about 2 hours (actually, 4-5 hours) outside Medan lies Bukit Lawang, the sanctuary of the orangutans.
Bukit Lawang is a beautiful riverside town situated atop a hil and is known as one of the few places left in the world where you can still see an orangutan in the wild.
The bus ride to Bukit Lawang from Medan was probably the worst travelling experience in my life.
After fighting my way through a bunch of touts offering me everything from weed to underage girls, i finally managed to find a bus heading to Bukit Lawang. The bus itself was in a sad state and looked more appropriate for a museum than on a road. The bus ride took about 4 1/2 hours and I don’t know whether it was the booming techno music in the background or the baby puking next to me, but i thought i was gonna die.
When i first got down in Bukit Lawang, i met a few locals who offered to show me a couple of places to stay. At first i was reluctant, but they offered to pay for my transport from the bus station to town, so what the hey – i guess some good can come out of touts. I ended up staying in a place called Garden Inn, it was a nice little place with a cozy restaurant where all the locals and travelers mingled. I met a guy who told me i reminded him of his son, which was a little weird, but he paid for my food, so i can’t really complain.
The number one seller in Bukit Lawang is the 2-day treks on offer by the locals. Although the treks are quite pricey, they are well worth it. I stayed in the jungle for two days with a nice czech couple and some locals. I managed to see a lot of animals in the wild and even had the chance to relive that cliché of everyone sitting around the fire and singing to a guitar.
The key thing to remember here is to shop around for the best prices, the 2-day treks go from as high as EU$200 to 250,000 Rp. So make sure you don’t get cornered in by any of the locals.
On what felt like the 4th or 5th day in Bukit Lawang, i headed out towards the bat caves, which is an underground passage beneath the jungle.
Once you enter the bat caves, you’ll be presented with some amazing rock formations and well – bats. There was one instance where i climbed into a small opening in the cave and a bat flew straight into my head and knocked me to the ground, i dropped my torchlight, so i was blinded for a couple of seconds before i managed to find my torchlight again. I shone up my torch light and the roof of the tunnel, which was less than 2 meters high, was covered in bats. Obviously, you can imagine me freaking out, because as soon as the light hit the bats on the roof, all of them got startled and started flying around like crazy taxi drivers from penang. i hugged the floor till the commotion died down and slowly crawled out of the tunnel. An australian guy was standing nearby the small opening of the tunnel and helped me out. But all in all, it was a pretty good day.
Bukit Lawang is an amazingly scenic and peaceful town, although the floods that occurred a couple of years back devastated the town and took it off the map as a tourist destination. However, it seems now that tourism is starting to pick up and sooner, rather than later it’ll be back to being one of the most popular tourist destinations is Sumatra.