Munene, the journey...

The day began with an elaborately laid breakfast at 9am. The camp opposite our own got visited by a famous orangutan, called Jackie and her young. So we went to check them out. Add caption We played in the water for some time, then we crossed the river a couple of times to the waterfall. The waterfall was beautiful, cool, refreshing. At the waterfall, I was crowned the Lord, King Raja himself by one of the guides. He made kingly garb from leaves and vines. We played some more in the water, and then went back to our campsite. We had a fruit snack, lunch and then broke camp. We rafted down the river to our hotel. It was loadsa fun. We competed with the other teams to get to the hotel. Having started last, our raft boat was able to make up for the lost time, and was leading at some time. In the end, we came second after a closely-fought battle with the leading team. We got back to our rooms, and I changed and I am here writing this post. We are supposed to prepare f...

Oil palm bunch This was zesty Tofu making in the background Rubber We began the day at 10 and Dede and Danny and his group showed us around the Bukit Lawang area and village. We saw many things Roof making from palm tree leaves Making of tofu Making of brown palm tree sugar Rubber plantations Rice plantations More importantly, we came in contact with leeches, and Julie got a bleed from one of them In the afternoon after lunch, we had a session with people from Orangutan Haven who explained to us about their works Afterwards, Kelly, a former student of the program last year (2017) explained about the Orangutan health project Self-medicating orangutans Use of their medicines for humans Parasite research Afterwards, Dede and Danny gave us a list of the things to bring to tomorrow's hike and day and night in the jungle. This place has a lot of monkeys, cheeky ones at that. They go throug...

We began the day at 9am. I woke up not feeling well still. I was queasy and weak. After breakfast, getting my laundry, we left the Aryaduta hotel to Manado airport. We checked in our bags and flew to Jakarta, where we had a two-hour layover. At the airport We caught our connecting flight to Kualanamu Airport, Medan, where a bus was waiting for us. Our guides Dede and Danny showed us to the bus, which then took us to Bukit Lawang on a 5-hour ride. During the journey, it rained and water got into the bus, and dripped on me while I slept. For a moment, I thought it was a creature and was horrified. We got to Bukit Lawang at 11.30pm, where the rain continued to pound. We crossed the infamous bridge in the torrential rain, got our rooms assigned and we chit chatted for a bit. I am rooming with Russell. Went to bed at 1am amid the rain.