Swinging in Sumatra!!!

The ape kind that is! We flew in to Sumatra from Penang for a very short trip in which our only aim was to come into contact with the wild orangutans, something I've always wanted to do. The capital city, Medan, is definitely only a gateway and you would not go there for any other reason. It felt like India again, dirty, polluted and not a place to walk around as pavements were totally inaccessible. We did manage to get out for a Chinese dim sum meal though during our stopover there which was hilarious. Once again, the only Western faces in the restaurant with a menu written only in Chinese and Indonesian, with very little English spoken by the waiters and waitresses. They brought trays of dim sum to the table but couldn't explain to us what they were so choosing was pot luck. Luckily we chose well (apart from John's chicken or duck intenstines stuffed with some kind of fish - he still ate it all!) and felt very full after a few plates of these ... delicious.
Bukit Lawang was our destination for viewing orangutans as they have a rehabilitation centre at the entrance to the jungle. Our driver, Bibit, arrived 1 and a quarter hours early to collect us so it was all a bit of a rush getting out of our hotel room. The journey through many small villages in the countryside took just under 3 hours. Bukit Lawang is a very small village which was virtually swept away by heavy flooding in November 2003, approximately 250 locals and tourists died. A very sad time for the locals but means that almost all the village has been rebuilt in the past few years. A path leads up to the jungle entrance and orangutan rehab centre and this is where the tourist accommodation was situated, next to the fast flowing river. Fortunately for us it was the low season as the monsoon had started so there were very few tourists although this did reduce the chance of seeing the Orangs as they stay in their nests sheltering when it rains. We stayed at a gorgeous place, Jungle Inn, that was the closest to the entrance of the jungle and had views of it across the river from your room. The rooms were stunning, only 9 of them, but ours was huge with a four poster bed, mosquito net, balcony with hammock and downstairs Jungle (outdoor) bathroom, which the monkeys sometimes visit! You had to keep your windows and doors locked at all times in case of these unwanted visitors! The staff were lovely and so friendly.

Our jungle bathroom

The view from the jungle bathroom, sometimes the monkeys visit here!

The view across the river from the balcony.

The first day we decided to go tubing on the river, a favourite pastime of the locals. Our guide, Rahman, said we had two choices, we could go tubing with him and one other on some tubes that they would tie together with him at the front paddling and the other guide at the back. Alternatively we could go it alone and rent individual tubes but we had to make sure we got out before the dam drop off. We saw some tourists on the first option and it looked a bit tame to us so guess which option we went for...yes, you've guessed it we decided to go it alone! We checked out the fast flowing river and our exit point, rented our tubes and launched. Being slightly lighter than John I took off at some speed down the river straight towards the rapids, at some points I couldn't even see him. We got swirled around, dunked and drenched in the rapids and standing waves and when it was make or break to get out I was moving quicker than I would have liked so has to throw myself out as elegantly as I could and make for the river bank! The locals seemed amazed to see us on our own and waved, shouted and took pictures of us. Local celebrities once again!!!

Some of the locals tubing..just before we did the same minutes later.

A calm moment!

We woke up to rain the following morning for our Orangutan feeding platform visit and subsequent 3 hour trek further into the jungle with our guide. We were convinced we would see nothing as the Orangs don't come out in the rain. Luckily it cleared by the time we got moving but the river was quite fast flowing and the only way to get across was by a death trap boat attached to a cable above so you didn't completely get swept downstream... not sure what would have happened if we had capsized though, which seemed very likely at the time!

This poor waoman looked as shocked as me when she boated over a few minutes after us!

Obviously we made it across in one piece and made it up to the feeding platform just inside the jungle where the two rangers position themselves with milk and bananas and bang their pots and sticks to let the Orangs know it's time for breakfast. As it was the low season there were only 8 tourists, another bonus, and we stood about 5 metres away. We waited for about 20 mins and nothing happened so we were convinced that they weren't coming. Then, much to our delight, we saw trees swaying in the distance and they came swinging through the trees. There were two mothers with their babies and one male that came in all that morning. An amazing sight!

This naughty baby had just tried to steal the ranger's cap!

A male enjoying his milk.

There are two types of Orangutan in the jungle, semi-wild like these ones that have been saved by the centre, brought up and released. These are the ones that still come back to the feeding platform soemtimes twice a day but hopefully more and more they will go and find their own food. The other type is the completely wild and not so friendly Orangutan that lives in the jungle and finds its own food. We started our 3 hour trek further into the jungle to see if we could spot any of these next. Our guide advised us to tuck our trousers into our long socks to prevent leeches and as I saw some of these during the trek I was glad I had, no matter how unfashionable I looked!

Rahman was very informative, pointing out wildlife and the various plants along the way. We saw armies of ants (some of the ants were the biggest I have everseen!), hanging termite nests, a long legged spider and then  we saw another mother and baby Orangutan in their nest. There are plenty of other monkeys in the jungle too, macaques and gibbons and we saw some macaques close up who came down to eat some of the bananas we had. John fed one of them who became very indignant that he would not let go of the banana, see the video below, very funny!

The time flew by and before we knew it we were on the edge of the jungle, emerging into the adjacent rubber plantation when our guide spotted a completely wild Orangutan above us. This one appeared none too happy as we watched her wing through the trees. They are solitary creatures and move nests on a daily basis so we were extremely lucky to have spooted this one, unusually so close to the edge of the jungle.. and there was us thinking we had used all our luck up on our tiger spotting.!
We then headed off to the local Friday market to browse their produce before heading back to the Jungle Inn whilst also getting soaked to the skin in another monsoon downpour and having to shelter in a local shop.

The local market

Bukit lawang was an amazing place that is extremely relaxing, with the sound of the jungle and flowing river constantly surrounding you. The locals are very laid back and some of the most freindly people we have come across so far. I would recommend it to anyone as you could definitely get lost here for a while. Unfortunately for us we had a flight to catch the nexy morning, back to Kuala Lumpur. We both absolutely loved the experience and it is one that will stay with us for a long time. This is what I said I wanted to do for my birthday so definintely the best present I could have had!

The rest of Langkawi

I will finish off on Langkawi as we're leaving tomorrow to get the boat back to Penang before flying out the following day to Medan in Sumatra, Indonesia for a few days.
It's still boiling hot here and we took an Island hopping boat trip this morning which travelled through the islands.

We stopped at an Island where you can get off and walk 10 minutes to a lake called the lake of the pregnant maiden -you are supposed to swim in it and drink it!!!  We did the swimming and I'm sure I ingested a little - will find this out tomorrow probably when I become ill!!!

I think I was drowning John in the lake at this point to stay afloat!

Next stop was an area where there were hundreds of eagles flying overhead. Beautiful birds soaring above us, quite an amazing sight.

last stop was an island with a beach to swim on. This would have been lovely apart from the other 50 boat loads of people there and the fact that the island seemed to be infested with hairy caterpillars!! We spent our hour in the water hiding from the sun and the caterpillars.

Hiding from the sun and those hairy caterpillars!

The trip was OK but definitely could have been much better. Langkawi has been a little disappointing to us both. We've been to lots of amazing places in the world and this was probably one of the worst in terms of what tourism seems to be doing. The scenery and surroundings they have are wonderful but not so great when there are so many other toursists all doing the same thing and dropping their rubbish in the clear blue waters! I actually saw someone drop litter from a boat straight into the sea...shocking! It would be much better if you could hire a sea kayak and explore the islands yourself in peace rather than only 3 trips being offered at every single tourist outlet and everyone being taken to the same toursity island at the same time! Apart from the rock sliding it hasn't lived up to our expectations or compared to many other places we've been. Sad but true...it could do better.

Langkawi - a taste of what's to come...

Langkawi is a holiday island off the North West coast of Malaysia, very close to Thailand.It's made up of 99 small islands and is very tropical with some beach resorts and jungle in the interior.
Arrived in Langkawi by boat from Penang yesterday and this is what we did today! Yes mum, we hired another moped and yes we both had helmets again! We managed to get round the whole island on our little moped and even made a few stops along the way. We stopped at the cable car but the queue was massive so gave it a miss and headed for the Seven wells falls instead. This is a huge waterfall with lots of rockpools on the way down - well seven! It was a steep hike up to them so we were glad to dive in when we arrived. the rock were so slippy between the pools that you can use them as natural slides. the last time we did this was in Oz ten years ago - remember Sarah!? It was fantastic fun and we spent quite a bit of time here. John even managed to video his ride as you can see.
We visited another waterfall later on but it asn't nearly as fun so just took a few pics and continued our ride round the Island, stopping off on the way to admire the view.


Tomorrow we're off on a boat trip island hopping so we'll update

you all on this later!



One of the smaller slides and pools

The big one...that the video shows!

This was a lovely photo until we both tried to get our camera back of the nice man...
and couldn't actually climb out, it was so slippery, he found this all very amusing!



Glad we didn't accidently slide over the waterfall!



The view from the black sand beach on the North coast

Penang

After hot footing it out of the hill we managed to jump on a train to Butterworth in Northern Malaysia. also the gateway to the islands of Penang and Langkawi. Imagine our disappointment when we got to the train station and asked for a ticket and he said, 'Sorry the train is full...you can only travel by first class!!!' Hooray!!!
We got to Butterworth late and took the ferry to Georgetown in Penang. Georgetown is one of the most colonial places in Malaysia. We walked through the town and admired the architecture again. It's also a place with very diverse races and cultures mixed in together. Muslim, Chinese and British expats all under one roof. The result of this is - lots of tasty and delicious food! Again imagine our disappointment!
We visited restaurants, hawker stalls and food courts and I think my stomach has grown to twice the size!

You can visit places like these as the only Western faces and...

eat delicious food like this!...Chicken foot broth anyone?? (John's lunch I hasten to add!)

 We hired a moped for two days to explore the island and yes mum, this time we both had helmets! On the first day we travelled further South, visited a temple with the hugest statue, the snake temple with its resident snake farm and the war museum.

The 4m angry cobra which the Chinese handler kept hitting!!! Aaaghh!

The war museum was based at the fortress that was built by the British in the 1930's and was taken over by the Japanese in 1941. They then used it as a POW camp and tortured and murdered many people there. It was really interesting and the bunker systems and gun emplacements were almost identical to those in Jersey.

John emerging from the escape shaft.

A pitch black tunnel within a tunnel complex in case of air attack.
John had to go round first to make sure there were no bats!

Gun emplacement similar to Jersey.

On the second day we headed North towards the beach, visited the Spice farm and then relaxed on the beach.

Fraser's hill

We took a train from KL to the colonial hill station of Fraser's hill. This was a bit of a mistake we realised when we got there. Unfortunately Lonely Planet didn't quite tell the whole story!  Like the fact that it was a quiter hill station than Cameron seemed to equate to 'ghost town' and they also forgot to mention that the pass up to the hill has separate up and down times which resulted in us being stuck for half an hour waiting for an up time!  The hotels were like swiss chalets and it rained for most of the time we were there. It was a lot cooler however and this provided some relief. Our hotel and the town reminded us very much of 'The shining!' So needless to say we stayed one night and left in a hurry the next afternoon!
We did manage a short walk around the hill and partly through the jungle and this was what we found...

A very unfriendly looking tortoise!

Who just wanted to cross the road.

The Malaysian adventure begins in Kuala Lumpur ... luxury at last!

So we moved on from the laid back Indian South via a plane into the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. What a difference and a welcome one at that after more than a month in India and Nepal. KL is a clean, modern and organised city and luckily we'd booked ourselves into 4* little bit of luxury hotel as a treat. We really appreciated this for a few days to get us back on track. The city is fairly compact and you can more or less walk anywhere you need to, so on the first full day we got up late and walked... a long way. We went up the KL tower, which is a sky tower really, about the 5th highest in the world I think. A great view over the entire city.



The view of the Petronas towers

We then tried to do a walking tour from our guidebook around Chinatown but kept getting a  bit lost and did our own thing in the end!  Amazing architecture on the way, with a good mixture of colonial, art deco and very modern skyscrapers.

Colonial

Art deco

Modern skyscraper

We went back to Chinatown in the evening, when it comes alive, for food and shopping. There are fantastic food courts and hawker stalls in Malaysia with a huge choice and it's all so clean and tasty. The shopping was great, very cheap and I would recommend it as a definite shopping holiday - just make sure you bring an empty suitcase or alternatively buy yourself a cheap Louis Vuitton one when you are here!

Cockles being barbecued



Chinatown Food court



We also took a trip one day out to the Forest reserve, just outside the city where you can do a walk through the jungle...very tiring uphill, to a canopy walk. It's a 150m long and about 30m above the ground. John wasn't that keen with his vertigo but did it anyway!

John overcoming his vertigo!

Me looking nervous!

 

John of the jungle!

We spent our time in KL catching up on sleep, relaxing, eating and drinking basically!

KL at night

Reflections on India

We both thought it would be a good idea to sum up our time in India. It's the most unusual place I've ever been to and a country of huge diversity and contradictions. They seem to be a world within a world to be honest, almost completely separate from the rest of the world with their own unique way of doing things. One thing we do miss now that we are not there is the people. They were so friendly and as much as they do hassle you constantly (usually for money in some form; begging, to buy something, take you somewhere, tuk tuk ride etc) they are genuinely interested in you and hugely proud of their country and culture.
Religion plays a massive part in the country and in everyday life. It is part of the national identity and is interwoven into everything. Shrines and temples on every corner and street, people stopping to pray as they go about their daily business, the food, the animals. It's also not just one religion, it's a mixture of Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism side by side.
The transport, roads and general driving skills were perhaps the most fascinating and amazing thing. There are no road rules whatsoever and if they do exist nobody follows them. Everybody on the road are the most impatient drivers in the world and they make us much noise as they can. In addition to that there are never any street signs and nobody seems to know where anything is ... very frustrating when you're tired and just want to go straight to your hotel but it takes twice as long because your driver has no idea and stops to ask everybody they can for directions! By the end of the trip we were hardly batting an eyelid at some of the things we saw using the road, in our time there we saw the following using the road along with us: cars, lorries, motorbikes (often with a whole family on), bicycles, autorickshaws (with an entire cricket team in at one point!), bicycle rickshaws, hand carts, donkeys, horses, cows, goats, chickens, camels and dogs!!!! Amazing! Usually he idea is to get as many people on everything as possible we gathered and weave in and out, hoot and get out of the way or be run over!
The food was incredible, even though we decided to be 95% vegetarian while we were there (unless we were certain the place was clean!), which was easy to achieve in India as the Vegetarian food is delicious and there's so much choice.
We've never encountered a country that has so much beurocracy and red tape for the sake of it. If they can create more jobs for more people and ensure that everything is hugely difficult for you and long winded they will. You get used to this very quickly and learn a huge amount of patience. There are books and ledgers for everything and it all has to be written down and recorded. To sort a train ticket you learn to put aside a couple of hours! In addition to this one of the contradictions is that the people themselves have no patience when they are driving or when they are queuing. If you don't push to the front and make yourself known then you don't get served! It's every man for himself!
In summary the country may have been absolutely filthy, chaotic, noisy and hot but it was also colourful, friendly, interesting... well just incredible really. It's almost addictive and there is something very appealing about it all. We will definitely be back.

Malaysia

We have now moved onto the next chapter of our adventure - Malaysia. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur and will update you on this soon. We are moving North tomorrow by train, stopping at a few places on our way to langkawi, so you may have to wait until Langkawi for the next exciting installment....

Some lazy beach time in Varkala

We chose to go to Varkala because Lonely planet promised that it was still very much underdeveloped in comparison to the much more popular Goa and Kovalam beaches. At last Lonely planet delivered and it was well and truly the right choice. Varkala has a few beaches along the coast and the beachside village is perched on a clifftop above the beaches. I'm sure in a few years these places may well have fallen into the sea they are so close! We found a lovely hotel with a decent sized room that felt like 5* in comparison to the hole we had stayed in the previous night.
This was a proper holiday destination with very little to do - again a welcome relief after the chaos of the North. Our days went something like this:  wake up when we felt like it, have breakfast, relax for a bit, head down to the beach (a couple of hours was enough in this heat!) for some sunbathing and sea fun, stop somewhere for lunch, browse the shops, have a nap, go out for dinner and bed. It was absolute bliss! Another on the list to revisit for a holiday again in the future. I even managed to get out for a few runs, although running in this heat is also a whole new experience and a sweaty one at that! The locals found it all very amusing and I had to find the energy to wave a lot throughout, hard work!
One day we decided to get off our lazy backsides and hire a motorbike to go exploring up and down the coast. As the motorbiking is John's baby I'll let him explain this bit to you all.

I insisted that as we were in India the only bike we could possibly hire would have to be a Royal Enfield Bullet 350. The bike was delivered and I looked over it and remembered that the gears were on the right hand side and the rear brake was on the left, exactly opposite to normal! To make life even more difficult, on going for test ride, I found it was one up four down i.e. complete opposite again! The bike wasn't in a great state but seemed to work and we decided it made more authentic. No helmets were provided either and we were told they weren't needed!!! We cruised up the coast in the morning, after getting used to the Indians driving and nearly getting killed by a Tuk tuk driver who pulled out on us. As we sailed towards it I braked and we didn't really seem to stop. Dave Truscotts voice repeated "They are called death traps John" over in my head as I realised I was braking with the gear lever. Luckily I managed to steer around it as the front brake was as useful as an ashtray on said motorbike!! We found a fisherman's village on a gorgeous beach. We stopped for a while for a sunbathe as we were the only visitors there and it was largely deserted. There was a nice 2-3 foot wave coming in with dangerous rips and shore break - not one for Karen to swim in but I had a splash.

 

Fisherman's beach



Us on our Enfield about to leave the beach


  

We gave our sore backsides a break for lunch and then headed out again later to explore the Coast south of Varkala. We spent a couple of hours riding through tracks and small villages following the coast and stopped at another totally deserted beach which went on for miles.

Steve McQueen poses at the deserted beach

The happy couple, more relaxed than ever!

It was like being celebrities, everywhere we went people shouted, waved, ran after us and wanted us to stop. They obviously don't see many Westerners in this part of town!  Either that or they'd heard of our arrival! It was a great way to get closer to the locals, much better than a car or organised tour. We needed to get the bike back before dark as cows roam around the roads and are hard to see as they are black and don't have lights!

We ended up staying in Varkala for 6 nights and could easily have stayed longer if we didn't have a flight already booked. An amazing place!

Sunset at Varkala