Parapat to Bukit Lawang

The rainy season: wet. Beautiful and lush, but wet. As I write this post, the rain is streaming past our window in Bukit Lawang—the site of a major flood that killed over 300 people on 2 November 2003 in a village no larger than 300 people now.

Bukit Lawang is one of the few places in the world where one can see wild orang-utans—our red-headed cousins. But I wont blog about that. No, that is for Claire in the next post. Instead, I will blog about how we got to Bukit Lawang from Parapat: starting in Tuk Tuk, then onto Medan before hitting orang-utan central.

Tuk Tuk

Mist rolling down the thick forested hills, a cool air. We arrived in Parapat early morning. Taking a small public boat, we motored across Lake Toba to Tuk Tuk on the island of Samosir—we spent three nights there, exploring the island and swimming in the clean, volcanic waters.

We stayed at the Carolina Hotel with its thatched roofs, water problems, and slow but friendly customer service. Nestled against the lake, the hotel was homely—especially compared to our 40-plus hour bus experience from Palembang to Parapat!

The first day we explored Tuk Tuk. Small tourist shops selling Batak carvings and paintings, and renting bikes and fishing gear, and eateries offering a range of pizzas, were all the rage in the small village. We swam in the lake, enjoyed the slow but free wifi of Carolina, and listened to a local band warm up for a gig playing Tracey Chapman and U2 covers.

The next day we tried our hand at bike riding, again. Heading north around the island, we cycled 19km to Simanindo and back. Along the way we stopped at a Batak site previously used for sacrifices and ate at a vegan cafe come Buddhist sanctuary. We passed rice fields, mango and corn plantations, kids playing soccer, and many carp fish farms dotted along the coast. Claire even saw her first ‘wild’ snake scurry off the road after being woken from its afternoon sun bake.

Tired, sore, and wet from the rain that pelted us on our way back to Tuk Tuk, we had an early night; off to Medan the next day.

Medan to Bukit Lawang

Checking out of Carolina, we took the boat back to Parapat and a public bus to Medan—the largest city in Sumatra. We spent one night in Medan before heading to Bukit Lawang.

The bus trip to Medan was eventful. About five minutes in, the bus was involved in a minor nose-to-tail crash on the small, windy and congested road to Medan. The bus was the lead vehicle, but was followed closely by a mini-van and several large coal trucks. It stopped to allow an oncoming bus passed a tight bend. The mini-van stopped ok, but two of the trucks did not. Luckily no one was injured so we carried on our way.

Then about two hours in the bus got a flat tire—not that uncommon in developing countries like Indonesia where assets and infrastructure are pushed beyond capacity. The bus staff worked tirelessly to fix the problem, while—in the usual Indonesian way—the men on the bus sat beside the road watching the action, smoking. That was 30 minutes wasted!

Arriving at Medan’s Amplas bus terminal, we took a small opelet—mini public bus—to central Medan. We stayed only that night at the cheap and clean Residence Hotel. The next morning we did a spot of shopping at the Sun Plasa to replace a shirt that I had lost earlier in our trip before taking the public bus to Bukit Lawang.

This 3 hour bus trip was an experience also, but for different reasons. After leaving the sprawling suburbs of Medan behind, the bus quickly entered into rural Sumatra as we headed west towards the Gunung Leuser National Park and Bukit Lawang. But along the way we passed plantation upon plantation of rubber and palm oil trees.

A semi-symbiotic relationship, the palm oil plantation owners grow the palms—which have a 10 to 15 year life span—while the locals graze their cattle underneath, apparently at little or no charge. This relationship sounds promising until you hear about how the plantations came to be.

Sumatra, like Borneo, is a major producer of rubber and palm oil. And like Borneo, Sumatra producers these products at great cost to the environment and lives. To plant these trees, pristine rain forests are cleared and habitats destroyed in the short term and landslides and devastating floods caused in the long term. The fertility of the soil is permanently retarded.

As noted above, Bukit Lawang was hit by a flood in 2003 that killed over 300 people. One of the causes—palm oil plantations.

The problem with these plantations is that they offer little to no resistance to large build-ups of water, which are common during the rainy season. Rain forests are thick, with long established root systems that hold the soil in place and drink their fair share of water. Palm oil plantations are not, and struggle to soak up a thing. And as a result, the plantations can only watch as the water cascades down hills into tributaries that turn into crusading rivers—as was seen in Bukit Lawang when the Sungai Boharok (river) burst its banks in 2003.

Anyway, like I said, the bus ride was an experience.

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Well, that gets us to Bukit Lawang. Claire’s up next.

Love to all,

xxx