Belanda Goreng

I'm back in the Netherlands, after two days of travelling over tarmac and through the air! My parents picked me up at the Düsseldorf airport, it was very nice to see them again and to be taken home by car. And there my cats were waiting, although they were a bit scared after one month of not seeing me.

I thought I would not be having that much news about the last day in the jungle, but there is some: I went to the monkey feeding (monkeys who cannot live in the forest all by them selves are being fed and hopefully reintroduced into wildlife). With another Dutch guy and an English girl, we were early and we were already brought over the river in the canoo by some boys. A ranger and his young daughter came too, and all of a sudden there appeared an orang utan. The little girl started screaming because the monkey came too close and took her bag. So the father tried to get the monkey away and to push it on the ground, like in a pub fight. But since orang utans are six times stronger than men, this did not work out quite well and the monkey bit the man, a part of his finger was off! We took the girl in a safe position and brought the man back to shore by canoo to visit a doctor. This was quite an experience. The feeding show afterwords was quite relaxed though. It appeares again that it is still about nature and wild life, and that we are interfering in it...
The evening I spent in the restaurant of my own hostel, singing and playing harmonica with a few guides who could play guitar very well (although they don't know much lyrics, they just sing "fake English"...). It was a very nice evening that went on late.


The next day it was time to leave Bukit Lawang. On the one hand, it was a pity because it was a great place with nice people and stunning nature, but on the other hand, I had enough of my hostel (a toilet with the shower above it leeking, to you were getting wet while visiting the toilet, and a very old and stinky mattress...) and most of my stuff was getting humid, laundry was not drying and my shoes were still wet. So time to leave... With two German guys, I took the bus back to Medan. I had plenty of time, so I spent the afternoon visiting a street with some old colonial buildings and a nice pub where they even sold saucijsebroodjes! On the airport, I had dinner and talked with a taxi driver, and then went to check in. But my plane to Singapore was one hour late, so I had to wait more.
Then, we flew to Singapore, transited to another plane and flew to Colombo and Dubai. We arrived there at 5.30 am and my plane to Düsseldorf would leave at 14.30, so I had plenty of time to visit the city. And I had prepared this by tellling the customs in Medan that I would like to check out in Dubai. At 8.45, after a nice breakfast and some reading (finally there were English newspapers again!) there came a tourist operator who could organise a city tour, so with some other tourists, they drove us through the city. It was amazing, we saw the artificial islands with the palm shapes, we saw the highest building in the world (800m!), we visited the beach near an extremely expensive hotel, a museum about ancient Dubai (city of pearl divers, traders and fishermen) and we visited a clothing and furniture store with carpets of about 25,000 Euro's! It was a very relaxed trip, although we drove around in an airconditioned car, and outside the car it was 46 degrees, that was hard! I could not imagine living there... Unfortunately my digital camera was full, so I only have analogue pictures of this trip.

And then it was time to leave for Düsseldorf - a great trip had come to an end. I'm very glad I did it, was sometimes shocked about the poverty, primitiveness and traffic (especially while driving the motorbike) but it is a great country with nice people and food and great nature and landscape! The title of this text is "Belanda goreng" which means "fried Netherlands". I never met people who tried to convince me of their religion, no Muslims, Buddhists, Hinduists or Christians, everyone was very nice and open minded. But especially on Sumatra, they did have criticism at the Dutch colonial time (therefore fried Netherlands) and of course they were right, although it's two generations ago as it stopped. At the 17th of August, Indonesia celebrated it's 63rd year of independence, which is a good thing I think...

Below you'll find some nice pictures of my trip, and some small movies (without sound)!

Bye, Jeroen


Amazing (sweaty) wildlife:
Like the bloom of a banana tree: and the Jati tree, which is called teak wood too:


Sumatran palm oil plantations, and the palm fruits being transported to the refinery

Pigeon run in Dieng

Carved cow skulls at Bali and the sudden end of a beach road...

You see loads of happy kids, but child labour too!

Scout's group on Java