Bukit Lawang, Sumatra

The Stanleys and I were in a hurry to leave Medan so I spent a lot of money and got a private car to pick us up and take us to Bukit Lawang.

Click for the full map

On the way, we drove past a lot of Palm Trees. Companies are cutting down the jungle to grow palm trees so they can make palm oil. Maybe you can do some research and find out what happens to the animals when their homes are cut down or burnt so palm trees can be grown. You could also do some research to find out what palm oil is used for. I think you will be surprised how many different foods and products it is used in.

Palm trees

Bukit Lawang is a small village on the edge of the Gunung Lesuser National Park.

Click to see Bukit Lawang

The view from our room

Breakfast time visitors.
One cheeky monkey even ran across the table in front of me.

Here are some of the sights I saw when I was trekking:

A Viper that had been relocated from the village

When I went on a jungle trek, I saw 8 Orangutans; 3 rehabilitated females, each with a baby and 2 wild males.

Orangutans get rehabilitated and released into back into the jungle if they have been kept as pets (which is now illegal) or injured. Bukit Lawang used to have a feeding station where the rehabilitated Orangutans could come twice a day for food if they were unable to forage for enough in the jungle. The people running the feeding station kept the food boring to encourage to Orangutans to fend for themselves.

Long Tail Monkeys (Macaque)

You can see the cuts villages have made to collect rubber.

Fruit snack in the jungle

Picnic lunch
Rice, vegetables, fish, noodles and rice crackers

This guy was attached to the back of my shoulder. It had a good feed of my blood but it still looks hungry.

Termites

Bukit Lawang Village.

The locals swim, wash themselves and their clothes in the river.

Tourists from other places in Indonesia come to go rafting on the river in rubber tubes.

My 'Jungle Taxi' that carried me through the rapids back to the village.
It was made of a large tube tied together with two smaller tubes.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The Stanleys and I stayed in Chinatown, in Kuala Lumpur for the first 3 nights. Pentaling Street is in the center of Chinatown. It is a flea market where they sell lots of different things like watches, handbags, shoes, souvinairs, food and so much more. Most places around Kuala Lumpur don't open until 10 or 11am. Stall holders start setting up their stalls from about 10am and then from about 5pm even more stalls are opened down the middle of the street.

The metal boxes are more stalls being put out for the night time crowds.

Fruit stall

My favourite stall on Pentaling Street. It sells so many different types of fruit all cut up and ready to eat.

Photos from other areas of Chinatown

There is lots of places to buy food on the side of the road. There are inside restaurants like we have in New Zealand but there are more outside restaurants.

Barbeque fish

Some of the restaurants cook your food to order from a menu and others are buffet style where the food is cooked and you choose what you want.

The meat section of the local market.

A road in Chinatown

Brickfields (Little India), Kuala Lumpur

After Chinatown the Stanleys and I moved closer to KL Sentral and stayed in Little India which is also known as Brickfields.

We took a train into Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC).

There are lots of shopping malls, hotels, office buildings and a park.

The Petronas Towers, at 88 storeys, were the tallest buildings in the world until the end of 2004. They are still the tallest twin buildings in the world.  The skybridge (the bridge between them) is 2 storeys high and is at levels 41 and 42.

There are lots of different companies working out of the towers and there is a shopping mall and an aquarium under the towers.

There were less motorbikes and more cars in Kuala Lumpur, compared to Bali.

Time To Go Home Stanley

On the 18th of April I posted another Stanley back to Lake Tekapo.

The Post Office

In you get Stanley

I had to push a button on a machine to get a number and when my number was called I was allowed to go to the counter.

Bye Stanley!

Bali to Malaysia

Click for interactive map



The Stanly's and I left Bali from Ngurah Rai Airport and flew to Malaysia. Our destination was Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. There are so many planes flying into Kuala Lumpur, they have built a second airport. The Stanleys and I landed at KLIA2 and then we caught a train into the city. It took 50 minutes and we were going at speeds of up to 160km per hour.

The north coast of Bali

Blue = KLIA2, Red = KL Sentral, Green = Chinatown

Click for interactive map of Kuala Lumpur

From KL Sentral which is the main train station we took another train to Pasar Seni, the train station in Chinatown, which only took 10 minutes.

Looking out the train window on the way into Kuala Lumpur