Ring of Fire

STATS: Day count=304; theft count=1; rip-off count=1.5; tourist screw-up count=5.5; Chris’ photo count=2394; Emma’s photo count=128; touch-typing char/min=254; Poi skills mastered since last post: None

The post title does not refer to the Johnny Cash song, nor to the spiciness of the food, which has been a little tame recently – with the exception of one particularly fiery mie goreng (fried noodle) dish we had in a local restaurant which probably rarely saw delicate western palettes, but refers instead to our location in the volcano and earthquake belt of northern Sumatra.

For those as ignorant of geography as I was, Sumatra is the largest of the wholly Indonesian islands. Indonesia is massive and comprises hundreds of islands. Sumatra is also massive and our limited time and lack of desire for 20+ hour bus journeys meant that our travels on the island were very limited and thus our assessment of all things Sumatran or Indonesian is based on minimal sample data of 4 towns only. I shall act like the British media, however, and draw wide and wild conclusions from this limited data.

In general we found Indonesia a very contrasting place. One minute we were being smiled at by local kids and engaged in conversation by the adults in a gorgeous jungle village setting, the next we were being shouted at by ‘youths’ (not aggressively, just rudely), ripped off by bus drivers and choking on city fumes. Our opinion on the country fluctuated wildly during our time there – primarily dependent on whatever was the latest interaction with the local people – but ended up pretty positive overall.

We flew to Medan, a large city in northern Sumatra. After being ripped off on the taxi journey from the airport to the main centre (we weren’t to know it was only a 5 minute ride!) we quickly discovered that all the hotels and guest houses were overpriced and pretty dirty. Luckily we had arrived in the early morning, so we just found our way to a bus station (getting ripped off again) and got on the first bus out (our third overcharging experience in a matter of hours).

Bukit Lawang has an interesting history. A town mainly formed around the formation about 15 years ago of an orangutan rehabilitation centre and trekking post into the jungle that it borders, it was all but wiped out by a flash flood following the Boxing day tsunami in 2004. It has since re-established itself and is a very pretty town on the edge of a national park. The orangutan centre is still there, though it has been successful enough (or the deforestation has been severe enough) that they no longer rehabilitate into that area of the jungle as there are enough orangutans to ‘fill’ the local area. However, they do still study the apes and provide basic food twice a day for any that want to turn up to the feeding platform.

The town was quiet – we had arrived out of season – all the locals were friendly and not too pushy, despite every male over the age of 12 being either official or unofficial guides for the treks, which were incredibly expensive, given the price of everything else in the country. So expensive that we decided not to go on one of the treks. Unfortunately you have to have a guide to go into the national park, so we were therefore unable to venture much into the jungle. Since we had only recently come from the jungle in Malaysia, we were not that worried. We did visit the orangutan feeding platforms on a couple of occasions and did have some pretty close encounters with our orange cousins – there is a rule that you should not get closer than 7 metres from them, but that is hard to do when they just wander past you while you are busy looking elsewhere! A fantastic experience, though every time I see orangutans I am reminded of Dr Zaius from (the original, and still the best) Planet of the Apes film. A testament to the great costumes from that film, or maybe just to my strange memory associations.

We accidentally discovered a good method of ensuring you don’t spend long in a particular place: only draw out a small amount of money and go somewhere with no ATMs. Of course, it means if you like the place, you end up eating cheap noodles for 3 meals a day to drag out the money! This was the case with Bukit Lawang, but we managed to stay 4 days before our money ran out.

We wandered to the nearby Bat Cave. I had images of Adam West (for the older ones amongst you) or Christian Bale (for the younger ones) powering out of the cave in his Batmobile, but it was in fact simply a cave containing some bats. Nothing overly impressive, but a pleasant walk to the cave through some plantations (palm oil and rubber) where we encountered more friendly people and some Thomas Leaf monkeys. If you study the photo hard enough you may see one!

 

From one relaxing place to another – Lake Toba.  We had to cross Medan to switch buses and the local minibus ride across town was the worst driving I have ever encountered – and I’ve come across some poor driving in the past – most notably a taxi in Tel Aviv! This was worse than that. I’m not a nervous passenger but eventually I did have to tell the driver to take it easy, before he killed someone. Still, even that was better than having to listen to Westlife on loop on the bus out of town. For 5 hours.

The town of Tuk Tuk was apparently the backpacker party central in the early 90’s, before the Thai islands stole all that thunder. We arrived in off-season and there were hardly any tourists there. Imagine a typical, small Lake District town with its gorgeous views and clear lakes. Remove 90% of the tourists, 80% of the residents, all bar one road and all traffic. Keep all the coffee shops and cafes, but replace cream teas with magic mushrooms, and the little china houses in the souvenir shops with tie-dye T shirts and wooden sculptures and you have an accurate picture of Tuk Tuk. We loved the place – once again very friendly people and a great guest house room overlooking the lake. Peace, puppies and piglets. What more could you ask for?

After two such polite and friendly places things could only go downhill. Leaving Tuk Tuk took a little planning. There was a bus on that part of the island, we were told. It comes on Wednesday. Unfortunately we were leaving on a Thursday, so we had to persuade a friendly local to give us a lift on his moped to the ‘main road’ where we got a local bus across the island and another local bus to our next destination – Berastagi. It seems a common trend with local buses that the only thing in good working order is the stereo.

Berastagi is a relatively dirty and, at least along the main road, a busy and fairly unfriendly place. The cheery hellos from locals in Bukit Lawang and Tuk Tuk were replaced with more arrogance and rudeness here. But away from the main town we again encountered friendly people which made up for the unpleasantness. Our prime reason for coming to Berastagi was to climb one of the two nearby volcanoes – Sibayak. Unfortunately on the day we arrived and the following day the weather was very cloudy, overcast and wet so we didn’t attempt it. Luckily on the day before we left it cleared up and we had a great, if exhausting, 2 hour climb to the top of the volcano, where there were sulphur jets and a barren landscaped crater to interest us. The walk was tiring, and we only met 2 other couples on our trek – it was eerie being alone at the top of an active volcano. After the walk back down we were aching (though not as badly as the following day!) and the nearby hot springs were very welcome – after not having had a hot bath since May the relaxing warm mineral waters of the hot springs felt amazing. Once we had spent an hour in there and become very prune-like, it was time to head back to town.

Back to Medan the following day, and we had to stay the night there as our flight back to Malaysia was not until the following morning. Luckily we had got a good recommendation on a guest house on our travels and we got a basic, but great value room in the centre of town, overlooking the impressive Great Mosque.

The Muslim call to prayer is very haunting, evocative and culturally interesting. At least it is when you read about it or see it on TV. When it blasts through your windows and walls from large loudspeakers at 4:30 in the morning, it moves more towards the intensely annoying.

So our brief foray into the Ring of Fire produced a lot of rain, some of the coldest temperatures we have encountered all year (in Berastagi) and some sulphur jets, but no earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions. I probably shouldn’t be disappointed.

We now head back to Thailand. Flights home booked on 29th November from Bangkok, we are planning to head to one or two of the islands for our last two weeks. All this travelling takes it out of you and we need a holiday!