In the jungle

After Bali we wanted to visit Sumatra and flew to Medan. It is probably one of the ugliest cities we have ever seen. We felt like celebrities there as everyone was staring us, pointing their fingers at us, talking to us and even taking pictures of us. Luckily we didn't have to spend more than one evening in Medan. The next morning we left to Bukit Lawang to the jungle!

When we arrived in Bukit Lawang we were kind of bored as there really isn't much else to do than go to the jungle there. So the first day we met some locals who took us on their motorcycles (again without helmets, sorry mums!) to a shed in the middle of nowhere where they picked coconuts, snakefruits and cocoa fruits for us. They also took us to a lookout point and we had the most amazing corn on the cob there, yammy! :) In the evening the locals entertained us by playing guitar and drums and we sang along. Our favourite song was the business song! The melody is jingle bells and the lyrics go pretty much like this:

Jungle trek Jungle trek

In Bukit Lawang

See the monkey

See the bear

See orang-utan

Jungle trek Jungle trek

In Bukit Lawang

See the monkey

See Mina

And everybody run

Cacao fruit, it tasted nothing like chocolate :) Lili drinking coconut juice in the background



Pineapple!

 

Bukit Lawang in the background, we posing with our motorcycles

 The next morning we left for our two day long jungle trek. Our jungle trek included a lot of steep up- and downhills and the paths were nowhere to be seen. We had to climb up and down and be really careful not to fall or slip as the mud was really slippery. The first day we saw about nine orang-utans which is really rare. We also got to see the infamous Mina! Even Lonelyplanet has written her story in their guidebook. Mina is kind of aggressive and all the guides are really scared of her as many have been bitten or scratched. So when we heard Mina approaching us, the guides told us to walk really fast to the other direction as they fed her with bananas to keep her distracted. Apparently she was treated badly when she was a baby and that might be the reason for her aggressive behaviour. In the afternoon we also saw black gibbons. They were really cute with their big bellys. We were told we were going to sleep in a tent but as we reached our campsite all we saw was two big tarps where we had to sleep. The night was long! The ground was really hard and our backs and sides were aching so we weren't well rested the next day. The second day we went trekking by the river and had to cross it twice. This was almost impossible due to the strong stream, but luckily we managed to cross the river both times (with a little help from the guys). Our trekking on the second day was really dangerous. We had to walk on very slippery rocks and at one point our guide slipped and fell almost on top of Katja and they both almost fell to the river. We came back to Bukit Lawang in a tubing train. We were supposed to go rafting but instead the guides tied many huge inner tubes together making it a long tubing train.




The infamous orang-utan Mina with her baby



Having a break from running away from Mina on our jungle trek





One of the orang-utans we saw



Lunch break, eating like locals with our very clean hands



We "slept" under this tarp

 



Black gibbon



We were supposed to go rafting but instead we went train tubing

Pulau Weh was our last beach vacation before returning back to Finland. The island is really pretty and according to LonelyPlanet it is what Thailand's beaches used to be 20 years ago. We were just relaxing in Pulau Weh as we needed to save our energy to extreme shopping in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. :) There are only six restaurants on the beach where we stayed and they all have the same menus and almost all of them are run by the same family. Service is extremely slow and you have to write down your order yourself. :)



Beautiful view in Pulau Weh



Our lunch view

 We wanted to spend a day in Banda Aceh too see all the tsunami sights. Banda Aceh was almost completely destroyed in the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami and about 75 000 people died because of it. We wanted to visit the tsunami museum but unfortunately it was closed for reconstruction which is kind of weird as it opened less than a year ago. That's why we visited the boat in the house which now serves as a tsunami memorial and the 2500-tonne power genrerator vessel that was carried 4 km inland by a wave. The whole tour took us about an hour and after that we had nothing to do. We didn't even want to go outside anymore after hearing an angry comment about the way we dress (we know this is a muslim country but it is way too hot to cover yourself up!). Luckily we managed to take us to De Helsinki Cafe without drawing too much attention to our bare legs and arms. (Martti Ahtisaari and Helsinki are famous here because the peace agreement between the Indonesian gowernment and the Achenese people who wanted to be an independent nation was mediated by him and took place in Helsinki).

Now we are off to our shopping spree/vacation in KL!



The boat in the house



2500-tonne power generator vessel