BUKIT LAWANG - Finding Wild Orangutans in Sumatra

Good morning guys. We have just arrived to Bukit Lawang in North Sumatra. And for those of you that don't know, this is one of the only places in Indonesia and one of the only places in the world where you can see orangutans in the wild. That's what we're here to do. We're going to be here for the next few days exploring it. We have been invited here by Sumatra Eco Travel and we're staying in Sumatra Eco Travel cottages, which is right here. We literally just checked in. Really excited about this. This is like what I've always wanted to do in Sumatra. We're going on a full on jungle trek tomorrow and I'm going to show you every little bit of what we got up to. Okay. So this is Anton, our guide. Awesome man. I'm really excited. Amazing. Perfect. I can't wait. Amazing. We are checking in now. Oh great. So this is us. It's amazing. What do you think? It's a nice cottage. All of this for us. This is huge. Like look at this bed. It's just huge. We also have another bed up here, but I don't think we need to use it. Cool. This is so cool. Okay. This is an awesome place to stay, but actually I want the bulk of this video to be about our trek, which we're starting early tomorrow morning. So I'm going to finish this here and catch up with you in a few seconds. Good morning guys. It's 7am and we're getting ready to leave on the trek. I found out last night that I needed trousers. They did tell us that beforehand. I just didn't have any. And so we had to go buy the tourist trousers. Check it out. Wow. Look what I look like. Check it out. This is the, I'm 18 and just arrived in Thailand. I actually really like them though. It's so comfortable. Here's our breakfast spot. I think that's where we're going today. Ooh, very nice. We have our own private breakfast. Oh, we have a giant tub of coffee. Oh, that's amazing. That's what you want this morning. Yeah. This trip's looking good already. Wow. It's a feast. Thank you. Well, we need all of this because we're going to be walking for about six to seven hours today. We've been told we're going straight into the jungle after this. So first up we're crossing on this. I don't think he's managing. It looks hectic, but they're laughing. How are you feeling about this? First up. So this is the old orangutan center. Apparently as you can see it's completely run down and it looks pretty ominous, but we're just heading into the jungle. Okay. So they don't need the rehab center anymore. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Before we have the first year because the new, like a new man, like a from the village. Okay. From the human. Right. We've just been told that used to be the rehab center for orangutans, but they didn't need it anymore because the orangutans have now gone into nature and into the wild. So that's really cool. Like it used to be a feeding center, but now all the orangutans are just free in the jungle. By the way, it's up to if you want to like a group track like this with wildlife. Yeah. The front, because then you can see things before we make loads of noise. Your bandana looks kind of like a Santa's hat. This is a orangutan nest. Straight up. Fun fact. I just found out orangutans build a new nest every day. As soon as they're finished with their last nest and they slept in it the next day, they go and start foraging and building a new one. Cigarette, like a plastic, like a rubber band, like this, because it's not good for the orangutan baby. Like orangutan baby, they're still stupid. Yeah. Still like a two years or one years. No, no. Yeah. No, no. I understand. The thing like a chewing gum. That's why they're collecting and eating. So you're collecting rubbish, but not all of the companies. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. He said lemon. It's not painful. Okay. We've seen something. He's seen something. We have to be quiet. We have to move when the big one comes. You'll get out of dodge when she comes. That's the mom. She's coming towards us. Okay. That was when we run. Jesus. Like this close to the baby. They say back and you move. She's there. She's through the tree. She's still coming. You take photos of my baby. You pay. That was legit. Amazing. Like that is, I didn't actually expect us even to get that close. And we were like, I don't know, six feet away from the baby. But at one point I turned around and it was just swinging towards me. But now the mother's kind of got bored of us and chased us out. So you don't want to wait around really. When one of the big ones is coming towards you. That's so strong. So this is a termite highway. Our guide just tapped into it and look, I'm going to come out. Protein anyone? Oh, lovely. Spicy. Good. We just came around the corner and that was a pigtail macaque, by the way, which was really cool to see it. But the reason it was here is because one of the other tour groups, one of the guides was feeding it, which you're not meant to do. And the company we're with Sumatra EcoTravel wouldn't do that. And they were telling the other guides why you shouldn't do that, but they were feeding the monkey. And that's why I had all that fruit and why it sort of stuck around. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not the right thing to do. You shouldn't be feeding wildlife here because then they get dependent on it. And this company have a good reputation for being eco-conscious, whereas some of the other companies here do not. Apparently there are more orangutans. Well, I mean, there are like 7,000, but apparently there's some more here. It's steep now. Like I mentioned in the last video, this is also probably good training for the Great Wall. I've been doing the other running as well, but there's still up and downhill building up for the climb. So yeah, if you want to, of course, I'm still going to have it in the description. You can go and donate there and support me on that journey because training is still going. It's funny, we're having fruits right now as a snack. And then this monkey's come to investigate. Yeah. He's just like being coy about it, isn't he? Yeah. He's pretending he's not interested. He knows what he's doing. And we are back off again. That was the first part of it down. We've still got another few hours of walking ahead. This is properly slippy. There's another one up here, yes, but he's quite far away right now. Look at his faces. This is genuinely amazing. The orangutan is just there. She came right up to us. So many furs are just staring while she stares back. So cool how close we were. I can already see him sneaking up on people. Ribbon, give her. Look at his face. Looks like it's a cat. Best moment of the day. I think it's lunchtime. Oh yes. Yes it is. Good quick stop for lunch. And, um, yes. One of the nice things about trekking is that you really look forward to having a lunch and a feasting and then you're ready to go again. So I think we've just got another couple of hours until camp. This is really cool. About two hours later and we've made it to the camp. That was really steep on the way down. Actually, you can tell how much I'm sweating. That was a hard last hour coming down a really steep hill, but now check it out. This is going to be our camp and we can go swimming. Yeah, that was nice. That's so refreshing after that hike. The river's ice cold and there's a bit of a current on that side, but this side's good. So we'll just swim and refresh a bit in it. Perfect end to a great day. That really was, that was an awesome day. Okay. Nice. All right. This is us. Good morning. Breakfast time. Breakfast time. Thank you. That's very nice. Okay guys, we're being invaded. Right now I'm wading through the water. We just had a bit of a breakfast and woke up here in the jungle this morning. And now, it's a really nice sleep by the way with the jungle sounds around, but now we are on the way to a waterfall, which means we have to go through the river like this. By the looks of it, we're getting a rock. Thank you. Oh, that's cold. That is refreshing in the morning. That is absolutely freezing. I have no words. It wasn't so bad? It wasn't so bad, no. It was a bit scary in the beginning. But now it's good, and now the waterfall. That's very cool. The Thomas Leaf Monkey is one of the ones I wanted to see while we were here. I didn't bring my big camera. I just got the small one, so I can't get like really clear shots of it. But yeah, that's awesome. Another box ticked. I think they're only here in Sumatra. I think. I'm not sure. I know they're pretty individual to this part of the world. Oh, there we go. Lunch is served. We are about to go on this raft, but unfortunately I just tried my GoPro and it's not working for some reason. So I'm not sure how much footage we're going to get on the raft. I'm going to try, but we're about to get on it and go 30 minutes. 30 minutes down the river back towards camp. No, wait, this is camp. Back towards where we started at the beginning of this video. All right, we are back in the guest house. We started that now and feeling a bit more human-like after having a shower and freshening up. That tubing, by the way, that we just did at the end was really, really cool. It took us a six hour hike on the way there. We just came down the river in 30 minutes going through the rapids. The last two days have been great as well. Getting that close to orangutans and all of the other monkeys and everything else we got up to was fantastic. So I want to say a huge thank you to Sumatra Eco Travel for having us here for the last couple of days. If you are ever here in Bukit Lawang, then check them out because they're a great company. They offer other tours besides this and they are one of the most eco-conscious companies here as well that we've found. So massive thank you to them. Thank you guys for watching. We are actually leaving Sumatra tonight. I'm flying on to Bangkok and then Cambodia which I'll show you in the next video. But for now, thank you for watching and this is my life.