TRAVELS WITH MY TEXT BOOKS 7

A year goes by very quickly. I remember thinking when I first arrived in Indonesia that the year I had there would feel very long, but when I was about six months through my contract, it was more the case that I didn't have enough time. I suddenly found myself in my last week of teaching. My older students were used to this routine - schedules changed and contracts ended so the fluctuation of teachers was not unknown to them. The younger students were unsettled and more likely to protest and this was the case particularly with one class I had begun from the most basic level when I first arrived. While they were shouting at me various motivations to remain in Indonesia (not that I needed convincing) I couldn't say very much to soothe them except to complement them on how far their English had progressed. It was an extremely emotional week and very hard to say goodbye to many of my classes and the staff in the office, all of which had made my time in Indonesia so memorable and enjoyable.

Thankfully, to cheer me up from joining the ranks of the unemployed and an inevitable return to arctic England, I had arranged to go to Sumatra with a friend, Felicity. Sumatra is a vast island west of Java, probably most famous for national parks which house thousands of orang-utans. The first stop on our adventure was Medan, which left both of us feeling extremely glad that we lived in Jakarta. Medan is a big, dirty city with very little to do or see; the type when you feel you need to wash your face after you've stepped outside due to the vast amount of dust that gets blasted in your face just from walking along the road. Of course, given the state of the hotel we stayed in, we also felt we needed to wash after sleeping in the bedbug-infested bed...if it weren't for the state of the bathroom, which had some extremely unsanitary marks strewn across the walls. The locals there were also extremely pushy and if you're trying to take any mode of transport, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by six people shouting completely useless information at you whilst blocking your peripheral vision. This not only applies when you're trying to hail a taxi but also at the bus station where they try to insist that there actually isn't a ticket office. They then encircle you so that you can't escape and find it.

We were extremely glad to escape to Bukit Lawang, a jungle village three hours bus journey north of Medan. After negotiating an extremely questionable bridge, we installed ourselves in a guesthouse and went to explore the local bat caves with some guides who had taken residence in a nearby cafe. I made the presumption that since they didn't say anything about my attire, it was suitable for exploring the caves. However, I rapidly discovered a valuable lesson; bat caves do not mix well with skirts and flipflops. A vast amount of our exploration involved scrambling and jumping over rocks with a fairly intimidating drop below or squeezing ourselves through tiny passageways in the dark. I also learnt that the smell of bats permeates through clothes and is surprisingly hard to get rid of.

That aside, the guides who showed us the caves were extremely knowledgeable and friendly and we decided to book an overnight jungle trek with them, in the hope of seeing orang-utans in the wild. We set out early the next morning and our expectations were not disappointed as we managed to see four orang-utans, one of which was only a few metres away. The trek itself was beautiful and we scrambled up and down the mountains admiring the scenery, bribed by the collection of delicious fresh fruit in our guides' backpacks. We were lucky enough not to encounter an orang-utan known to the locals as Meaner, whose name originated because she habitually chased trekking groups around until they fed her. A friend had not only pre-warned us of her existence, but had also added the reassuring details that not only had he been a personal victim of Meaner and she had tried to bite him, she was also pregnant, which had made her hormonal and more aggressive than normal.

We set up camp late in the afternoon by a river bend and spent the rest of the day stretching out our sore limbs and swimming. Several other groups were camping near us and we gathered on blankets to eat a delicious meal cooked over a fire. After some rousing card games and dozens of puzzles involving matchsticks (which seemed to confirm my suspicions that most of these guides were so bored that they had nothing to do but invent puzzles involving matchsticks), the guides offered us all massages. Although massages in Jakarta cost next to nothing, we couldn't resist the offer of anything free. However, in my case, I soon realised that this was a dire mistake and had to undergo almost two hours of complete torture. It was somewhat akin to being attacked by a cheek squeezing aunt or an aggressive and slightly frisky lobster. It's been quite a while since I've nearly reflex kicked someone or had to shuffle so violently northwards away from wandering digits. This includes the time that I went home physically bruised. It was quite a relief when I was finally left alone to sleep and the effort of subtly inching away during the massage had left me so exhausted that I fell asleep instantly, despite lying on a piece of canvas on some very uncomfortable rocks...

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