Elephants and Ocean

I didn’t get enough jungle in Bukit Lawang, so after my ape-filled trek I took a motorbike down a long rough gravel road to a different village called Tangkahan. In Tangkahan I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to wash elephants! The elephant  that I was brushing is named Ooni, and she seemed to enjoy the scrub-down.

The villages located around the perimeter of the national parks, such as Tangkahan, have issues with wild elephants and apes leaving the park and eating the villagers' crops. To combat the issue, the government captured the problem elephants and trained them to do work. The elephants at Tangkahan are used to help patrol the park against illegal loggers and poachers.

Ooni the elephant is well trained, and helped rinse herself (and me) by shooting water out of her trunk. After the cleaning I was allowed to feed her bananas. She thanked me by shaking my hand and kissing me on the cheek!

I did a day hike in Tangkahan to get a sense of what the jungle is like away from the well-touristed Bukit Lawang area. It turns out that real wild animals are much harder to spot than the semi-wild ones in Bukit Lawang.

I did manage to glimpse one black gibbon high up in the trees. We also found a bat cave that was packed with bats. When I walked into the cave it stirred them up, and they were flying around everywhere.

Probably my favourite part of the hike was the wild elephant path that we followed through the dense jungle. The wild elephants seem to act as kind of bulldozers, making it easier for us to hike. My guide started to get nervous as the elephant tracks were getting fresher and fresher as we walked deeper into the jungle. While I wanted to see a wild elephant, he made it clear that he wasn’t comfortable with that at all. He claims that the wild elephants can be very aggressive towards people.

After feeling the size and power of elephants from washing Ooni, I can understand that facing off with an angry elephant would not be ideal. We did hear the wild elephant making trumpeting sounds a few times, but we purposefully avoided coming into contact with it.

Now I am in my final stop in Indonesia; at the very northern tip of Sumatra at an island just off the coast from the town of Banda Aceh. The island is a great place for diving and snorkeling.

I’m enjoying my picturesque bungalow, the delicious food, turquoise waters lined with living coral, and cheap prices.

Yesterday, after a much needed refresher course on my scuba diving skills, I took to the water with a group of other divers. We dove in two spots: the first was an underwater tugboat wreck not too far from the shore, and the other was to see underwater geothermal fissures.

The water is warm enough that I can dive without a wetsuit, but it was still nice to sit at the bottom of ocean and soak up the heat emanating from the ‘underwater volcano’.

Hopefully I’ll get a bunch more dives in here in Indonesia, and I might even get a chance to surf waves for a day or two before I fly back to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I really love Indonesia, and I already can’t wait to come back to this country in the future. Indonesia is huge, and I haven’t even explored most of the better known places – Bali, Gili Islands, Komodo Islands – for example. Not to mention all of the active volcanoes here. Indonesia is a traveler’s paradise.

Surfing West Java

There are lots of tourist attractions on Java Island, Indonesia’s most densely populated island, but I only came here to learn how to surf.

The travel guide book recommends a couple of beaches in West Java for surfing, so that is where I wentafter touching down in Jakarta a week and a half ago. I endured a noisy, rocking night bus ride to the beaches and where I met a teacher who offered to give me a ride to the hotels. The unwritten part of the deal was that I go to his school and meet his class and practice English with them. Not the easiest thing to do on almost no sleep, but rewarding all the same.

The beach I stayed at is called Pangandaran. Each night there were beautiful sunset surf sessions that I took part in. I stayed in Pangandaran for 5 days, surfing 4 of them.

On my rest day I took a stroll through the national park where monkeys and deer roam.

I also took out a scooter and drove it through the countryside to a quiet spot in the jungle where I went swimming beside some small waterfalls. There was a swarm of photographers taking pictures of a girl dressed up like an Indian, so I took my best paparazzi shot.

After four days of surfing at Pangandaran I was ready for a change of scenery, so I took a bus about an hour up the coast line to another surf spot called Batu Karas. I am very glad I did, because Batu Karas turns out to be the perfect spot for beginners. While the waves at Pangandaran are hard to paddle out to, inconsistent, and very tiring, Batu Karas is the opposite. The waves keep rolling in all day long, and the breaks are a nice consistent size and shape.

Everybody rocks longboards at Batu Karas and are very friendly and welcoming (even when I accidentally cut them off). By my last day surfing, I could catch the waves and ride them all the way in to shore. It was a ton of fun!

Now I’m in the airport in Jakarta again waiting for a flight to Indonesia’s larger but more remote island to the north-west called Sumatra. I can’t wait to see more of Indonesia.