as you run after them cursing and shouting, trying to get your stuff back.  They are rumored to have been seen updating their facebook page on a guest's laptop with the pictures they had just taken of the irate tourist.  

Freedy taking orders from some Australians

Freedy was the manager, or at least the face of the Jungle Inn, who served as the waiter, raconteur, and at least for Ralph, who stayed up much later than us, the musical entertainment.  Freedy was born and raised here, is married and has one teenage daughter.  Freedy is of indeterminate age, but has the appearance of a Sumatran Keith Richards/Captain Jack Sparrow. 

He made our stay at the Jungle Inn quite enjoyable.

But we did not come to Bukit Lawang merely to hang out at the Jungle Inn (though with river rafting, exotic alcoholic drinks and a beautiful atmosphere it was tempting).  No, we were here to see the orangutans.  So, the next day we set out with our guide across the river and on into the jungle.  The river crossing was itself a trip in a small dug out canoe that is pulled across the rapids along a guide wire strung from shore to shore.  It was a bit wet but also quite fun and exhilarating. 



waiting at the feeding station

Once across the shore we started hiking up the mountain.  We first climbed some steps carved into the shore cliff, then climbed up a steep path, then across a small field and then up another path of rock and mud.  Did I tell you we were going up? a mountain? in a rainforest? early in the morning?  Without a starbucks in sight?  Carrying a heavy camera?  Just as I was starting to feel sorry for us, a park employee scampered past us carrying two big slopping buckets filled with milk and banana mash for the orangutans.  Up ahead, along a very slippery slope and a very small wet and muddy clearing we stopped.

  There built into a tree, which we looked down upon, was a small wooden platform which was erected as the orangutan feeding platform.   A crowd of more than a fifteen people were huddled about waiting to see the orangutans come to feed. 

After about a half an hour a couple of orangutans did slowly descend from the upper trees to the platform.  The sound of about a dozen cameras all clicking away was almost deafening.  But we were looking at orangutans in the wild. 
After about an hour the show was over and everyone was told to go back down.  Everyone but us that is because we had the good sense to hire a guide to lead us further into the jungle to look for more orangutans.  You may not wander into the jungle without a guide.  A couple of Australians tried to do that and they were quickly herded back down the mountain.  We, however, started on our passage up.
That's right, I said up for we were no where near the top of the mountain (I say mountain- the guides would probably call it a hill).  We were soon to learn that our initial little climb was nothing more than a stroll through the park.  We had many more miles to go.  And for the first couple of miles our guides kept on telling us not to get our hopes up.  Sometimes they see orangutans and sometimes they see nothing.  But, in order to drag us on, they kept on saying that it looked like a good day for orangutans.
Next up Orangutown . . .