One of the best overseas seas experiences I have never had was visiting an orang-utan rehabilitation centre on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.
I was travelling overland between Singapore and Thailand back in 1991 when one of my travelling companions suggested this as a side trip.
It was a pretty big side trip and took a lot longer than what I was expecting but at the time I was in no hurry just backing and travelling overland as much as possible on my way to Europe.
The side trip started with a ferry ride from Penang in Malaysia to Medan in Indonesia across the Malacca straight. Then the local bus out to Bukit Lawang. No mobile phones or Google back then just an out of date lonely plant travel guide.
Meeting the some locals and seeing the young children playing in the river way almost as good as visiting the rehabilitation centre. It was sad to learn that lots of the accommodation and the whole village where I stayed got seriously flash flooded and washed away with many lives lost in 2003.
Back to the Rehabilitation centre, It was all set up to help displaced orangutans get back into living in the wild. While we were visiting there was a new arrival.
I remember being quite sceptical when I was young. They got us to sit down and wait near this simple wooden platform, eventually a couple of guys climb onto the platform with a small amount of food and they started banging the food around. I was looking around thinking yea right there's no animals around here for miles we could be sitting here all day but it was not long before there was all this rustling and the trees started to move and shake like some Hollywood movie. You did not know where to look other than up. Then the hand full of tourist including me were all astonished as this big mother orangutan and her baby who lower her self gracefully down and out of the tree canopy.
From memory the bigger one came first and some others afterwards, like they had some sort of pecking order.
Overall definitely one of my best side trips ever and probably my best wild life experience.
