The traveling bug comeith
Hold on to your desktops.... This may be a mighty long post...
Often when I think of teaching I think of that movie Mr. Hollands Opus and how Mr. Holland says something like he never thought his teachers hated to come to school as much as the students. Word. Anyway Mr. Holland becomes a great teacher while I um well I don't see it happening.
Anyway lets go away from teaching at the moment. I got back on Sarurday from a trip around Sumatra for 2 weeks which was pretty great. Becasue it was the end of Ramadan, school was out and pretty much the whole country was on vacation (ie bad time to travel).
So I wrote a quick almost non-exsistant post about orangutans, but come on, I can give better descriptions than that. You know those generic jungle noises (can't explain too much more, but I know you know what I mean) the jungle in Indo sounds just like that. And there are all sorts of vines you could prob swing from branch to branch just like Tarzan. And I saw these Thomas Leaf Monkey's that look just people pretending to be monkeys. I've never seen that so well exemplified in a monkey.
So this is in Bukit Lawang. Bukit Lawang had a flood 2 years ago which washed away most of the town and killed about 300 people. Although this was 2 years ago, looking around it looks more like 2 months ago. So much wreckage is still just lying around and the town still doesn't have power. The government started building homes for the people, but they are small and as of yet there's not enough for everyone which really is unacceptable after 2 years. So Bukit Lawang used to mainly subsist on tourism, but becasue most places don't have any power and there's not as much to do there, tourists don't stay there as long and the town is loosing more and more money. And because education is not free this sometimes leads to not enough money for school for children. So grr on that...
So in Bukit Lawang I went on a 2 day treck and ended up meeting a Dutch couple I traveled with for quite a while. Thats one thing I love about traveling you really learn not only about the place you are, but about the world. Know a lot about the Netherlands now.
Anyway after Bukit Lawang, me and my new dutch friends went to Berstagi to climb a volcano. If I was able to put photos on here I'd show you the photos of the top. Kinda reminds me of yellowstone with these sulfur smoke coming out of holes at the top. Anyway it was pretty cool.
Then it was off to Danua Toba, the largest lake in south east asia. So beautiful. Also thought it would be a good idea to rent a motor bike. Its that easy to rent one and they don't seem to care if you ever have before. Ya, so I was kinda like oh how hard coupld this be. Simple right to go the 43 km to the hot springs. Like 10 km in I fell on some evil gravel and scrapped my knee pretty bad. Kept going though, but I'll never try to ride a motor bike again. There was a time I thought of buying one. But no longer. I was so afraid of falling the rest of them time.
So because it was the end of Ramadan everyone was on vacation so it was harder to go anywhere. This said, for my trip from Paraphat to Bukittinggi (18 hours) the bus was sold out for several days so I had to get a stand by seat. So I ended up sitting on a stool in the asile of the bus the whole way. Certainly hard times. What made it worse was at 3am (after I'd been on the bs for 12 hours) someone asked to take my photo. People often want to take a photo with me becasue I'm white which I really find absurd especailly at 3am in the morning. Come on people.
So then on to Bukittinggi which I was nice, but really I expected a lot more from. So I went on a treck outside the city with my dutch friends again. The guide said it would be a simple walk, but really I should realize by now that there is no such thing as an easy jungle walk. The jungle is hard period. Near the end we had to walk down this steep revine down to a beautiful lake. The guide told us to put this cream on our legs for leaches. I put it on, clearly not knowing how pressing the issue was. When we got to the middle of the decent where we'd be spending the night, there was a complete leach party on my feet. You can't feel them, but its just icky to see this slug like thing sucking your blood (sorry if that was a bit too vivid). Anyway when you check the guest book at the place I stayed every message mentioned the leeches to some extent. Funny stuff.
So that was a few days ago and now I find myself back in Pekanbaru. Really wish I was still out there traveling. I suppose I'll get back out there soon enough.
Often when I think of teaching I think of that movie Mr. Hollands Opus and how Mr. Holland says something like he never thought his teachers hated to come to school as much as the students. Word. Anyway Mr. Holland becomes a great teacher while I um well I don't see it happening.
Anyway lets go away from teaching at the moment. I got back on Sarurday from a trip around Sumatra for 2 weeks which was pretty great. Becasue it was the end of Ramadan, school was out and pretty much the whole country was on vacation (ie bad time to travel).
So I wrote a quick almost non-exsistant post about orangutans, but come on, I can give better descriptions than that. You know those generic jungle noises (can't explain too much more, but I know you know what I mean) the jungle in Indo sounds just like that. And there are all sorts of vines you could prob swing from branch to branch just like Tarzan. And I saw these Thomas Leaf Monkey's that look just people pretending to be monkeys. I've never seen that so well exemplified in a monkey.
So this is in Bukit Lawang. Bukit Lawang had a flood 2 years ago which washed away most of the town and killed about 300 people. Although this was 2 years ago, looking around it looks more like 2 months ago. So much wreckage is still just lying around and the town still doesn't have power. The government started building homes for the people, but they are small and as of yet there's not enough for everyone which really is unacceptable after 2 years. So Bukit Lawang used to mainly subsist on tourism, but becasue most places don't have any power and there's not as much to do there, tourists don't stay there as long and the town is loosing more and more money. And because education is not free this sometimes leads to not enough money for school for children. So grr on that...
So in Bukit Lawang I went on a 2 day treck and ended up meeting a Dutch couple I traveled with for quite a while. Thats one thing I love about traveling you really learn not only about the place you are, but about the world. Know a lot about the Netherlands now.
Anyway after Bukit Lawang, me and my new dutch friends went to Berstagi to climb a volcano. If I was able to put photos on here I'd show you the photos of the top. Kinda reminds me of yellowstone with these sulfur smoke coming out of holes at the top. Anyway it was pretty cool.
Then it was off to Danua Toba, the largest lake in south east asia. So beautiful. Also thought it would be a good idea to rent a motor bike. Its that easy to rent one and they don't seem to care if you ever have before. Ya, so I was kinda like oh how hard coupld this be. Simple right to go the 43 km to the hot springs. Like 10 km in I fell on some evil gravel and scrapped my knee pretty bad. Kept going though, but I'll never try to ride a motor bike again. There was a time I thought of buying one. But no longer. I was so afraid of falling the rest of them time.
So because it was the end of Ramadan everyone was on vacation so it was harder to go anywhere. This said, for my trip from Paraphat to Bukittinggi (18 hours) the bus was sold out for several days so I had to get a stand by seat. So I ended up sitting on a stool in the asile of the bus the whole way. Certainly hard times. What made it worse was at 3am (after I'd been on the bs for 12 hours) someone asked to take my photo. People often want to take a photo with me becasue I'm white which I really find absurd especailly at 3am in the morning. Come on people.
So then on to Bukittinggi which I was nice, but really I expected a lot more from. So I went on a treck outside the city with my dutch friends again. The guide said it would be a simple walk, but really I should realize by now that there is no such thing as an easy jungle walk. The jungle is hard period. Near the end we had to walk down this steep revine down to a beautiful lake. The guide told us to put this cream on our legs for leaches. I put it on, clearly not knowing how pressing the issue was. When we got to the middle of the decent where we'd be spending the night, there was a complete leach party on my feet. You can't feel them, but its just icky to see this slug like thing sucking your blood (sorry if that was a bit too vivid). Anyway when you check the guest book at the place I stayed every message mentioned the leeches to some extent. Funny stuff.
So that was a few days ago and now I find myself back in Pekanbaru. Really wish I was still out there traveling. I suppose I'll get back out there soon enough.