There are those times where you consider yourself to be wide awake but then things begin to happen that raise the suspicion that you are, in fact, dreaming and about to wake up and wake up you usually do.

Most recently this happened while trekking through the Sumatran rainforest sweat soaked, insect covered, generally dirty and drinking a cup of tea made from water pulled straight from the adjacent river (90% tea, 10% floaty bits of stuff) when the local indonesian guide suddenly broke out into a loud rendition of jingle bells...this was unusual enough to raise thoughts that I would, at any moment, be dragged awake to find myself back in my London flat faced with a blackberry full of messages and a sweaty tube journey into work. However I didn't wake up and (as always happens) things just got more weird... The words of the song became:

'Chorus: Jungle Trek, oh...Jungle Trek at Bukit Lawaaannggggg! See Baboon, see monkeeeey see orangutaaannnn!...

Verse 1: Treking through the jungle, at Bukit lawang, we camp overnight and try see Orangutan...'

Verse 2: Etc etc etc'

The thing is, as of now we still haven't woken up...

Stepping back a bit, we had left Pulau Weh and decided that a little bit of exercise wouldn't do us any harm and on the recommendation of pretty much everyone we had met so far Bukit Lawang in Sumatra sounded like just the place. To get there we had an overnight bus journey from Banda Aceh to Medan. The one piece of advice we had been given was to ensure, absolutely for definite that the bus was an 'executive non-stop' bus. These buses have about twice the leg room of a normal coach, go straight to the destination with a lovely air conditioned cabin. The one thing we have subsequently learned is that we should never trust any Indonesian that claims:

'My bus is not none stop but only one stop'.

For those of you who do not speak Bahasa Indonesian, that sentence broadly translates as:

'we stop every 3 mins to pick up anyone waving their arm at us and we will stop wherever they want to get off. Oh...and they can smoke on the bus. Did I mention that as we do this it adds 3 more hours onto what is already a ridiculously long journey? Before I forget, that means we need to keep the driver awake somehow and what better way than via some hardcore trance music? The ticket, by the way, is the same price for youuuuu'

Clearly, we know that now and in any case we arrived safe, sound, sweaty and tired to Medan and stopped off for a night before catching a bus to Bukit Lawang.

Bukit Lawang is a pretty amazing place. It is a long stretch of village about 1km long that draws a thin line up the bank of its centrepiece river. This flows right through the thick Indonesia rainforest on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park. The village came very close to being wiped out in 2003 when the river overflowed causing floods and landslides along its stretch. Now, there isn't much sign of this and is a pretty relaxed place to spend a few days...that is other than the numerous 'Jungle Guides' who wont leave you alone until you have agreed to go on a trek with them (it is illegal to enter the park without an official guide) however once you have something all sorted out they leave you pretty much alone to enjoy yourself.

Having booked our hotel ahead to avoid the majority of the hassle, we organised our trek which involved 7 hours of fairly heavy walking through the rainforest followed by an overnight camp, more trekking the next day all finished off by sitting on a large rubber tube and floating all the way back to Bukit Lawang down the river.

The trekking was excellent, tough in parts where we were quite thankful of our rock climbing weekends back in London and the amount of wildlife was just incredible. When we set out we were hoping to catch just a gingery glimpse of Orangutan but got lucky seeing around 5 or 6 up fairly close over the course of the first day. On the second day we even managed to spot a troup (troup? no idea actually) of baboons as we took on the more hardcore jungle trails on a mission to find some waterfalls to cool off in while remaining fully clothed (you (well me) are so sweaty by the time you have taken even just a few steps that jumping in to a river really makes no difference to your overall level of soaking-ness). These two days were broken by sleeping on a thin plastic sheet directly on the jungle floor in an A-frame style 'tent' open not only to the elements but more importantly to the massive spiders and centipedes (and apparently rats) of the forest. While this might sound painful, and it was, sleeping in the pitch black rainforest surrounded by animal sounds mixing with those of the river while watching our small campfire dying out in the background was one of the best experiences of our trip so far.

While we could easily have stayed for days when we got back to Bukit Lawang itself later that day via our rubber tubes we had a very long, cold shower, a massive meal and a long sleep on a real mattress.

Next stop - bus to Medan, flight to Bali, ferry to Lombok, small boat transfer to the Gili Isles to spend some time diving...