I flopped into a chair and ordered a plate of nasi goreng and a bottle of Bintang, now running on empty and entirely on autopilot. The nasi goreng was to satiate my hunger, the beer to celebrate my having survived the Trans-Sumatra Highway; it was hot and humid even in the small hours,
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Orangutan means ‘man of the forest’ in the Malay and Indonesian languages. But where does the man of the forest go when the forest is gone? There are a number of places in Southeast Asia where you can see both the answer to this question and the reason it must be asked in the first place,
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We got off the ferry from Malaysia, cleared immigration, and made a mad dash across Medan (North Sumatra, Indonesia), just catching the last minivan to Bukit Lawang by the skin of our teeth.
This was one of those minivans where there are 12 seats but the driver’s taking however many people need a ride;
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When I first visited Southeast Asia in 2004 en route to Australia with my mate Danny, we’d had no real plan to visit Sumatra (or anywhere else in Indonesia). We flew in from India to Singapore, and were flying out from Bangkok to Australia via Brunei.
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