Medan is in North Sumatra, Indonesia, but it’s less than an hour’s flight from KL and so a lot closer to us than many of the places that we’ve visited in Malaysia. We’d been before, last year, but on that occasion we didn’t have time to mooch around in town as we were on our way to Bukit Lawang to look for wild orangutans.
We found them too, a couple of hours into an early morning walk through the undergrowth in the Gunung Leusur National Park. There had previously been a sanctuary nearby that had closed a few years previously and a few of the apes hadn’t really bothered heading too far away.
Jen and I had two guides for the walk and one of them soon spotted a patch of orange fur up a tree. We crept closer and ended up near to a large male orangutan who seemed happy just to sit and look at us. Or at least he did until his missus turned up. At that point, and despite the audience, they promptly had it off no more than twenty feet away from us. Maybe they liked being watched as it didn’t take them long. Once finished, they moved on to look for a post-coital snack.
We followed them down a path and caught up with them in a clearing where we sat and watched them arse about for a good half an hour. At one point I picked up the skin from long eaten piece of fruit and offered it to the female. She swung herself in my direction and then reached out. Rather than just take the offering she grasped my hand. At that point the guides flapped a bit in the way that guides tend to do, but she soon let go, took the fruit skin and then quickly discarded it in a similar manner to the way that I do with sprouts.
After moving on we were able to see another couple of orangutans further into the trail and then as we made our way back to the camp we found a mother with a toddler. Both of them were happy to relieve us of the bananas that we had left over from lunch.
This trip to Medan didn’t ever threaten to be as good as the last visit, but it was never intended to be. The nearest we got to wildlife on this occasion was a museum full of stuffed exhibits where we whiled away an hour or so trying to remember the names of creatures that we’d seen in Africa or Australia. The main source of fun in these places is usually the bad taxidermy, but sadly few of the animals on display looked as if they had been stuffed by someone whose only previous experience had amounted to putting a duvet back inside its cover.
Still, we were here mainly for the football and a game in the top-tier of the Indonesian league that had briefly promised the possibility of seeing ex-Boro player Willo Flood. Yes, really. He’d left Dunfermline for today’s visitors Bali United about a month ago. I can’t see why anyone would want to swap Fife for Bali, but I’m sure the prospect of trips to Medan and their taxidermy museum must have a been a prominent factor.
Alas, it was all too good to be true and a few days after Willo arrived it was discovered that his immediate past employment in the Scottish second tier was considered to be too low a standard to justify a work permit. A shame really as I was looking forward to seeing him play. From what I remember of his time at the Riverside he seemed limited, but honest, as he straddled the Strachan and Mowbray eras whilst playing little for either of them due to injury.
I do recall seeing him score a twenty-five yarder that was clearly intended to be a cross. I liked that he had the good grace to look embarrassed. Not all of our players would have done.
The twenty-thousand capacity Stadion Teladan was busy as kick-off approached. We declined any number of offers of food and drink but were able to buy wristbands from a fella outside for the nearest stand. We paid a ten per cent premium on the face value of a hundred thousand whatevers, a total of just over five quid each in real money.
Our stand was covered and down the tunnel side of the pitch. There weren’t any seats and so you had a choice of selecting your patch of concrete either low down where the playing surface was obscured by a twenty-foot high fence or else higher up where the stanchions blocked your view. We went high and found a spot from where we were able to see both goals.
Kick off was delayed for ten minutes due to a floodlight failure, but that just helped the atmosphere to build as more people made their way in and anticipation heightened. I didn’t see any Bali fans, not surprisingly I suppose given the distances involved, but the bottom of the league Medan side, PSMS, had supporters singing behind both goals.
The support was constant, particularly from the end to our right, whilst the fans sat around us had an odd tendency to yelp whenever a chance looked imminent.
The standard of play wasn’t up to much and with the ball frantically flying around, I think Willo Flood’s familiarity with the fast pace of Scottish football would have stood him in good stead in this league.
Bali opened the scoring ten minutes into the second half when a hopeful lob back into the box beat the offside trap. Having made the breakthrough the visitors then quickly added a second. PSMS pulled one back from the spot with twenty minutes left but they didn’t quite have the quality to kick on and take a point.
Tags: Bali Utd, Gunung Leusur, Medan, Orangutans, Willow Flood
Trail of the Lion King 
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