A Time Out

Russ & I took another time out from work to go on R&R and holiday. No really, we do work - I just don't usually write posts on the blog about work, cause who wants to hear about payrolls, employment contracts and National staff health insurance issues?!?

This time, we decided to check out some uncharted areas for us on Sumatra.

First stop: Medan.

Medan is a city that looks beautiful to us when we come from Nias, but in reality, it's probably pretty dumpy. The two nights that we spent there looked a little like this:

• Starbucks
• Pizza Hut
• JCo Donuts (easily rivals Krispy Kreme's)
• BreadTalk (where you can find brown bread)
• Hypermart and Carrefour (where you can find cheese, yoghurt, guavas from Hawaii and some European chocolates)
• Baskin Robbins icecream
• Hotel room with a toilet, hot shower and satellite TV.

Second stop: Danau Toba

Danau Toba, or Lake Toba, is a lake that was created from a volcano. Apparently, it was the largest eruption on earth, occuring around 75,000 years ago, according to one source on the internet. Bottom line is that it is a beautiful place. The people there are called Batak and they actually beheaded the first ever missionaries that came to evangelise in the area - don't remember their names, but they were Canadian. The next missionaries to that area came from Germany and now the Batak people are a Christian group; with many traditional and not-necessarily-Christian beliefs or practices. But they're no longer beheading people.

Tuk-tuk, the town we stayed in on the Island of Samosir which is in Lake Toba, is a touristy place with very few tourists. What did our 6-night, 7 day stay in Tuk-tuk look like?

• Long walks around the town of Tuk-tuk
• Letting a high school group of Indonesians practice their English on us
• Shopping in the plethora of souvenir shops
• Eating yummy food in different restaurants each meal
• Renting a motorbike for about 6 dollars for the day including fuel (when we went to rent the bike all they asked is if we know how to drive it and advised us not to fall, because they don't have insurance on the bike) :)
• A lot of relaxing

These are the grounds of the hotel we stayed in (spent about 8 dollars a night for this one!):

Me talking on the phone to my mom

Traditional Batak-style roofing

Some boys showing off the carvings they're being trained to carve:

Beautiful lake view

Lake Toba was a treasure of a place to stay. The people provided some of the best customer service we've seen in Indonesia and the most hassle-free shopping we've experienced here.

Third stop: Bukit Lawang

Home of the Orangutans. Orangutan is actually an Indonesian name. Orang means person or people and hutan means jungle. So literally, Orangutans are "Jungle People". In Indonesia, Orangutans are found on the island of Borneo and Sumatra. I think they are worse off in Borneo, being killed at a rapid pace by the burning of the jungles. The jungle that we went to in Bukit Lawang has a rehabilitation centre for Orangutans that have been wrongly held captive by humans. But even in this area, since this part of the jungle was declared a National Park by the government in the 1970's, the majority of it has been chopped down to make way for rubber and palm oil plantations. It's really sad and hard to have hope for these amazing animals.

Because there is a rehabilitation centre here, we got to view a feeding of some of the Orangutans and then went on a 3-hour trek through the jungle in hopes of viewing some more. Here are some of the best pictures:

The baby in this picture is only 8 months old. The mother was just hanging out in that position for quite a while as the baby was climbing around it and on it. It was so confident in the branches! So cool to see!

Here are some other monkeys we saw in the jungle. They're called Thomas Leaf monkeys.

This is the view from the restaurant at our little hotel. We had a clear view of the jungle and often just saw orangutans, other monkeys and a Monitor Lizard, just as we were sitting there enjoying our drinks! It was such a beautiful place!

Last stop: Medan.

For more of what we did there, look back at stop number one.