One thing you have to do when you are in Sumatra is check out the orangutans of Bukit Lawang. We took the public bus to Bukit Lawang from Medan and were immediately pounced on by 3 guides. There are over 150 guides for this one small village and there is usually only 20 tourists at a time so competition is fierce! It was rather unfortunate that the guides have to follow a set price for treks because the price was ridiculous. It was something like 25 euros (Almost $55CDN) for each person to do a full day trek. This is probably the highest we have paid for something like this. Oh well, Joey and I really wanted to see our ginger haired friends of the jungle!
We set out early in the morning and the humidity was very high. We were sweating our skin off by the time we even got to the jungle's edge. The thing about humidity is that your sweat never goes away. I could tell this would be a long, but very exciting day. Our guides for the day were Eddie and Erwin. We also had a german and an austrailian couple on the trek. About 20 minutes in to the hike our group ran into our first orangutans. It was a female named Sassa and her male friend, who was absolutely massive. Most of the orangutans at this park have been part of the pet trade and are now in rehabilitation. Unfortunately being a pet or having so much contact with humans has made these monkeys reliant on people for food which causes them to become aggressive. After Sassa saw that we did not have any bananas for her she started to charge us. It was quite scary. What was the most upsetting about the situation was that our guides kept on going back and asking us if we wanted to take more pictures. We had already alienated Sassa and her mate enough. A few of us were getting upset especially when another treking group came by to take pictures.
They asked us one more time if we wanted to take more pictures and I pretty much said LETS LEAVE THEM ALONE. You pay high regulated prices for "licensed guides" but you can tell that the welfare of the animals in this rehabilitation forest isn't really respected. I was getting quite annoyed that we had bugged this monkey for more than 20 minutes and had put her life and our lives in danger. Really responsible guys. It certainly didn't set the mood for the rest of the trek. Especially for the Australian girl, Hannah, who had been attacked by wild monkeys in Vietnam. She was trying to overcome her fear, but being chased by a 40kg orangutan wasn't helping her any!
After our group got away from the madness it was a nice peaceful trek through the forest. We were lucky to see some cheeky monkeys, a group of macaques, one lone brown gibbon and 10 other orangutans. At one point we were taking a break on a log, when an orangutan named Jackie (who had a tiny tiny baby on her back) came over to Joey and sat on his lap and put her arm around him. She sat on his lap for a good 5 minutes. Joey started to feel a bit uneasy because this is a wild animal and she could kill him with her very strong hands or jaw. Luckily she was a gentle monkey and was just attracted to the kind nature of Joey.
Joey and I were really happy to have seen all those monkeys that day. Although our guides could have been better, the money was worth it to see these amazing creatures being protected in a forest where they can keep on being monkeys instead of pets.
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