One of the reasons we had decided to go to Sumatra was the pristine rain forest you can find there. The rain forest in Sumatra is some of the best in the world and the wildlife is varied and not to be found many other places.

The best way to see it is to do a trek but since we didn't have enough time to make it worthwhile to go to Gurung Leuseng National Park we went to the small, rather touristy town of Bukit Lawang. Bukit Lawang is famous as the village where the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center is located. At the Center orangutans rescued from abusive owners are sent and rehabilitated so they can return to the wild. The process is a long one and so twice a day there is a feeding at the Center where tourists can go and see the orangutans who can't quite make it on their own yet.

We didn't go to the center but rather took a two day, one night trek to experience the jungle and to try and see some of the wildlife.

We trekked with three other couples making 10 people all together. The other couples were from Holland, Austria and South Africa and it was interesting to talk to them while hiking.

The trek was so-so. There is a maze of trails behind the Rehabilitation Center and we walked along almost all of them until we had seen about 5 orangutans. There were two sets of mothers with their young babies. Probably however they were all animals that were not wild and still dependent on the Center. Still it was amazing to see such interesting animals living and swinging in the trees.

After seeing "enough" orangutans we headed a little deeper into the forest towards our camp. The trail was right along the edge of the national park and a disappointing thing was that just across the park border people were cutting down the trees with noisy chain saws. It was a little sad to think that still rain forests are being destroyed.

We came to our camp, right along the river, and stayed for the night. All ten of the tourists were crammed into one long plastic covered shelter. There was hardly enough room to lay shoulder to shoulder ten across!!

Then next day we took a small hike in the area around the camp and the rafted back to Bukit Lawang. The rafting was good fun in spite of the fact that one of the guides had trouble controlling his oar and struck both Jon and Deb on the head.

After getting back to town we took a bus back to Medan where we stayed one more night before catching the ferry on to Malaysia (and soon on to Thailand).