Depending on who you ask, Old Bagan consists of somewhere between 2400 to 3000 temples. They are amazing to explore on foot, but the best way to capture the magnitude of the setting is to do it by air.

The one thing I insisted on doing during this trip was a hot air balloon ride over Bagan. The experience does not come cheap – approximately $400 per head – but it was so worth it.

There are two main ballooning companies in Bagan: Balloons Over Bagan and Oriental Ballooning. After a bit of research we chose the latter because, while it was slightly more expensive, they supposedly took less people in each basket (8-10 people vs. 10-12, however, we wound up with 11 passengers anyway).

When it was all said and done, both companies, along with a third – Golden Eagle – appeared to offer very similar experiences and in fact share the same take-off and landing spots. And because your flight pattern is almost entirely dependent on the wind, all balloons travel a similar path.

The day starts very early with a hotel pick-up from the company van at approximately 5-5:30am. From there, we were taking out to a field where apparently all the balloon-riders assembled, regardless of the company. While still in the dark, the balloon companies provided a small breakfast of pastries, fruit, coffee and tea.

As the sun began rising, we finally caught glimpses of the giant balloons – still mostly deflated and lying flat on the ground. However, one by one, each balloon took shape, which turned out to be quite an entertaining show in and of itself. After locating our balloon and operator, we were given some basic safety instructions and divvied up to be evenly distributed within our basket.

We lucked out with a perfect weather day! Sometimes, particularly earlier in the ballooning season (October to early-November) trips will be cancelled do to uncooperative weather. We met a couple who had made a booking for October of the previous year, only to have it cancelled.

I can’t image how else to fully appreciate the sheer size and majesty of Bagan’s temples but to see it by air. I believe the pictures speak from themselves (all shot from my iPhone, btw, as our big boy camera would not fit on our carry-on only luggage that had to hold us over on a three-week trip).

The air journey lasted approximately 45-minutes. Since landing was somewhat dependent on where the wind carried you, most balloons landed in the same general open field area, although there was no way to pick your precise landing spot.

After safely returning to the ground, we were offered fruit and champagne and presented with flight certificates and souvenir hats before being driven back to our respective hotels in time to make our real hotel breakfast offerings.

The Details:
Oriental Ballooning, Bagan
Price: $400 per person
Time: 45 min to 1 hour in air; 3-4 hours total
What to Bring: Jacket, camera, toilet paper/Kleenex (for one last pre-flight bathroom break), cash tip for your balloon operator (if desired).

While my husband and I both love the outdoors, I’d say we fall into the category of “nature-light.” In other words, we love exploring National Parks, but neither of us are willing to lug camping gear, sleep with bugs, and forgo showering. And I certainly am not about to poop in the woods (TMI? Sorry). So guided day-trips into nature are perfect for us.

We chose to use the company Bukit Lawang (.com) because they offered just that – a day trip into Gunung Leuser National Park on an Orangutan-spotting day trek. Plenty of other companies offer similar services, but this was the only one I found which specifically advertised day-trips including pick-up from Medan.

[As an aside, we chose to stay in Medan based on its proximity to the park. Unless you are going to stay in the park, Medan may be your most realistic starting point for day trips into the park. To be perfectly honest, aside from local eateries, there’s not much to see/do in the city itself.]

Our day began at 6am, with the company picking us up from our hotel. The schedule listed on the website allows for a 3-hour drive each way to and from the park. In reality, the journey took only a little over 2-hours.

TIP #1: If you are at all prone to motion sickness, prepare accordingly. The path to the jungle is not always paved, and even if it is, not necessarily maintained. And it certainly includes its fair share of turns. Additionally, in true Southeast Asian fashion, about every 5-minutes or so you’ll witness a close encounter that convinces you that you’ll meet your end in the back of a Toyota station wagon on this random road in Sumatra. Thankfully, this never happened, but I’ll never quite get used to how many near-collisions I experience in this part of the world.

Upon arriving at Bukit Lawang, the small village which provides the entrance to the park, we met our jungle guide, JoJo. We later learned that JoJo was born and raised in the forest. Legend has it (and by legend, I mean JoJo’s grandmother) that JoJo’s playmate as a young child was a rare Sumatran tiger cub. Fact or fiction, who knows.

We began our trek in the jungle by observing the locals harvesting rubber from a rubber tree grove.

TIP #2: Cover your body with as much insect repellent as possible. I made the mistake of only spraying the areas not covered by clothing. These are not your average mosquitos. At this point early into our hike, I felt the mosquitos biting through my Columbia Sportswear hiking pants and wished I had bathed in Deet prior to commencing this hike.

As we forged deeper in to the forest, I realized this was the closest I would ever get to feeling like Indiana Jones. I had never even hiked off trail and we certainly entered areas where I wished we had a machete.

We soon encountered another couple with their guide observing a pair of Orangutan – a mother and baby. I was pretty amazed at how close we got to the pair!

At this point, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were being set up – were these animals planted such that tourists like myself could go home satisfied that we got to witness an endangered ape? How could we possibly stumble upon these two so early into our day? Were we going to go the rest of our trek without spotting another animal?

Fortunately, this did not happen. We finished the day observing an additional 6 orangutan to the 2 we saw early on.

I was later informed that wild orangutan tend to stay far away from humans. However, JoJo explained the “semi-wild” nature of most of the orangutan we encountered. Bukit Lawang houses a major orangutan rehabilitation center focused on preserving those displaced due to hunting, deforestation, capture, etc. Because these rehabilitated animals were accustomed to humans, they had no qualms about coming into close proximity. Additionally, while some of these orangutan had “wild” babies, the young ones had also become relatively desensitized to humans as they followed in their mothers’ steps.

We often encountered other tourists with guides on during the course of our trek. It appears that the guides listened for each other and seemed to know when and where fellow guides had spotted animals in the jungle. The guides had no problems tempting the animals with treats of fruit in order to coax them into coming closer. While this seemed a bit of an inauthentic ploy purely aimed at allowing us to get some easy photo-ops, I quickly got over this. After all, our guide had grown up here and become familiar with these animals which he knew by name (of course, given at the rehabilitation center). The animals benefit by getting an easily obtainable fruit treat. Tourists like myself get a rare close encounter with an endangered animal as well as a bunch of awesomely close photos. The guides wind up with better business and tips because they delivered on orangutans. Seems like a win-win-win situation to me (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

TIP #3: Be prepared for rain! After all, this is a rain forest. I made the mistake of trusting my handy iPhone weather app which showed a totally dry day. Wrong! We were caught in a massive 45-minute downpour. While the guides have bags to keep your backpacks, etc., dry, you might want to keep a rain jacket or poncho handy.

After taking a break for a quick lunch of Nasi Goreng, cucumber slices, and fruit and veggies, all brought by our guide, we were informed we’d now be walking to the river to raft our way back into town. Now, this is where my research failed me. The company’s website states that you have the option of either hiking or rafting back. I’m not much of a water sports person, so I figured we’d take on the extra exercise and just walk back. Apparently, you need to inform the company of this beforehand – otherwise they assume you are rafting back. If we were to hike back, we would not have gone this far out as we’d basically have to backtrack the entire way and cost us another 2 hours. At this point, we were pretty exhausted and hot, so the idea of rafting didn’t sound so terrible.

Now, I’m by no means a water-sports aficionado under regular “US” standards. And in hindsight, our rafting experience turned out to be pretty entertaining. However, both before and during the experience I could picture the headlines – “American Tourists’ Heads Cracked Open Over Rocky Rapids.” Our “raft” consisted of 3 black inner tubes tied together with ropes. Our guide, JoJo, steered (with bamboo sticks) from the front tube while another driver sat in back with our gear. My husband and I occupied the middle tube. No helmets. No life jackets. Me holding on to the ropes for dear life. Now, I have been white water rafting once before and quite enjoyed it. But that was with the proper gear and in a proper raft. I don’t know the rapids classification system, but I would guess that this river at this time of year wouldn’t rank very high. Still, I could not believe the circumstances we were doing this under – good lord, we didn’t even sign liability waivers!

The fact that I’m writing this post tells you that we didn’t die. Fortunately, a couple local shops sold cheap clothing so that I could avoid a 2+ hour drive back to our hotel sitting in soaking wet clothes.

Where: Gunung Leuser National Park
Cost: 80 GBP per person
Duration: 12-14 hours.