The Wobble

Aceh is a name that should be familiar to every person on the planet. Ground zero for the 2004 tsunami, even before that it was notorious for a 30 year civil war that left 30,000 people dead in various clashes between local rebels disgruntled at jakartas exploitation of their natural resources and its total lack of any kind of reciprocal investment. The achenese see themselves as different from the rest of indonesia. Its ironic that it took the tsunami to make both sides see the err of their ways, the state is now at peace.

Given its turbulent history I was a little apprehensive visiting the place, though I was never not going to go given that I was so close. The bus trip from medan was 13 hours, another over nighter but this one wasn’t too bad. The road followed the coast mostly so was flat and straight. After the stop for morning prayers, I sat up and with interest looked out to see the damage that the tsunami wreaked. The wave that struck Bande Aceh was 35 metres in height when it hit land. 35 metres!!! Try and get your head around that, thats bigger than the gpo in dublin, hitting land at high speed. Its no wonder the place got wrecked, there is maybe one or two buildings here and there thats over 4 years old. There are ships abandoned miles in land, carried in by the wave. To give you some idea of the toll this city, roughly the size of cork, took there are 2 mass graves in the city with over 30,000 bodies in each. I spoke to one guy at the bus stop who said 44 members of his family perished that morning, Indonesians tend to exaggerate their family sizes to include friends and neighbours but even that taken into account leaves you with a phenomenal number of people that you know, just gone!! Those numbers are phenomenal, not since the US dropped the atom bomb have so many people died instantaneously. Rightfully it moved the world so much that the fund raising efforts to help these people rebuild their lives was unprecedented. Individual and collective empathy raised more cash that the governments of the world were willing to contribute. I was very interested to see how this money was being spent, I recently read naomi kleins book on disaster economics and she highlighted the corruption of government officials in tsunami hit zones – pocketing alot of the money intended for poor fisher men or orphaned children. I have to say that I was impressed by what I saw, it really is a town getting on its feet. Its lively and the people are as nice as anywhere I’ve been. There are some buildings or institutions (Mcdonalds, burger king, pizza hut) which are unnecessary, surely the money would be better spent building more houses, more schools, cleaning up the mess thats left behind. I only passed through the town twice, not staying over night so my impressions are pretty limited.

My main destination for the week was the island of Pulau Weh, an island famed for its coral gardens and its relaxed lifestyle. Not a bad place to spend my last week in asia I reckoned. The boat over takes a little over an hour, I chose the little fishing village of ibioah to stay, recommended by an indonesian lady on the boat. A taxi to the village is expensive but because there are so few tourists here I had to foot the bill or face being stranded at the port. The island is mountainous and surprisingly big. The trip to ibioah took the guts of an hour over a fairly comical excuse for a road inhabitated by the strangest looking monkeys I have seen yet. I got out of the taxi in the village and stood around looking like a plum when someone asked me if I wanted a place to stay. That someone stood in a small fishing boat, I nodded and before I knew it I was in the boat coasting around the bay trying to keep my bags from getting wet.

The trip was short enough,I was welcomed at the pier by the lady I had met on the boat. Some questions immediately sprung to mind – what the hell was she doing there and how the hell did she get here so quick. Now the first one is easily answered, she owned the place. The second one I am still scratching my head about, answers on a postcard please. She showed me to the rooms. Now when I say rooms, these things are individual wooden bungalows on stilts standing on the sea, the water was pure turquoise. The stuff you see in travel agent brochures. Not a beach to speak off but it will do nonetheless. Up with the hammock and out with the snorkel.

I must have swam 40 miles in the 6 days I spent there. The underwater action was superb, on my last day I happened upon a turtle out for his lunch. Swam with him for an hour, allowing the currents to take us all over the place. The sea is peculiar in these parts, the currents always seem to land you in the same spot, they will take you off for a mile or so and then it turns and land you back where you started.

Now I have a little something I need to get off my chest. I hate divers!! There bam I said it. And not just cristiano ronaldo or pippo inzagi either. I mean the people who dive in the deep sea. They are fascist arseholes, I hate to use the word hate but I hate them. They are so cliquey, ignorant and full of their own self importance. Pulaw Weh is full of them. One guy in particular got up my nose, from the second I stepped into the communal area he made up his mind not to like me, he kept his back turned to me and wouldn’t reply to a single thing I said. It was actually funny to be honest. I was happy enough to have my time to myself, swinging on the hammock over the gorgeous bay or swimming with my new turtle friends. I flew through a couple of books, with my 15kg check in limit date looming it was a necessary exercise!!

One more thing that annoyed me about this place was the locals ignorance for the rarest of jewels they had right on their door step,  the tsunami cleared away absolutely everything on the coast including rubbish – it gave the survivors a clean slate with regards to a new environment. The coral garden underwater for some reason survived the onslaught, others in the province were destroyed, but the locals just throw away their rubbish into the sea, they have no problem sinking concrete wells into the coral garden so that they can build an ugly concrete and steel structure in the beautiful bay. So many times myself or the nice italian guy who was there chastised the workers in our resort after they flicked another cigarette out in the sea or when they threw a plastic bottle out the front window just because it was empty. I think its a lack of education that has them this way but if they keep going the way they are going it will only be a matter of time before the place is abandoned by the fish aswell as the tourists. Its a pity as its picture perfect from afar, with a little planning and some counter refuse system it would stay that way.

I had to be out of the country by sunday because my visa was up and they don’t take too kindly to people overstaying their welcome here, so I headed off the island early friday morning. Back to Banda Aceh where I had hoped to grab a direct flight to KL but the bleeding thing was sold out and the next flight was tuesday, I had only heard off the flight during the week otherwise I would have booked it at the start of the month. So I was left with two ways to get back to medan, 1 hour flight or 14 hour bus. Sounds like a no brainer right? Wrong, the airline running the route were called SMAC airlines, now I am not a superstitious guy but I am not stupid either. The bus it was. In medan I spent a thoroughly unremarkable 2 days before I grabbed my flight – there are some beautiful mosques in the town but little else other than loud non moving traffic and pollution to see in the place. Off to KL on the sunday where I had a couple of days to shop for cold weather clothes and oooh sort out the tiny problem that is that my Australian work visa is no longer valid….

ciao ciao

Phil

I’m not sure if many of the people that I know have heard of bukitt lawang, to be honest before I even stepped foot in sumatra I would have not have had a clue about the place. Its an amazing place though and somewhere that is definitely worth a visit if you do find yourself in this part of the world. The main reason why people do come here is to get a glimpse of the Orang Utang, a magnificent creature that is teetering on the brink of extinction. Its natural habitat, the rain forest is being eaten away at year after year by careless logging and it is simply killing these creatures. Fortunately the government have started to set  up more and more national parks to offer them some sort of safe refuge but it could very well be a case of too little too late.

Like alot of other places in sumatra, Bukit Lawang is no stranger to human tragedy either. It is a very small town, 2000 people or there abouts live there. It is situated deep into the sumatran rainforest by the side of a really stunning river valley. Over the years either by artificial or natural means a natural dam built itself up someway upstream from the town. People it seemed weren’t aware of this phenomenon, this ignorance proved terribly fatal a couple of years ago. The wood from the dam rotted, weakened and eventually gave way sending a torrent of water down the valley at a ferocious rate. Some people I spoke to, still deeply traumatised by the event speak of seeing the water come down the valley, they hadn’t enough time to react. 280 people perished in that instant, the town was wiped out. It was a shocking blow. The indonesian government in fairness to them seem to have put their backs to the wheel in helping the locals rebuilt their tragic town. A new village has been build on higher ground away from the river, more money has been pumped into the local tourist trade. There are dozens of guest houses here, the tourist infrastructure is the best I have seen in the entire country, all they are missing is the tourists to come in and fill the rooms.

I arrived as I have said before a tattered mess, I took up residence in Noras Homestay. The two dutch girls I was with in Padang recommended the place very highly, its a 10 muinute walk from the Orang Utang Reserve and situated right on the river bank, so close the sound of the river is deafening. Its a very easy sound to be lazy to. From your hammock you can interrupt your book to stare at the trees high up past the river and watch gibbons fly from tree to tree, you could hear the makawks fight over just about everything – it was like having the national geographic in 3-d in the comfort of your living room. Apart from a couple of trips up to watch the Orang Utangs get their daily feed from the local rangers I did feck all in that town. The food and lodgings itself are lovely so I had a great time just hanging out. If one was inclined you could head into the jungle for a trek and some rafting, there is also the stoner favourite activity of tubing whereby you rent out the blown up inner tube of a tractor and float downstream to the next town where you simply jump on the next bus to Bukitt. All n all it takes about 3 hours, but even that seemed too much like work for me. I did get off my arse one day to check out the local caves – much like ailwee caves in clare they contain some stunning natural rock formations with the addtion of a couple of thousand bats, with the odd look outside to the jungle it really was a spectacular setting. Though I happened to find myself there at the same time as a massive group of school girls, I spent more time posing for photos, signing autographs and giving out my email than looking at the bloody cave. The girls here are so incredibly cheeky and friendly, its impossible to say no to them.

As I have said I did interupt my lying about to go visit the orange haired orang utangs. A five minute walk up past noras homestay along by the river bank takes you to a bend of the river where there is a canoe tied to an over head wire which transports you from yourside to the reservation on the other. My first time there I arrived a little early so I had time to take in the beautiful setting, the land rises sharply and greenly on both sides giving away occasionally to some wonderful waterfalls. Waiting there we got our first glimpse of the apes when the recent mother came down to collect some bananas and milk for her cub. I’m not sure whether the feeding of these animals is the best thing, it makes them dependent on humans and therefore unable to adapt to the wild but people who know more about these matters than I run the place so I bow to their superior knowledge on the matter. Once you cross you pay and entrance fee then make your way up hill for about 20 minutes right into the jungle to the main feeding centre which is just a clearing in the trees. You know you are there as the trail virtually stops dead. You wait there for a while but it is not long before 5 or 6 of the orang utangs arrive for their free feed. One guy in particular is massive, he would tear you apart no bother. It was more interesting though to observed the ones high up in the trees, they sat there looking at you as if they are scoping you out. I was unfortunate enough to be beside this most annoying of tourists, he was a master at stating the obvious. When the ranger handed out a banana he would say ‘He is feeding them a banana mr phil’,No Shit Sherlock – ‘Look it is peeling the banana’, ‘Look it is eating the banana’ and so on.

Unfortunately my time in sumatra is running short, 1 month is a ridiculously short time to give as a visa so I must beat my retreat from Bukitt Lawang, I have 8 days left and Aceh looms to the north of the island. I will go there next to finish off my sumatran adventure..

Adios again,

Phil

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