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North Sumatra - May 2016

Medan

It was a short flight from Penang to Medan and soon we were forcing our way through the crowds looking for a local bus to take us into the city. Luckily we found one with two seats spare. It took an hour to reach the city where we were dropped off at Medan Fair Plaza. Nick sorted out a SIM card and we took a walk through the deserted back streets to our guest house which was next to Sun Plaza. There wasn’t a great deal to do in the city but the locals were very friendly and everyone wanted to stop and talk to us. We worked out that the fruit bats in cages on the side of the road were actually going to be eaten! Poor things! On our last day in the city we found Medan Vegetarian, an amazing vegetarian style buffet owned by a friendly family.

Bukit Lawang

From our guest house in Medan we had to take a taxi to the outskirts of the city where we caught a minibus to Bukit Lawang. It took a long time to argue the price of a trip and of course, being foreigners they tried to rip us off. The roads in Sumatra are in a very poor state and the drive there was a bit hectic. I was so pleased to climb out of the ancient minibus! We were greeted by a friendly guy who walked us through the village to our guest house where we settled into our nice room overlooking the river. While we were here we went for a days trek in the jungle where we spotted 10 wild orangutan, ate lunch in the jungle surrounded by baboons and monkeys and took a ride on a raft back to the guest house. We took a walk to the bat cave which took us through the jungle and up some steep rocks.. We would have stayed here a lot longer if we had time.

Berastagi

Instead of taking a local bus we booked a tourist bus which is basically a minivan with aircon. It was a much nicer ride and we could actually stop for a break! Google maps had the location and the name of our guest house wrong so it took a long time to find it! It was a small property overlooking the mountains and the town below. There was an amazing fruit market in the middle of town and for some reason the locals wanted to take pictures with us all the time. It was like being a celebrity! We took a trek from town to the summit of the volcano and back and covered 21km in 5 hours! At the top of the volcano was a lake and smoking craters surrounded by neon yellow sulphur deposits. The views from the top of the volcano were breathtaking!