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Most people come to Bukit Lawang to see orangatangs and do a trek. It's a small village beautifully set next to a fast flowing river inside sheer sided valley covered in rainforest. In 2003 a dam, higher up the river thought to have been caused by illegal logging formed, burst and flooded the village in the middle of the night killing 2/3rds of the population. Many of the locals told us stories of how they managed to survive. Like lake toba this killed tourism and has made the village quite quiet which was nice but the problem with this was that at any one time there are more tour guides than tourists which means you get a lot if hassle!! Anyway through the wall of tour guides we managed to get to our accomodation which was amazing and perched on very high stilts overlooking the river. It also had a bamboo shower that we marvelled over for a while! In the morning we realised we couldn't afford it and moved to some where else for the remaining 3 days! The new place was was almost as good though costing only £1.60 a night and run by a family of Sumatran dwarf's. During our stay we we did some tubing, saw an orang-utan with baby, learnt to surf a river board, tried and failed to find a bad cave, had a panic about our proximity of our accommodation in a tropical rain storm, listened to the worst band we'd ever heard and acquired my first leach!
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