Today is jungle day and I will first hike deep into the jungle with a few other residents of my guesthouse and a local guide. About 9 kilometers lie ahead of us. The tour is offered as "1-Day-Trekking from Park Center to Teras Waterfall via Bukit Indah".
We take the boat to the other side of the river and walk for a while over a footbridge through the jungle. In some places its planks are damaged by the wild elephants. During the COVID lockdown they had come into this place and wreaked havoc here and there. In the past few weeks and months there have been some of them here again. This can be seen from the piles of dung that we find in several places.

Easy hike to Canopy Walk

At first, it is a walk with occasional stops, during which we are taught about the many uses of the plants that grow along the way. One plant can be employed as sandpaper, which can be used for both manicures and polishing blowgun darts. Another leaf can be rubbed with your fingers and the resulting paste used to stop bleeding from wounds. For example those who inflict leeches on you. This will become important later on.

This morning there was nothing for me to do at first. I used the opportunity of the morning sun and early fog to take some pictures at the war cemetery. These got even better. Afterwards I went to the information center that belongs to the Ysselsteyn War Cemetery. It was just finished last year and is ultra modern. You can scroll interactively through the history of the Second World War in the Netherlands on large screens. Until then, I had not known that one of the fiercest battles for the liberation of the Netherlands had raged here in the neighboring town of Overloon, where the war museum is located.

Today my Southeast Asia trip begins, for which I prepared longer and better than on the last trips. I don't have a ready-made travel plan, because for me the journey itself is actually the goal. On this trip even more than usual. I just looked around mid-December where there were still reasonably affordable flights to Southeast Asia somewhere. There are basically none like before the COVID pandemic. I found a one-way flight to Bangkok that cost more than a return flight three years ago. As soon as I started my journey today, it became clear that international passenger traffic by plane had gotten into serious trouble. I'm leaving from Frankfurt am Main (FRA). Check-in there at China Airlines takes just three minutes. But at the automated border control, I've been in line for 30 minutes. There are not enough of the gates  for so many passengers who have to go through it. Passport control is only theoretically faster that way. In reality, many people still have problems handling it. Most do not leave their passport on the scanner long enough, so the process has to be repeated multiple times.

Although it had rained heavily all night, a blue sky was visible through the morning fog. The opportunity was good and so I used the time between breakfast and the start of work to take some photos at the military cemetery. Morning sun shining through the fog always works well.

The trips abroad of the voluntary work assignments of the Volksbund War Graves Commission include not only work, but also the occasional exploration of the surrounding area. Four days ago we visited the war museum in the neighboring town of Overloon. Today we drive a little further and visit the metropolis of Amsterdam.

Luckily we only worked in the morning today, because heavy rain started from midday. As this was already apparent early in the morning, Rudi and I decided that we wouldn't even start with the grouting, but first of all clean an overflowing gutter in the supply building of the youth meeting center. It turned out that the gutter was full of dead leaves. In addition, it did not have enough slope to let the rainwater run down to the downspout. When the gutter was cleaned, the water ran down the outside of the downpipe. Because the sewer pipes in the ground are probably also clogged, so that the water is standing in the downpipe. Looking around, I noticed that the gutters of the other accommodation bungalows were clogged as well. We therefore extended our cleaning work to all buildings. Everywhere the leaves of the whole year were still in there. Many were already rusted through and nowhere did the water drain properly.