Banderlampung: Pleasant big town. Nothing to do here, but they have a very nice modern hotel and its a good place to kick back for a couple of days if you are missing the comforts of home. Be wary of the becak driver who will stalk you all over town. We really enjoyed it, but its nondescript.
Jepara: We were forced to stay here due to problems with the park, but there is a nice hotel with karaoke for 250,000 if you really want to torture yourself by visiting Way Kambas.
Way Kambas National Park: OOOhhhh this will be fun. Haven't had this much of a rant since Ecuador. You may want to try Bukit Berasan Selatan (we never had time) as its part of the triumvirate of UNESCO Sumatra parks along with Gunung Leuser and Kerinci (which we loved), but for the love of God stay away from this park. Unless you have private transport to and from the park and are willing to burn through at least $500 and love birds then this park is not for you (If you answer yes to the above three you will probably have a nice if overpriced stay). Lets start at the beginning. They let us have a bus to Metro and then there they lied and said there was no bus to Rajabasa and wanted us to charter a van. This went on for 4 hours before they eventually gave us a fucking bus. Only the old people were honest. Then we found out there were no hotels or homestays in Rajabasa and the park is actually 7km from the village. Shit. It was late so we went to Jepara to stay. Luckily they agreed to look after our big bags and are subsequently the best option for visiting the park independently. We then took an angkot to the village again and walked the 7km to the park. Ojeks want around 30,000 so not too bad. Once we got to the park the troubles really began. They invent fees to pay (we ignored these), but they won't let you walk in due to tigers (rubbish) and we had to pay 150,000 for 2 ojeks for the 13km to the park hq. Here you are veritable prisoner, because you are not allowed to walk anywhere. When we tried, they sent us back like babies. They want 300,000 for a 3 hour walk and anything from 500,000 to 1.5 million for a 2 hour boat trip. Insanely expensive. No backpacker can afford this. When we told them it was expensive they just laughed and said not for us. The shit shack in the middle of the jungle was 300,000 (still our most expensive hotel and more than the plasma screen, hot water, super comfortable bed place in Banderlampung). They tried to screw us out of more money in the park, but it was beyond us. Hence what I said about $500. They watched our every movement like inmates and we told them the next day we would walk out of the park as we couldn't afford anything (Bear in mind at Ujung Kulon accommodation is 100,000 and a whole day guide is 100,000. In Gunung Leuser accommodation is 50,000 and a whole day guide is 300,000. Kerinci accommodation is 100,000 and a whole day guide is 300,000). All those parks are many, many times better than Way Kambas. You have to be lucky to see wildlife here. In the others its almost given. They said we couldn't walk without an escort for 100,000 (It was 300,000 on the way in). They said they would have a gun to protect from tigers. Come the morning they had no gun and we told them no gun, no money. We didn't need their stupid protection. What were they going to do to a tiger with just a scooter. Idiots. The guy passed us twice on our walk out of 13km (we saw squirrels, macaques, wild boar and 3 types of deer so nothing outstanding). They have silver leaf monkeys on the river, but we couldn't afford the boat. When we got to the gate the other guy came and demanded 100,000 for the protection. What protection. He passed us twice in 3 hours. Ridiculous. The park guards just want to screw you as much as possible. This is a super unpleasant place. We got into a slanging match and he said I was crazy after I verbally abused him. Yeah I am. Crazy for coming here. We were toying with the idea of not coming due to the bad reviews. We should have listened to our instinct. Just don't go. Yet it gets worse. We eventually got out and collected our bags to go. We went back to Rajabasa and the locals told us all afternoon that a bus would be coming. Eventually it turned out they were lying so we would be forced to take their friends ojek to Metro. What kind of people are these people. We were forced to stay the night in Jepara again. The next day they lied to us about the bus again and Cannelle was getting hysterical. We thought we would be trapped here. She didn't believe people could be like this. The ojek drivers were preventing the buses from picking us up and they were trying to force us into taking ojeks. One guy said it was the crisis and they need money. I told him he shouldn't treat tourists like this and its the reason why noone visits the park. I told him I'd tell everyone I met how they treated us. Prisoners in a town for 2 days. Eventually when he realised how upset we were a bus mysteriously appeared and the driver paid a backhander to the guy on the street of 8000. The bus price is 10,000 from Jepara to Metro, but he wanted 30,000 to cover his backhander even after saying he was doing nothing when I asked him why he paid the other guy. I watched everyone else pay 10000 each and gave 20,000 for the two of us. He complained and I said everyone paid that. He then talked in Bahasa about how we had only paid 12,000. No we hadn't. We had paid 20,000. He just paid a stupid backhander. We are not ATMs. They then didn't want us to take a bus to Banderlampung, but we did and our ordeal was finally over. This is without doubt the worst I have ever been treated by people and under no circumstances should you entertain the idea of visiting this shithole of a park.
We took the public bus to the port for Java for around 17,000 or so and met a cool priest there on the way. For some reason they played Titanic on the boat crossing. Interesting choice of film. We absolutely loved Sumatra and its a shame we had to end on such a bad note at Way Kambas. Onwards to Java.
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