In the jungle

After our idyllic stay at Danau Toba, we headed up north to Bukit Lawang, a "small tourist village at the bank of Bahorok River in North Sumatra" (wiki) to do a jungle trek. 

#1 Rainforest - A simple home-stay run by the lovely Nora.

#2 Delicious watermelon juice to wean off the heat.

#3 A fast flowing Bahorok River right next to our backyard!

#4 Chrysanthemum in bloom

#5 'Lobby' at Nora's.

#6 These colourful paintings are for sale

#7 A friendly feline at Nora's; turned out that one of my travel companions is scared to death of them.

We did 2-day-1-night trek with some local guides at Gunung Leuser National Park (where an orang utan sanctuary is located) in the hope that we'd be able to catch a glimpse of our shy, red-haired cousins. 

#8 Didn't have to wait too long for our first sighting. 

#9 Was quite excited to spot such a colourful snake in the wild

#10 And another orang utan. They appeared to be doing quite well in the sanctuary; we came across quite a number of them during our trek.

#11 Gibbon, mohawk style.

#12

#13 Soft-shelled turtle. This is one funny-looking fellow who'd swim upstream furiously when it smells/detects food in the water.

#14 Heading for lunch

#15 Our friendly guides preparing fruits and lunch; loved how they arranged the oranges and pineapples.

#16 Lunch by a stream; a well-needed break to catch my breath. 

#17 2-in-1 :)

#18 Love the way the baby is clinging on to the mother's body

We ended half a day of trekking at a campsite where some more guides were already preparing our dinner. We took a dip in the cool waters of a nearby waterfall to wash off all that sweat from our bodies, and also, to be honest, get out of the ways of our guides who were busy cooking.

#19 Friendly monitor lizard who stopped by

#20 Dinner in the making.

#21 'Million star hotel'; our sleeping quarters for the night. 

#22 Masak masak toy cups from which we had some hot tea before dinner was served

#23 One of the few simple and delicious dishes that was served; this should be tempeh

#24

#25 Chicken curry

It rained briefly later in the evening, so we played Shithead and some other card games to pass the time, and I spotted my very first fireflies much later in the night too. Next morning, we woke up to find some unexpected visitors...

#26 Some very naughty macaques decided to pay us a visit 

#27 They must be pretty used to having visitors in the forests since they were totally not shy at all

#28 That's our clothesline btw.

I decided to take a rubber raft back to our home-stay, and we walked for about 30 minutes to reach the starting point of the raft ride. Along the way, we had to wade through hip-deep water with strong under currents to get across to the other side of the river; that was quite an experience.

#29 Some of the most beautiful butterflies that I've seen

#30 Chanced upon them as we made our way to the raft ride start; they remind me of butterfly magnets that Mumsy used to buy for our fridge some 15 over years ago. 

#31 The place where we got on to our rubber rafts. It was a 30-minute ride back to Nora's, and I'm glad that I went for it because it's such a different experience from the trek.

This should be the second time I did a trek while on holiday and though it got really tiring at times, looking at these pictures and recalling all the funny episodes that took place while we were getting badly bitten by the commando mosquitoes in the rainforest, I suppose I might just do something like that again in the future?

Today marks a year since I got back from Medan; I remember meeting up with KH straight after landing in Hong Kong on CNY eve so that we could visit a CNY night market. I had my first 麥芽餅 that night, and called Mumsy to wish her a prosperous new year when the clock struck 12 midnight; it's amazing how quickly time flew past and a year is over just like that. 

And that... sort of sums up this long-overdue entry.