Yes, yes, it’s true.  I’m still overseas, and still traveling.  And no, I don’t have a hidden chest full of gold that I’m using to pay my way through.  The chest is far too big to hide.    

This time I was visiting Sumatra- a northwestern island of the Indonesian Archipelago.  I was working for “In Touch with Nature Education”, run by Thom Henley who is half man, half legend here in Thailand because of the dozens of books he’s written on Asia’s protected natural areas and ecology.  The trip was for International School Phnom Phen (ISPP) out of Cambodia.  My co-leader, Mana Sareewong, and I met the kids from ISPP at the airport in Medan, Sumatra after spending a lovely day wandering the dirty streets of the dull and architecturally uninteresting city.  We all bused our way north of Medan to Gunung Leuser National Park where we stayed the night just outside the preserve.  The next day we headed across a river to an Orangutan sanctuary, where we watched a 5’9” male weighing more than 200 pounds scare one of our guides off the trail.  He already had a nasty scar on his arm from a previous bite, as did the other two guides.     

We continued walking through the preserve, encountering Thomas leaf monkeys, monitor lizards, giant ants, orb spiders, and my personal favorite . . . “Snake Man”.  We’ve all come across strange and interesting people in our lives, but I can honestly say that Snake Man’s story trumps any I could have told previously.  Snake Man did not know his given name, but had been called Snake Man (Penjinak ular) from a very young age after it was decided he would become a shaman.  Shamans in this part of the world harvest snake venom which is used as an ingredient in medicine, as well as for anti-venom.    He was born in the jungle of Sabah, northern Borneo, where he was cared for by his grandparents since his parents had been killed in intertribal warfare.  His grandfather was a headhunter and cannibal, and some of Snake Man’s earliest memories were of drinking human baby’s blood because his grandfather said, “it’s sweet and healthy for small children”.  After his grandparents passed away Snake Man wandered the forests of Borneo, learning about plants and animals and collecting ingredients for medicine which he sold in the city.  He also was called-upon to help remove dangerous snakes from households and fields where people preferred to deal with the snakes respectfully rather than offend their spirits by killing them. 

When our group met Snake Man, he was on the bank of a river, handling a green vine snake.  He would place its head into his mouth to calm the snake down, and let it bite his toes with its tiny needle like teeth, which weren’t long enough to pierce the man’s calluses.  He told us he used to have a rear fanged viper which he would let bite him “just a little bit” so that he would build-up tolerance to venom.  It was a good thing he had a reasonable amount of tolerance, since two massive deformities on both of his arms showed the signs of bites by the infamous King Cobra.  He said he had survived because he was able to use medicine from the jungle, though his right arm had lost most of the function due to the use of a razor blade at a hospital to make an incision to extract the poison.

The remainder of the trip was spent south of Medan near Sibayak Volcano, where we climbed to the noisily steaming caldera on the summit.  The kids humored me by pretending to be attentive during my natural history lesson as they cooked eggs in boiling sulfuric pools, and we all descended back into the 94 degree heat of the equatorial rainforest.  

And now I’m back in Bangkok, practicing martial arts as usual.  The gym I’ve been helping my friend Leigh put together is just about ready, and we’ve managed to snag a few more students.  If anyone would like to see the website (still in progress with updates and editing), visit: www.boxer-rebellion.net.  I’ll be back in the States on March 11^th, and back to work in Joshua Tree National Park shortly thereafter. 

Hope you are all doing well- keep snakes out of your mouths!

Glen