Let’s take a moment to recap. We left Lake Toba happy and relaxed. We had a terrifying van ride to Bukit Lawang. Now we were in the rain forest and would be seeing orangutans. Oh, rain forests are super hot and humid and the trees block wind. Still, orangutans! Happy days!
Wrong. Sad days. After going over the options we had made downpayments for, we were shown to our room. This was one of the things that I was most excited about here. We were in a treetop bungalow with amazing views of the rainforest. To get there, we had to climb a couple flights of steep, uneven stone stairs and then climb an even steeper small wooden staircase to reach our deck. On the deck were two old, rickety chairs, a small table, an ash tray, and an old hammock. Ando drew back the bolt from our door and welcomed us into our home for the next 10 days. The bed was about 4 and a half feet long and had a hanging mosquito net over it. Ando went through the room with a flashlight to make sure nothing dangerous had gotten into the room while it was unused. There was a wooden shelf for us to leave our things off the ground. The bathroom had a heavy door with a bolt because the bathroom was open to the elements and monkeys would get in there. Oh, we had to have the windows and door shut during the morning, evening, and night because monkeys would get in. On that positive note, Ando said goodnight and left. We would meet with him the next morning at 10:30 to go over our plans for our time there.
As April and I got ready for bed, I steeled myself and told her that I did not want to spend 10 days here. Everyone we had talked to, including Ando, had been surprised that we would spend so much time in Bukit Lawang. Now I understood. It’s not a place you go to relax. We agreed that we would stay in Bukit Lawang for a few days and then head to Kuala Lumpur early. We crawled into bed, tried to get the mosquito net back into place, and April fell asleep. That’s one of her super powers, falling asleep anywhere she wants. I lay there in bed secure in the knowledge that I would not be sleeping at all. The hanging mosquito net was loose enough to reach the mattress but not long enough to reach the floor. It draped enough onto the bed that we lost at least 3 or 4 inches off each side of the mattress. This does not sound like much, but when you are six feet tall and 6 inches of your 4 and a half foot bed are taken away by mosquito net, that’s not nothing. Then there’s the fact that if you sleep against the mosquito net, mosquitos can land on the net and still get to you. So I couldn’t stretch out, I had to constantly make sure I wasn’t laying where the mosquito net was resting against me, and the air was so hot, humid, and still. And April just lay there beside me sleeping peacefully. Again, her superpower. The only time she was woken up was when what I assume was an entire troop of monkeys got into a fight on our tin roof.
I stood the stifling environment for an hour before finally rolling over and poking April.
“Hey, I need you to wake up for a minute.”
She did, because she’s nice like that.
“I don’t think I can spend four days here. I can pretty much tell you that I won’t be sleeping tonight at all and I don’t see that changing while we are here. I’m sorry.”
We talked for a while about our options and then April said the best thing she could have said.
“Let’s just leave tomorrow morning and go to Kuala Lumpur early.”
With that decided, she was back to sleep. I spent the rest of the night reading “Iron Dawn”, a book about the Monitor and Merrimack. Every time they talked about how hot it got inside the ships, all I could do was nod.
I woke April up just before sunrise so that we could get packed and ready. We would need to find a ride from Bukit Lawang to Medan, although I was hopeful that there would be a shuttle directly to the airport so that we didn’t have to find a taxi in Medan for that part of the trip. We made it downstairs to the desk by 7, when they were supposed to be open. We had to wait until about 7:30 when the hotel crew started waking up. By this time, we had already booked a flight from Medan to Kuala Lumpur (thank you AirAsia for such cheap flights) and emailed the Majestic Hotel in Kuala Lumpur to ask if we could show up 9 days early.
When the first guy showed up behind the counter, I told him that we needed to catch a shuttle to the airport.
Artist’s rendering
He picked up the phone and called one of the local cab companies. There was a long conversation before he hung up and told us that they weren’t going to make the run today but that now they would. We paid him 380,000 rupiah (about $28) for the seats and then sat down to wait. One of the hotel staff approached us and asked if wanted to have breakfast since we had about 45 minutes before we had to walk to the taxi stand. We ordered some food and began to eat with gusto when it arrived. We had not had dinner the night before and would probably not be eating another meal that day. About halfway through the meal, I was startled by a loud bang right beside me. A monkey had launched itself off of a power line about 10 feet away and landed on the counter beside me. He grabbed a piece of toast off of my plate and scooted back a few steps. I stared at him a bit stunned. Then he reached out and got a handful of my jam.
“No, monkey!”
Apparently talking sternly to monkeys is not effective. When I reached for the dish the jam was in, the monkey fled. I pulled my food closer and wrote the jam off as lost. Another monkey joined the thief on the power line and stared at us. I ate the rest of my meal hunched over my plate in case either of them felt lucky again. They didn’t. April, meanwhile, had a great time laughing at my admonishing of the monkey.
A person from the taxi company showed up on time to lead us to the stand. We shouldered our packs and followed him out into the concrete jungle that is the guesthouses, shops, and restaurants nestled in the middle of a real jungle. We picked up a mother/son duo from another guesthouse on the way. We had a steep flight of more uneven concrete stairs to climb on our way. There was a single railing and the mother, whose right arm was in a cast, clung to that railing for dear life. Some local carrying large loads of something were coming down the stairs and we all had to move (including the injured mother). Then we had to scramble back across the staircase because another batch of locals hauling 30 foot bamboo poles came down the stairs. On motorbikes. When I stepped back across the steps, only the toes of my right foot made it onto the step and I slipped. I caught myself on the next step and didn’t fall, but as I landed I felt an intense tearing pain in my foot.
My poor tibial sesamoid.
Now for a little history. I broke my tibial sesamoid bone in my right foot in Feburary of 2015. I spent a year hoping it would get better and it didn’t. Four months ago, I had surgery on my foot to remove the bone as it had started to disintegrate (avascular necrosis, in case you want to look it up). The scar from my surgery is practically invisible, so I didn’t think that tore open. My fear was that I had torn something in my foot but I couldn’t stop because the group was pulling further ahead of me. I scrambled to catch up and limped with them the rest of the way to the taxi. It sucked. It was only afterwards that I realized how lucky I had been. If I had done this to my foot while out in the middle of the rainforest, I’m not sure I could have made it back.
While waiting for the taxi, we found out that the mother with the broken arm had broken both bones in her forearm falling down the steps at their guesthouse. Great. They were taking a van to Lake Toba and we told them that they would really enjoy it there. Far fewer steps to worry about. Our van ended up carrying April and I plus a guy from the UK. The trip was pretty uneventful and the driver didn’t seem to have a death wish.
At the airport, we had to wait a few hours before we could check in for our flight. While there, I heard back from the Majestic Hotel in Kuala Lumpur that they were looking forward to us arriving tonight and, if we wanted, we could take advantage of a special upgrade opportunity to turn our normal room into a suite in the Colonial Wing. It would include butler service, breakfast (either at their award-winning breakfast buffet or in the room), complimentary access to the minibar, complimentary laundry service, complimentary afternoon tea and snacks, and complimentary evening cocktails and snacks. We talked about it for a few minutes, did the math, and decided, “Screw it, let’s do this.” Sure, it would cost WAY more than we had planned to spend anywhere on our honeymoon but this was our honeymoon.
Indonesia is a bit humid.
Our flight to Kuala Lumpur was quick. There was meal service on the 45 minutes flight, which we did not purchase. We were up in the air for five minutes when meal service started, people had about 20 minutes to eat, and then it got picked up again. From the KL airport, we walked downstairs to the train station and took an express train to KL Sentral. The Majestic Hotel operates a shuttle from Sentral every 30 minutes and we had just missed one. We sat on a bench outside the station and were approached by exactly one cab driver. He politely asked if we needed a cab. When we said no, he walked away and that was that. The shuttle arrived a bit early and we were off to the Majestic Hotel. Like the last post, I’m going to stop this one a bit early. The Majestic is amazing and it deserves at least one post all on its own. We were about to spend two weeks on vacation, not traveling, and it would be glorious.