The small print unseen at the Tourist Information Centre:

Tourist Bus: A cramped mini-van with 'natural a/c' (an open window) that guarantees to be non-stop direct if you exclude the 2-hour 'break' in Medan for no apparent reason. Paying a premium for the service guarantees that you will arrive after dusk. This technique allows the hotel owner, also playing the role of your driver, to leave you with little choice, dropping you conveniently at their hotel doorstep in the dark.

Local Bus: A roomy, air-conditioned, luxury coach showing recent movie releases to make your travels as comfortable as possible. You will enjoy real interactions with locals, especially since all the tourists are taking the mini-van. This service almost guarantees no hassle and anonymity upon arrival at your destination. It's also one-third the price of the 'tourist bus'.

After a 4-hour ferry from Malaysia, we arrived in the less-than-memorable port city of Medan. Renowned for its lack of decent accomodation, we splurged with the 4 other weary travellers from our boat and headed directly to the jungle by minivan.

Bukit Luwang is a small town right in the middle of the jungle, now world-famous for its Orang-utan rehab centre. Fortunately, we had done our homework, and managed to dodge our van driver's pitch and make the hike to the highly acclaimed Jungle Inn. This would go down as one of our best decisions. This inn is an amazing example of the penultimate eco-resort, with the entire place created from its natural surroundings. It's been designed and built by locals with every room fascinatingly unique (some with indoor/outdoor jungle showers!), the food is outstanding, and the friendly staff are a delight. We'd see Thomas-Leaf monkeys make an afternoon appearance in the restaurant regularly; and Slo lorries sauntering by the door, wasn't uncommon. But nothing could top the humanesque Orangu-tans, a mere 5 minute hike away.

On our first full day in the jungle, we went to both feedings at the rehab centre. The feeding helps recently released Orang-utans receive basic food staples and slowly adjust to life in the wild. Mom and babies, along with a couple of young males came to greet us, swinging in with style. One of the males put on quite the show, doing his best to charm the crowd with facial expressions and leaf tricks, another sat down next to one of the tourists and put its arm around her!

It was time to try our luck with a guide the next day (Samuel's the man!) and hike into the jungle to find the orange furballs for ourselves. Lucky for us, we had the good fortune of spotting Jaru, a 30 year-old male. He looked exactly like one of the characters from Planet of the Apes - we soon started to question who was watching who! After wildlife encounters with a poisonous snake and a large tortoise, we had the displeasure of running into the infamous orangutan, Mina. Mina is renown for blocking the trail in a 'hold-up' fashion until she receives an 'adequate' (depending on her mood of the day) quantity of bananas. The guides aren't supposed to feed the animals, but there's no choice but to make an exception for her, if you want to make it past with all your body parts intact!

From Bukit Lawang, it was off to the Tabo Cottages, on Lake Toba - Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake and possibly the world's deepest (at 525m). We immediately could see that the resort owners had been hit hard by a severe lack of tourists (like the rest of the island). It's not a place to go looking for night life, or any life, for that matter. Lucky for us, some friends from The Jungle Inn showed up to liven up this tranquil cottage-like retreat. The five of us then spent our days swimming in the lake, floating on the raft at Caroline's resort and consuming hoards of the local mushrooms. Okay, that last part wasn't true for us but our travelling companions did indulge, to pass the time.

We decided to take in some of the local culture and walked to the village of Ambarita to see the stone chairs - the local law court from over two hundred years ago. Our guide was extremely knowledgable and seemed quite eager to share with us the history of cannibalism in this community, for crimes punishable by death. The entire village took part as he explained (a little disturbingly excited), "they liked to squeeze lime and salt over the victims -- kind of like sushi." After a quick re-enactment by a nervous Neil (as the victim) and our excited guide (as the "sushi chef") we bade farewell.

Back in Medan, we weren't surprised to discover that it lived up to its grungy reputation. We somehow managed to enjoy our short time there regardless. We were interviewed by groups of students having to seek out foreigners for a school assignment. We took turns taking each other's picutures. We're not sure who enjoyed the encounter more, but we'll definitely appreciate the photos of us in front of the Grand Mosque with 20 giggling girls in headscarves (Hijabs).

While waiting to board the ferry back to Malaysia, we heard the war in Iraq had officially begun. We also heard that a virus called SARS was sweeping through Asia. We had the next 5 hours to contemplate our immediate plans of heading to the most Muslim part of Malaysia, and our not-too-distant planned excursion to the SARS hotspot of Singapore...