lazy days at lake toba

getting from bukittinggi to parapat takes about 17 hours (an aircon bus cost me 175000 rp which is about 14 euros). that is if your bus doesn’t break down... after driving for about two hours we stopped in the middle of nowhere, because the battery died. an hour later we started driving again, but a while later we stopped for two hours in the middle of another nowhere. it was a nightbus (saves a night of accomodation) so i was half asleep most of the journey. half because the busdriver found it absolutely nescessary to play indonesian music all night long, there was a crying baby in the seat behind me, the guy sitting next to me kept burping and a guy in the back was playing his ringtones over and over again. normally people also eat while on the bus and sometimes throw up (i’ve heard some very disgusting stories), but it was ramadan and people only ate at the nightly stopovers. if you ever go on a long bustrip in indonesia, make sure you don’t use the toilet on the bus. seriously. i felt really bad for the people who had to sit in the seats next to it. and if you don’t want to get smoke in your face the entire trip (which i personally don’t really mind, but for all you non-smokers) try to sit in the front of the bus, people usually head back to smoke (but not always).
21 hours later i arrived at a deserted busstation, but as soon as i stepped outside and got my backpack out of the bus, there was a minibus driver waiting there, asking me where i needed to go. malin told me that she met some people at lili’s who already stayed at lake toba at a place called reggea hotel and that it was good and cheap. when i arrived at the harbour to take the ferry across the lake to tuk-tuk, there was a guy named antonio, who works at reggea, so he would show me where it was. i met some more guys on the ferry who all work in hotels and homestays in tuk-tuk. they go to parapat and wait at the harbour for tourists to try and convince them to stay at their accomodation. it can be very annoying, but since i already knew where i wanted to go, they were just chill.

from the ferry:

parapat and two mountains

the ferry dropped us of at reaggea and antonio showed me the rooms. i was the only one there so i picked the one with the best view. it was just 40000 rp (3 euros) a night, double bed, balcony, awesome view of the lake and a hot shower (which didn’t always work though, but still). it was the upper right room on the picture here to the right, the square building next to the batak room. you can jump of the balcony into the lake from the batak room (thomas jumping here left). i was knackered so i slept for a while in the afternoon and at night i hung out with antonio and thomas, who also works there. they were smoking grass, having a drink and playing batak songs on the guitar (i later found out that this is what all the young locals do, every night).
so lake toba (in indonesia known as danau toba) is a lake and (extinct) supervulcano (see picture right, no i did not take this one myself). it's the largest vulcanic lake in the world and the site of the 75000-year-old supervolcanic eruption (the largest in the last 25 million years) where it staged a massive climate-changing event that scientists believe might have wiped out much of humanity. the island in the middle is called samosir island (palau samosir) and tuk-tuk is the resort town, which used to have full-moon parties, but thailand took over that job. now empty hotels and quiet streets are the norm, which means low prices high value and tranquility, but there's plenty to do around, like trekking or visiting traditional villages and some hotels organise batak performances at night. and a trip to the moon, but i'll get to that later...most people that live around the lake are ethnically bataks. batak societies are patriarchal organized along clans known as marga. the toba bataks believe that they originate from one ancestor "si raja batak", with all margas descended from him. they are known traditionally for their weaving, woodcarving and especially heavily decorated stone tombs. their burial and marriage traditions are very rich and complex. the burial tradition includes a ceremony in which the bones of one's ancestors are reinterred several years after death. you can visit some traditional tombs when you drive around the island. before they became subjects of the colonial dutch east indies government, the batak had a reputation for being fierce warriors. today they are mostly christian with a muslim minority. the picture on the right shows a traditional batak house. one side of the rooftop is higher than the other and this symbolizes prosperity for the future generation. the house has no windows and has a specific shape, suitable for life in the tropics. the decorations on the outside walls of the house are meant to drive away evil influences. they consist of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations either painted or carved. the colors used are natural colors, the most important being red, white and black, which respectively represent the three spheres of the cosmos: the human world, the world of good spirits above, and the underworld. today these traditional houses aren't built anymore.
the next day i walked around until i found an internet café next to a restaurant where i had dinner. there i met jenny and matt, both from the uk, but not travelling together. matt was on his way to australia (he left two days later) and jenny had been travelling for a couple of months already. really hilarious girl, had so much fun hanging out with her. when i paid for my food, i realised i didn’t have that much money anymore, so i asked where the ATM was. the guy behind the bar looked at me in a strange way and said, uhm, there’s no ATM on the island, you have to go back to parapat. pff. so the next day i did. (that's what you get for not bringing a lonely planet, aargh!)
i was waiting downstairs at the hotel for the ferry. there isn’t a specific place to board it, it goes around tuk-tuk and picks up people on the side of the hotels, which are all located right next to the lake. there also isn’t a specific time it comes around, so you just basically sit there and wait.
at the harbour i took a minibus to the ATM and when i wanted to take the ferry back i had to wait, again, for a couple of hours. on the way back i met amelia from the uk (cornwall to be exact, and for some reason very proud of it), and lars and anna from berlin (awesome people to party with!). amelia was getting hit on by a guy who worked at tuk-tuk and tried to smoothly get her to stay at his hotel (very funny to watch, since she was obviously very annoyed by him but didn’t want to be to rude). she ended up also staying at reggea next to my room, was nice to not be the only one there anymore and to have someone cool to hang out with. malin arrived in the evening and since the rest of the rooms sucked, she became my roomie.

some pics around tuk-tuk:

views from the balcony at reggea:

the weather wasn’t great, but the one sunny day we had was spent sunbathing and swimming. i’d planned on staying at the lake for about 3 days and then continue on north, but i ended up staying a week. it was so chilled out and i was having so much fun and felt totally at home. jenny was staying at bagus bay which we used as our living room/restaurant place (there was a tv there and loads of dvd’s). me and amelia rented bikes (70000 rp, 5 euro)(dykes on bikes!) the second day to drive around and see some cultural stuff. we went to a batak museum and a hot spring. it was so awesome to drive around, kinda dangerous without insurance, a helmet or a license, but nothing happened, except for me almost falling when i tried to not run over a chicken...and amelia had some issues with her bike haha.

amelia, traditional batak dancing at the batak museum, batak musicians

ginormous batak boat, made from one piece of wood, the rest is basically what you see when driving around

there was a ‘discoteque’ we all went to on saturday. the music was incredibly bad which made it more hilarious (think scooter and other bad 90’s dance and really fast happy indonesian dnb). amelia, malin and jenny went home after a while and lars, anna and me went to another place, which was a little bit more crowded and we danced with the three gayest guys on earth and a couple of local guys i met a few days earlier. lars and anna walked me home, since i had absolutely no idea where i was and there aren’t many streetlights in tuk-tuk. they were supposed to know the way, but we got lost anyway (even though tuk-tuk has about two roads...)

anna dancing with a local; lars, two gay guys and anna; gay guys

me and lars; me, hamlet (local guy i met on the ferry to tuk-tuk) and anna, lars and hamlet

this was the last evening having dinner with anna, lars and malin at bamboo restaurant where they have the best pizzas in the world; me as blond as malin...

i walked around the last day, taking pictures of every single sign i could find with the words 'magic mushrooms' on it. you can basically walk into any shop or restaurant and ask for magic mushrooms, they will go into the jungle and find you a couple (no, i did not try any). so if you're into getting spaced in a jungle, than lake toba is the place to go.

so after a week of just doing nothing much besides hanging out with everyone i decided it was time to move on. malin wanted to go to banda aceh and i was going to bukit lawang. since we both had to go to medan first, we hopped on a public bus together. when we arrived there it was around 7pm and malin was able to catch the night bus to banda aceh. i on the other hand had to stay the night and get a bus the next morning. we said goodbye and i went to a hotel. and btw, medan is an awefull place. absolutely horrible. i’d heard this from more backpackers, but i couldn’t imagine it being so bad, but from the first moment i arrived i could not wait to leave again. i can’t really explain to you why i felt this way, it’s just the atmosphere or something. it’s a complete shithole, dirty and crowded, holes in the roads, annoying people and it was the only place where i felt like leaving immediately. but unfortunately, i couldn’t. i stayed at a hotel closeby, so i wouldn’t have to go far to get the bus again. and much like the city itself, it was a total shithole. it was expensive (well, in comparison to the rest of the places i’d stayed at) and i didn’t even have a shower. i woke up in the middle of the night by a cockroach that was crawling on me. gross. i turned on the lights and smacked the life out of the thing with my sneakers and found another one in the bathroom. it was 3am and of course i couldn’t sleep anymore. i think i heard more crawling around under my bed but i was too scared to look. after a while a weird wurm thingy crawled into my room from underneath the door and started eating the cockroach (see right, so gross!!). i found out later that it was poisenous! i was really happy to leave the next morning and a very bumpy 3 hours later i arrived at bukit lawang.