I always seem to be complaining in this blog.

Why is that?

Oh well, too bad.

I’m sick at the moment. And I’m not very good at it. I become a bit depressed when I’m sick, because I hate not being able to do what I normally do, and from feeling like people think I’m faking it when I take time off work (in this case from “overdoing the partying in Banda” – which I must say is not true. I had a fairly tame party on Sat night, which included shooting fireworks out the front and accidentally into the mosque across the road, plus fabulous dancing until the wee hours. Then there was a bit of a late one on Monday night with the boss and his barbeque before my early morning flight to Medan. But that’s it. I swear). After getting back to Simeulue I found myself with a crappy head cold, and a blocked right ear. It’s driving me mad! Hopefully it will sort itself out soon.

I went to Banda Aceh on Saturday. I went around to my old boss Paul’s house, to see him and his family. His little boy Adrian is so big now… he is Gigantor next to other Indonesian kids of the same age! It was cool to have a few beers and a chat. He’s moving to Medan soon for a new job, which is good for his family because his wife Popy is from there, and her family can help look after Adrian.

I usually enjoy going to Banda. But I didn’t enjoy being in that office this time because one of my colleagues, who is dating a local staff member, was basically ignoring me. Fair enough. I broke the news to her after the party early on Sunday morning that this ‘boyfriend’ of two years had been fooling around behind her back, including with me (I didn’t know!). This was going on while she was away at home in Scotland; she was under the impression that they were still together. So I had to tell her. It wasn’t fair otherwise.

Anyway, we had planned to go surfing the next morning, and in our hungover state we didn’t really think much about the fact that it wasn’t a good idea if the three of us went surfing together after the events of the previous evening! But out we went, and I really wasn’t in the mood for surfing – I don’t like being bad at things generally, particularly when I’m hungover and in a “three’s a crowd” situation. So after less than an hour pretending to enjoy being really crap at surfing, I made my way back to shore and amused myself on the beach until they were finished, then got them to take me home. Even more unfortunately, I happened to be staying at her house!

It would have been pretty funny being a fly on the wall. But I hated it! It wasn’t my fault, but she made me feel like it was.

When you’re staying with someone, it’s nice if they take care of you. Just a little bit. I don’t expect her to hold my hand; but after Sunday I hardly saw her, and she didn’t talk to me at all in the office. So I had to amuse myself by finding other friends to play with. Not difficult really – the other delegates live around the corner, so I hung out with them for dinners and we played a bit of tennis (even with a sore arm, I can still play if I don’t serve – but I feel like a bit of a wanker serving under-arm! This time, I didn’t get to thrash the boss, but a run-around was awesome, and much-needed!).

In addition, the office in Banda Aceh felt really unfriendly. I arrived with my engineer Rinaldi, and hardly anyone came up to say hello and introduce themselves to him. It was much different to usual; maybe because there’s been a few changes in the delegates, and a couple of the teams have moved to a different shipping container in the compound. But normally when us Simeuluenians go to the office, people are friendly, inclusive for lunches and keen to have a chat. The usual bright, cheery people were great. But there was none of that from anyone else. The admin and HR staff were particularly unfriendly, and even made Rinaldi organise his own briefing schedule – instead of organising it for him, they made him go around to everyone in each department and find out when they were free to give him the run-down of the different programs. How rude!

So I came back to Simeulue and became sick. Crap. And then on the weekend, I wanted to go out to Anna’s place to go kayaking. When I approached my housemate with the request to take the car, he got all narky with me and started carrying on about how I always take off with the car with little consideration for when he wants to go somewhere. We’re a bit short on cars at the moment, because of maintenance needs outside of Simeulue.

I can understand his point. I do often just go tearing off with the car to do things on the weekends. Being stuck in Salang all week really makes me ansty and I enjoy the freedom to be able to get out and about. But I usually check to see if he’s around, and he’s usually sleeping or off having coffee on Sat and Sunday mornings, so I just take the car and figure he’s big enough and ugly enough to call me if he needs to use the car. In the past, we’ve had enough cars for me to do this and it hasn’t been a problem.

But also, let me paint a picture of my housemate. At a guess, he’s in his late 50s, and spends his free time on weekends and after work doing the following things: reading, sleeping and smoking. All in the house. Or, he goes to the office. So he hardly goes anywhere. The only time he ever really needs the car is to go to the office (if he's too lazy to walk! it's only 15 mins up the road), or if he wants to go into town for a change of scenery on the restaurant front. So I thought it was a bit rich to hassle me for using the car as I do. But the main thing I was mad about was how he spoke to me, just launching into me without even really saying hello; and then when I asked Anna to come pick me up (I wasn’t able to take the car) he started mouthing off to her. That really pissed me off. I was almost in tears.

And then I WAS in tears when almost straight after our argument, I get an sms from my sister Ange: “I miss you! :( Can you please hurry up and come home so we can do fun stuff?! Love you xo”.

Anyway, the upshot of it all is that I’m just pissed off with being here at the moment. Counting down big time til December 10th. Bring on those holidays!

The environmental nightmare that is Simeulue...

I thought I'd give you some delightful imagery of my little slice of paradise.

Environment is not high on the priority list here. But making money at the expense of it certainly is.

The prime example is the seemingly humble palm plantation - "kebun sawit". Hectares of virgin Indonesian rainforest are being knocked down to plant these ghastly trees, all for the purpose of harvesting palm oil. The community cuts the wood for their own consumption first, but they are being encouraged by the government to sell and/or rent their land to the palm oil companies who make big bucks - and little goes back to the community. There is a lot of community land dedicated to palm oil production.

The Bupati - the head of governance in Simeulue - is up to his neck in dodgy dealings with the oil companies too, at the expense of the community. He's been in court and I think even in jail for it. The amount of land available on Simeulue is not even close to that needed for a palm processing facility.

It's depressing to drive around the plantations and see just how much was forest before. I remember the first time I arrived in Simeulue and went for a nice drive - only for my jaw to drop to the floor when I drove over the hill and saw the rows upon rows of palm trees stretching to the horizon. And the destruction continues around the island - even in Salang where I work, there are just more and more hectares being cleared. We don't see many monkeys any more :(

Then there's the rubbish dump. It's gross! There is no proper way to deal with the mountains of plastic bags, bottles, food scraps, wood and other rubbish that rapidly accumulates in this little town. There are a few entrepreuners around town who have set up their own businesses to collect cans, old bikes, 44 gallon drums and rusty old ships and export the metal back to Medan by ferry. There are scavengers that peruse the area for anything valuable that can be recycled, like plastic bottles, for which they get a small sum of money.

In terms of dealing with household waste, people just make a pile out the back of their house, dump their rubbish there, and burn it. In some ways it stops the rubbish making its way into the drains and the sea, but pollution-wise it's not good, especially as a high proportion of the waste is toxic plastic bags.

Recently, the UN set up a waste sorting and management facility (the big blue building in the picture) to try and deal with it. They are also planning a waste education program. the can really only operate effectively in Sinabang, the location of the main mass of people. In the kampungs its not feasible.

The positive thing about the waste management program though is that it's a practical one. The idea is that the Department of Sanitation, together with UN, go around with trucks and personnel and load up with the town's rubbish. Then they take it out to the waste management facility at the dump and sort it into non-recyclable and recyclable plastics, organic matter, paper, wood, metals etc. The organic waste gets composted and any recyclables sent to Medan by ferry to be recycled.

The harbour is a disgrace rubbish-wise. People dump their rubbish straight into the 'rivers' - read concrete lined canals to transport water to the sea - and it goes straight into the harbour. Plus there's the fishermen and boat passengers that throw all their rubbish overboard. There really is very little understanding about the importance of waste management. The UN has now started a waste collection and harbour clean-up program in Sinabang to try and deal with the growing mountain of plastic bags, bottles, fishing nets and other visible rubbish that blights the landscape; we regularly see teams of rubbish collectors around the place. But they're fighting an uphill battle; as soon as they clear the shoreline, more rubbish washes in. If you take a boat out into the harbour and beyond, on the way back you don't need to guess how close you are to home - just observe how much rubbish floats by!

Tameng tales and other woes

This is the bridge in Tameng, which fell down this week when one of our gravel-laden trucks went over it.




The drivers had to dump the load of gravel into the river and then try to lever it out. We then got into a tricky situation when we signed an agreement to pay half the cost to the local government to fix it. It still isn’t fixed 2 weeks after the contractors promised it. We can’t move any quarry or hardware materials to our villages until it’s sorted. It’s been very dodgy for a long time, so it had to happen. But still, more frustrations!

Ahhh my project seems to take two steps backwards as soon as it takes one forward. We recently got an audit done of the program, and our engineer uncovered about 50 houses in the first two villages ARC built in, where the septic tanks were made of concrete and brick, and never actually finished. They used a ‘traditional’ design where there is no floor in the tank – which means the shit goes directly into the soil without proper filtration! And while soakaways were supposed to be attached to these tanks for the effluent, the completion of these was left to the community, including filling them with self-procured gravel and sand. So of course, they neglected to do this, and in some cases used them for other purposes like garbage dumps.

So now we have to go back and fix this problem. And it ain’t cheap. We have decided to replace the old tanks with new fibreglass ones, and fill in the soakaways. My budget was already looking shabby, not to mention my timeline totally overshot by at least three months.

I might be here until the end of 2058, not 2008!

Other favourite pastime: kayaking

One of the very enjoyable things I am lucky enough to do in Simeulue is take a kayak out on the bay on the weekends. My previous boss Paul left his kayak behind for me to use. It’s an aluminium-framed, canvas and rubber, kit kayak. A few months ago, Anna (another expat here) bought herself one so that we could kayak together. Along with Chigusa (working for Japanese Red Cross), she lives out of town in a little village called Lugu, in a beautiful wooden house overlooking the water on its own little bay. It’s such a tranquil place. At night all you can hear are the frogs croaking, the crickets and geckos chirping, and the buffalo tramping across the grass. Oh and the asphalt factory rumbling away up the road (but forget I said that). It’s been the location of many bule gatherings, and for good reason.

From Lugu, Anna and I take our kayaks out and paddle around the little (and not-so-little) islands that dot the bay. The first challenge is carting the kayaks down the hill from the house, through the fence and across the grass, then along some dodgy wooden planks and bamboo bridges that aid you in your quest to reach the water. Once you reach the water’s edge, depending on the tide, you encounter rocky coral or thick, squelchy mud in which you sink halfway up to your shins. It’s an effort just to get the kayaks out into the water!

But once we’re out there, it’s great. We can cruise around to our hearts’ content. On days when the weather is good to us, it’s absolutely beautiful. The water is like glass, and our kayaks glide over it as we make our way around the mangrove-covered, rocky coastline. The mangroves are an amazing shade of green. We always see fish jumping out of the water. One morning we saw what seemed like hundreds of black devils leaping around in a seething mass, either in pursuit or being pursued by something under the water. The shoreline is regularly dotted with a multitude of little mud towers, the works of art of the millions of crabs that inhabit it. They are curious little creatures, with one, oversized, yellow, red or white claw that they wave around at you as they retreat back into their burrows.

We have kayaked around some of islands, out into the open sea, and also right across the bay that shelters the town of Sinabang. It’s a nice perspective of the town; you can see the shiny, silver towers of Sinabang’s waterside mosques glittering in the sunshine and watch the bustling activity at the port.

Unfortunately, our long breakfasts on the balcony mean we often don’t get out on the water early enough, and by then the wind has sprung up and the clear, sunny day is already partially clouded over. The wind is what kills us. Particularly when we emerge from the shelter of the mangrove forest and out into the open channel, the wind picks up and makes it very difficult to go anywhere. It’s a little scary at times when the water is choppy, the wind is blowing you all over the place and you’re struggling to stay upright. I wouldn’t want to tip over in one of these things. They are great for calm conditions, but if you were to fall over, you couldn’t just do an Eskimo roll and right yourself. The kayak would fill with water and you’d be hard pressed to get it to move anywhere. They are a dead weight when they get water inside them!

We’ve been caught in downpours a few times, which hasn’t been a fun experience; battling waves and wind as well as rain! Especially when you’re constantly worried about whether you’ll tip over and whether you’ll be able to find your way back again. All the little coves and bays start to look the same after a while, and in heavy rain, it’s hard to make out the landmarks that were so trusty just a few minutes before…

We have quite a few big plans for our kayaking trips; following the coastline down to the popular beachside location of Ganting, which is about a half hour journey by road, to meet up with other, equally keen friends who are happy to share a mie goreng and then help us get back with their vehicles. Anna is keen to try to paddle out to Pulau Siumat, but it’s an hour by boat on the open sea and I’m not so keen! I think it would take us a lot longer than we think…

I have taken my kayak a bit further afield in the past when solo, carting it to various locations by car. There is a really beautiful spot on the south-eastern end of the island called Labuhan Bajau, which is a maze of waterways, islands, shallow mangrove forests and rocky outcrops. It’s also a good place to snorkel and swim, so a few friends have accompanied me there. I’ve launched the kayak from various port locations dotted around Sinabang, always to the curiosity of the locals sitting around on docked boats, hacking down bushy coastal land for timber, or just hanging by the waterside. Taking the kayaks up the little rivers is also great – providing you stay away from the toilets dotted along the more ‘urban’ rivers, and the wallowing buffaloes! The trees close in around you and you often disturb egrets and other wading birds foraging for their lunch.

It’s a really enjoyable way to experience Simeulue, and being out on the water, away from everything, when you’ve managed to rustle up a bit of speed and are gliding along with nothing behind you but the wind, is definitely one of my favourite ways to spend my time.

Bring back tennis!

I REALLY wish I could play tennis at the moment. Since being based in the field all week, I hardly get a chance to play any more. I’ve gone from playing around 5-6 times a week to not playing at all. It’s been raining a lot too, so on the rare occasion I am able to play, the weather prevents it. D’oh! Plus I hurt my right arm – I can’t serve the ball because my muscle is too sore … it’s like tennis elbow in my upper arm! So I have to rest for a while. NOT my favourite thing to do! I miss the exercise, the laughs and the company of the guys that usually play. Hopefully I will get back into it soon.

I’ve been trying to find ways to exercise in the field. From our base camp I can walk to the beach in about 15 minutes. I have to wade across a river to get to the beach, and there’s only one place you can do it – and only at low tide. The mouth of the river is quite wide, and really deep, so you can only walk along the beach on one side of the river! But it’s a good way to get some exercise after sitting in the office all day.

Fuck sit-ups and all that other crap. Give me interesting exercise! Maybe I should wander down the road and see if anyone wants to play volleyball or table-tennis in the dark.

Random adventures in Medan

And so I made it back to Medan in time to meet up with Penny and Ian, two workmates from Australia who were about to embark on a five week Sumatran adventure. Medan being the gateway to this beautiful island provided a timely location to catch up with them and to finally see some of Medan myself. I have been to Medan many times, but have never really had the time to ‘see the sights’ (some would argue there aren’t really any) as I’ve always been there in passing.

We spent quite a bit of time in Sun Plaza actually, surprise surprise! The ‘oasis in the desert’ as I like to call it. Airconditioned, clean and as fake as any western shopping centre, it provides expensive shopping and great people-watching. In between bouts of hot chocolates, perusing dvds (I now have two whole Simpsons series – 16 to go!) and testing out all the gym equipment, we cruised around on becaks (which turned out to be almost more fun than the destinations themselves due to the fact that we were four bules squeezed onto one!) to various parts of town.

We visited the Mesjid Raya, Medan’s largest and most beautiful mosque, the Istana Maimoon (royal palace), hit up the Pasar Patissa, the central market for clothes, shoes and other goods (which are always too small for big, tall bules like me), unsuccessfully tried to visit the North Sumatra museum and generally just enjoyed cruising around the place.

But the most disturbing part of our visit though was yet to come. I’d recently learned about a new attraction in Medan: the Rahmat Saleh Wildlife Museum. Sure, this was the usual sort of place I’d visit – if the animals were alive. But this was a taxidermy museum.

Well, it was an attraction nonetheless. Plus I’d been told by the yokels that it was quite a bizarre and kitschy place to visit.

So in we went. And it literally blew us away – pardon the pun. There were hundreds of stuffed animals inside that had suffered the same fate, at the hands of a famous Indonesian businessman, with a hunting fetish. Lions, tigers and bears – oh my! They were all in there. Elephants, giraffes, kangaroos, zebras, bison, komodo dragons, rhinos, wolves, crocodiles, a seemingly never-ending collection of birds; you name a living creature, particularly an endangered one, and it was in there. Even the poor old polar bear (no panda thank goodness, not sure how he escaped this horrible fate). And there were three floors of these poor creatures. I now know why Sumatran tigers are almost extinct – I think I counted about 25 of them in there. They even had one display with a whole family of the poor little critters.

We luckily got FREE entry to the ‘night safari’ exhibition of the museum (wow!), which was basically a dark room filled with all sorts of animals of the night (and the day, I must admit) that were illuminated as you walked along the path to the tunes of howling wolves and growling tigers. Not really sure why this is usually a part of the museum that you should pay extra for. Maybe it was the huge turkey that randomly held pride of place along the walkway. Ha! Better off on my dinner table on Christmas day.

And talk about an exercise in self-promotion! Framed newspaper clippings adorned the walls. There was a ‘trophy corner’ that showed off his prowess in other pursuits for darts, bowling and other random interests. You could buy his book. You could also read about the golf tournament he attended with three ex-US presidents.

The big five were proudly displayed in five big photographs, along with hundreds of others lining the walls showing off his, and his kids’ (poor bastards) “achievements”. Even more strangely were the photographs of Miss Worlds and Universes and Galaxies from various years, who had come to visit this morbid museum and had been presented with a book by the man himself. Our own Jennifer Hawkins featured proudly. Hehe.

It was horribly depressing, yet morbidly fascinating at the same time. Another disturbing thing was the “kids’ corner” which housed everything from mice to guinea pigs to frogs arranged in random dancing poses. What was also quite disturbing was the deformed goat and sheep with two heads. Someone must have donated them. Whoever they were, they were clearly disturbed as well. May have even had two heads of their own.

For more pics, go to:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43412&l=6f4f9&id=543196685

Welcome to the jungle!

Alternative title: LEECH LAND

Hooray for Idul Fitri! It’s the official end to Ramadan when everyone stops fasting and begins feasting. Sounds good to me. It’s only supposed to be three official public holidays, but because they fell on Monday, Thursday and Friday, we got the week off. Sweet!

I met up with Wendy, a lovely girl I’d met in Pulau Weh at the time of my last holiday, and randomly discovered that Robyn and Rob, two other friends I’d also made there, were also in town, so we met up for a lovely dinner and a few drinks. It was a nice reunion.

But then, the real part of my little holiday: off to Tangkahan. I was pleased to find that it was only listed in one of the two guidebooks I had – and not in the Lonely Planet – which meant that there wouldn’t be hordes of people there. I was also happy that I had some mates to accompany me – Sendhi, who I work with, and Wendy, a Canadian working in Medan – especially on the looooong bus trip there.

We made the trek out to Pinang Baris bus station in Medan, aiming to leave on the 10:30 bus, only to find that the 10:30 bus was actually the 10am bus, and we’d missed it. We got bored waiting around, even while perusing the local bakery’s fare of delicious goodies – and fair enough, as the next and only bus for the day wasn’t til 1pm – so we decided, at my urging, to jump on one of the many mini-buses to Binjai, an almost-suburb of Medan, and see what we could see. In the end, not much. But we had to wait somewhere, and waiting there was better than in Medan, where it was a lot more noisy and polluted.

Unfortunately it meant that by the time the 1pm bus rolled on by, it was packed. And so we stood in the aisle for a good hour or so before enough people disembarked and there were vacant seats. Nice one Jacqui! If we’d waited in Medan we would have got a seat for sure. The bus itself was a sight to behold – a big, rusty old clunker that looked like it had been side-swiped by about twenty cars, rendering the outside almost paint-less.

In the end the bus trip was around five hours. It wasn’t too unpleasant because the people on the bus were interesting, as was the scenery, particularly the further we travelled from the city. We ended up driving along a bumpy, muddy, ox-cart track through acres and acres of palm plantations – which was in itself disturbing, considering how much forest would have been cleared to plant them, and how the plantations went right up to the park boundary. And then we arrived at the end of the line: Tangkahan.

The village of Tangkahan is located right next to the Gunung Leuser National Park, amongst the plantations, but the bungalows and guesthouses for tourists are actually located inside the park, perched right on the edge of the beautiful river that divides protected land from farmed. A ferry transports you across the river to the guesthouses, from which we chose to stay at Mega Inn, a gorgeous little set of bungalows and a restaurant overlooking the river that are named after its owner. Mega had never heard of the English meaning of his name, and his broad smile grew even broader when we told him what it meant. Mega, his wife, and his two young partners in crime – Ucok and Preen – were awesome hosts, not to mention lots of fun.

So for the next four days we proceeded to relax, read books, make rock towers by the river, watch the monkeys in the trees, eat yummy food and drink ginger tea by the mugful. Our nights were taken up by singing and playing guitar with Ucok and Preen, and playing shithead (of course!). It was just what we needed – a nice break away from work in a beautiful, relaxing place.

We also decided to partake in the more adventurous activities that Tangkahan offered – one day which entailed riding elephants. Our two trusty steeds – Uni and Ardana – were amazing creatures, and while I’d ridden elephants once before, I’d forgotten just how beautiful they are. It’s amazing how well they can be trained to understand Basaha Indo commands and how they stoop right down to the ground to allow you to clamber up onto their backs.

At one point they became quite perturbed by something rustling in the forest, probably a monkey or pig, but we certainly didn’t see it! Apparently elephants can sense the presence of other animals from quite a distance. What was really amazing was the deep sound which reverberated through their bodies – it was like being inside a stationary car with the motor idling. They were clearly not happy, but after a bit of urging from our guides, continued on down the slippery path. Watching their ginormous feed plodding along, I wondered if they would ever slide down the steep slopes, but their sheer size and weight guaranteed our safety. Provided we hung on, that is! Getting a front seat – mahout style – was fun too, sitting on the neck of the elephant, with its leathery ears slapping your legs as they walk. Their skin is thick and leathery too, and quite scratchy due to the coarse hairs that cover it. You simply move your leg against their ear to instruct them which direction to turn.

We emerged from the forest to our now familiar river, where, in the rain, we helped to give the gentle giants their daily mandi. Scrubbing them down with brushes and water was my favourite part of the day – getting up close and personal with these beautiful beasts was really enjoyable. And they certainly enjoyed the scrub! The mahouts thought it was hilarious – and probably do every time – when after an offer of a shake of the trunk turned into a water fight after they instructed the elephants to give us numerous squirts of water! :)

We also did a short, one day trek through Gunung Leuser National Park. Ucok and Preen accompanied us on the trek, learning to become guides themselves, and of course undertaking the all important job of carrying delicious nasi goreng for our lunch. It was such a nice day out; we trekked through the beautiful jungle for three or four hours, where the diversity in plant life was amazing and the haunting sounds of the hornbills surrounded us.

Our other little guides were the constantly lurking and surprisingly fast-moving leeches – pacat in Bahasa Indonesian for the little suckers and linta for the big ones. We had both, weren’t we lucky? And could they suck blood! Wendy, who had come a little unprepared without her trekking boots, did her walking in flip flops – and paid the leechy price! But even I, who was wearing socks and shoes, still got attacked because the little buggers managed to make their way through my socks. Our feet were a bleeding mess by the time we reached the river to eat our lunch. The final straw for me was on return to my bungalow, when I noticed a spot of blood on my shirt. When I lifted it up I found one of the little buggers had made his way into my belly button and proceeded to attach himself there, sucking himself silly until he was big and bloated. Gross! I still have a little scar there to this day! Boo!!!

Sadly our jungle trekking finished, but that wasn’t it for the day. Our next destination: Oh-oh! A caaaave! A daaaarrrrk, gloooooomy cave! We can’t go over it….. we can’t go under it…. we’ll have to go…. through it! The cave was a twisting, turning maze of pathways leading to nowhere or to huge caverns that opened up in front of us. There were hundreds of bats perched on the ceilings of the main cavern, their little eyes twinkling in the torchlight, and they swooped us with glee as we picked our way along the tunnels. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when one came screaming down the tunnel and flew straight into the back of Wendy’s head! Didn’t help her claustrophobia either! The colour of the stone was also an unusual shade of orange, which I didn’t expect, and which didn’t show up under torchlight – it was only Wendy’s camera which exposed the true colour of the stone. Probably from the clay soil through which the rain leaches, and created the cave in the first place!

After we emerged from the cave, much to Wendy’s relief – and it had certainly been a task to even get her in there in the first place! – we jumped into the river and made our way over to some natural hot springs which bubbled out of the rock and had over time created a crevice, just big enough for 2 bules and 3 Indonesians to squeeze themselves inside. So we chilled out there for a while in the lovely warm water before deciding, finally, that tubing on the river was in order to get us home. It was hard to leave our steamy little oasis, and the water of the river seemed all the colder for it! But tubing was the perfect way to end our day of trekking; the river was surprisingly fast flowing, and before we knew it we were already back to Mega’s for another cup of ginger tea.

I really didn’t want to leave Tangkahan. And I’ll certainly be going back there again. Our next physical challenge is to conquer the four day trek between Tangkahan and Bukit Lawang. Providing we can conquer the leeches :)

Check out my photos from the trip: