FunkyGibbon
Well-Known Member
I've been in Indonesia for over a week now. This trip has been planned for a long time, to take advantage of a period of relative calm and prosperity in my life. However, due to various complications, especially Covid-19, in the last few weeks prior to the trip starting the actual itinerary (previously carefully crafted) entered a state of almost constant flux that is, and will likely remain, ongoing.
This is going to be a casual trip thread. I will be keeping posts short, with a focus on items of interest to the forum, but allowing extraneous material to seep in as well. Please ask for more details about stuff that interests you, it's always easier to write when you know someone wants that specific information.
My initial itinerary was Taiwan (six days) - Mainland China (ten days)- Vietnam (nine days) - Malaysia (one day) - Indonesia (a lot of days). I was supposed to fly to China on February 20th, but for obvious reasons that didn't happen. As @CGSwans can attest in the weeks before I became unhealthily (oh the irony) obsessed with tracking the progress of the virus and trying to understand how and when my trip-leg would become untenable. As it happened the flights being cancelled were the final nail in the coffin. So I shifted everything else forward, the Vietnam leg got truncated because the key requirement was to be there over a weekend and I would now arrive on Thursday not Sunday, and I was good to go.
I was in Taiwan to organise future life plans; hopefully I will move there in the autumn. For this reason I didn't visit Taipei or any other zoos, but I did by chance see Taiwanesee macaques in Kaohsiung.
In Vietnam, with more time I would probably have gone back to Van Long to try to see Delacour's Langur, but as it was my main focus was visiting friends. I did finally visit Hanoi Zoo on my third time in the city; see my limited comments here:
My one day stop in Malaysia (really a layover) got extended because I finally found out why one of my bank cards wasn't working, and it wasn't good. For an awful morning it looked like I might be obliged to go to China to unlock it. The situation at that point was already much improved, but travel restrictions had not, and have not, changed to reflect that and it would have meant sacrificing about a month of Indonesia (one week in waiting for documents, one week actually in China, and then two weeks in a third party country waiting for Indonesia to let me in). However, almost miraculously, a solution was discovered and so I was faced with either rushing to catch my flight that afternoon or rebooking a few days later and giving myself time to do the things I'd planned in KL and abandoned in the face of financial calamity. I chose the latter, and ended up with three days to play with, so I snuck in a quick hour at KLCC Aquaria and then headed off to Taiping.
I arrived in Banda Aceh on March 1st, intending to see the city, do a little snorkeling in Pulau Weh, an island off the coast, and then head south. However, what actually happened is that I spent a week on Pulau Weh attempting to learn to freedive and generally enjoying a pretty idyllic island lifestyle. Although I didn't do any specific nature watching, I still saw a number of cool species like hawksbill turtle, sea snake, zebra moray, collared kingfisher and possibly blue-spotted stingray.
After that I took the ferry back to Banda Aceh and got on an eight hour minibus to Takengon. It's a town of little repute, but it's halfway to Keyatambe in Guneng Leuser NP. I planned to stop for one day and enjoy the lake the town is built on, and also steel myself for another eight hours of hairpin bends and awful music. But unfortunately, as for so many others, Covid-19 has stopped me in my tracks.
I arrived here three days ago. The morning I woke up here I noticed I felt a bit off, but put it down to either food, lack of sleep, some personal stress or even just travel sickness from the day before. By the afternoon though I was quite certain I was actually ill. I was genuinely torn over what to do. It had been almost three weeks since I left Taiwan, exactly two since Hanoi, and then ten days since Malaysia. None of those places were areas where the virus was thought to have community spread.
Adding to the problem was that Takengon is a small town in the Sumatran Highlands. I assumed they wouldn't be able to test me for the virus, and so the chances of me being put into quarantine were relatively high. And I really probably didn't have the virus.
It's worth noting for context that I am a thirty year old male in good physical fitness with a hitherto overachieving immune system. I am one of the lucky ones who is genuinely unconcerned about my personal safety in this pandemic. But, in a backwater region in a developing country, there will be many who are not so fortunate. Even if Mainland China had been logistically possible I would have balked at going because of the risk of me catching Covid-19, remaining symptom-free, and then literally leaving a trail of devastation in my wake as I wandered off the beaten track in Indonesia.
With this scenario now upon me, I prepared an overnight bag, packed all of my other stuff ready to be collected if need be, put on my mask and headed to the hospital to declare my symptoms. And then an hour later I returned, having been been given a vitamin booster and an anticongestant and then sent on my way. Was I free to leave town? It felt like it. But.....
I'm here my hotel room two days later. I'm not quite in quarantine because I still have to buy my own food supplies every couple of days. But I'm doing my best and I think I'm doing the right thing. Today my symptoms have gone so in a few more days I'll feel comfortable going on the road again. For now it's just me, my breakfast biscuits and the ants.
This is going to be a casual trip thread. I will be keeping posts short, with a focus on items of interest to the forum, but allowing extraneous material to seep in as well. Please ask for more details about stuff that interests you, it's always easier to write when you know someone wants that specific information.
My initial itinerary was Taiwan (six days) - Mainland China (ten days)- Vietnam (nine days) - Malaysia (one day) - Indonesia (a lot of days). I was supposed to fly to China on February 20th, but for obvious reasons that didn't happen. As @CGSwans can attest in the weeks before I became unhealthily (oh the irony) obsessed with tracking the progress of the virus and trying to understand how and when my trip-leg would become untenable. As it happened the flights being cancelled were the final nail in the coffin. So I shifted everything else forward, the Vietnam leg got truncated because the key requirement was to be there over a weekend and I would now arrive on Thursday not Sunday, and I was good to go.
I was in Taiwan to organise future life plans; hopefully I will move there in the autumn. For this reason I didn't visit Taipei or any other zoos, but I did by chance see Taiwanesee macaques in Kaohsiung.
In Vietnam, with more time I would probably have gone back to Van Long to try to see Delacour's Langur, but as it was my main focus was visiting friends. I did finally visit Hanoi Zoo on my third time in the city; see my limited comments here:
My one day stop in Malaysia (really a layover) got extended because I finally found out why one of my bank cards wasn't working, and it wasn't good. For an awful morning it looked like I might be obliged to go to China to unlock it. The situation at that point was already much improved, but travel restrictions had not, and have not, changed to reflect that and it would have meant sacrificing about a month of Indonesia (one week in waiting for documents, one week actually in China, and then two weeks in a third party country waiting for Indonesia to let me in). However, almost miraculously, a solution was discovered and so I was faced with either rushing to catch my flight that afternoon or rebooking a few days later and giving myself time to do the things I'd planned in KL and abandoned in the face of financial calamity. I chose the latter, and ended up with three days to play with, so I snuck in a quick hour at KLCC Aquaria and then headed off to Taiping.
I arrived in Banda Aceh on March 1st, intending to see the city, do a little snorkeling in Pulau Weh, an island off the coast, and then head south. However, what actually happened is that I spent a week on Pulau Weh attempting to learn to freedive and generally enjoying a pretty idyllic island lifestyle. Although I didn't do any specific nature watching, I still saw a number of cool species like hawksbill turtle, sea snake, zebra moray, collared kingfisher and possibly blue-spotted stingray.
After that I took the ferry back to Banda Aceh and got on an eight hour minibus to Takengon. It's a town of little repute, but it's halfway to Keyatambe in Guneng Leuser NP. I planned to stop for one day and enjoy the lake the town is built on, and also steel myself for another eight hours of hairpin bends and awful music. But unfortunately, as for so many others, Covid-19 has stopped me in my tracks.
I arrived here three days ago. The morning I woke up here I noticed I felt a bit off, but put it down to either food, lack of sleep, some personal stress or even just travel sickness from the day before. By the afternoon though I was quite certain I was actually ill. I was genuinely torn over what to do. It had been almost three weeks since I left Taiwan, exactly two since Hanoi, and then ten days since Malaysia. None of those places were areas where the virus was thought to have community spread.
Adding to the problem was that Takengon is a small town in the Sumatran Highlands. I assumed they wouldn't be able to test me for the virus, and so the chances of me being put into quarantine were relatively high. And I really probably didn't have the virus.
It's worth noting for context that I am a thirty year old male in good physical fitness with a hitherto overachieving immune system. I am one of the lucky ones who is genuinely unconcerned about my personal safety in this pandemic. But, in a backwater region in a developing country, there will be many who are not so fortunate. Even if Mainland China had been logistically possible I would have balked at going because of the risk of me catching Covid-19, remaining symptom-free, and then literally leaving a trail of devastation in my wake as I wandered off the beaten track in Indonesia.
With this scenario now upon me, I prepared an overnight bag, packed all of my other stuff ready to be collected if need be, put on my mask and headed to the hospital to declare my symptoms. And then an hour later I returned, having been been given a vitamin booster and an anticongestant and then sent on my way. Was I free to leave town? It felt like it. But.....
I'm here my hotel room two days later. I'm not quite in quarantine because I still have to buy my own food supplies every couple of days. But I'm doing my best and I think I'm doing the right thing. Today my symptoms have gone so in a few more days I'll feel comfortable going on the road again. For now it's just me, my breakfast biscuits and the ants.
