Day 8.
Had a solid sleep in our king size poster bed of amazingness. I woke to find that Dave had descended & re-ascended our 55 steep stairs to bring us morning cuppas. We drank them while listening to the call of the white gibbon. The wooaaa wooaaa was like a vibrato string from a violin that lasted for 20 minutes. Amazing.
Our main aim for today and for coming to Bukit Lawang was to go to the orphanage to chat with someone about Dave & I volunteering there for three months to teach English. We got there & met Saskia who we had met in 2010. She is a Dutch woman & the founder of the orphanage. She married an Indonesian man & lives there permanently. She did not know Rahmi or anything about her or anything about volunteers teaching English there. It didn’t happen! So after donating money to the orphanage, Dave & I left, feeling completely confused & figuring it must have all been some mis-communication.
While we were there, I took off my shoes to find a leech was latched onto the top of my foot. I let him stay there, filling up with blood. When he was full, he rolled off my foot & began to slither away fatly, with a full belly.
We jumped in a motorcycle becak to the market at the site of the bus terminal. We bought some fruit:
1kg of Duku for 13, 000 Rupiah ($1.30 Australian)
1kg of Salak for 10,000 Rupiah (AUS $1)
A hand of small bananas for 10,000 Rp
A bunch of Mangosteen for 10,000 Rp
& some pisang coklat goreng (fried bananas with chocolate). Seven pieces for 7,000Rp.
Dan had a mini turtle in his bathroom with a pointy snout. It was only a couple of centimetres long. I think he may have been a snapping turtle. We released him in Dan’s private waterfall pond. He instantly buried himself into the dirt & sand beneath the pebbles.
Our shower has sort of been fixed. We now have a trickle. I had 2 trickle showers in one hour. So hot today!
We watched a mini monkey migration. Macaques were coming from the steep jungle behind our room, jumping on our roof, down our wooden verandah poles. They ate remnants of the mango pips from the bin on our verandah. There were two mothers with tiny black babies holding onto their bellies as they jumped from our verandah onto the tin roof below us. Off they swung into the trees beyond.
Three rendangs & three bintangs was our dinner in a small restoran beside the art gallery. The friendly owner gave us Idul Fitri cookies to take home.
