Cuti cuti Medan - Part 2

Woke up very early in the morning. The day started earlier than in Kuala Lumpur. It was such a nice and calm feeling to woke up and went to the window and looked at the sun rise. Breakfast served at 0700 and as told, the tour guide came to pick us up at 0730. We check out from the hotel as we were going to stay in Berastagi on the second night. Picked up the family of four (from Melaka) at another hotel and went to a jetty where we took a boat to Samosir Island.

 

Saujana mata memandang

 

View from the hotel room

  Breakfast

 

Samosir Island is an island off Danau Toba. The Lake Toba and Samosir Island were formed after the eruption of a super volcano some75,000 years ago. Subhanallah…

The boat ride to Kampung Ambarita in Samosir Island took around 45 minutes. On our way, the tour guide told us stories about the lake,the island, the Batak Toba people and lots more.  When we reached Kampung Ambarita, we were brought to the Stone Chairs of King Siallagan. The Stone Chairs is where the King and other village chiefs sat together to discuss and execute criminals.

 

On the boat

 

The execution demo

 

The house of the Bataks

We were told about the Batak Toba people – how they are still left behind in the world of modernization. Their only source of income is by selling souvenirs to the tourist. Which we know how competitive it could before them when all of them selling the same stuff, to the little amount of visitors on the island. If it’s not because of the crooked roads and long hours journey to reach Danau Toba from Medan town, I think more tourist would be visiting this place. Even ones who had went there would want to come again and again. Too bad… due to lack of awareness of the government to upgrade the road,and tourism facilities, the Batak Toba still live like we were 10 years ago.

 

Then we took the boat ride again to Kampung Tomok. No, I don’t think Tomok (New Boyz or OIM) comes from this village. We did not do anything much besides shopping there. I just spend time taking photograph at the jetty since I was pretty much done with souvenir shopping in Kampung Ambarita.

 

The youngsters making money by singing to the tourist on the boat

 

Beautiful chalets on Samosir Island

 

 

We went back to the Parapat mainland by boat and went to have lunch at Restoran Istana Minang in Parapat. We tried the ikan pora pora, which is also known locally as ikan Megawati .

The 4 hours journey to Berastagi started at around 1430hrs.We made two stops on our way there. First was at Simarjarunjung. We had a nice and warm famous local ginger tea and pisang goreng. Simarjarunjung is a bit colder than Parapat. We were told that it would be colder in Berastagi since it is in a high land.

 

 

Next stop was at the Sipiso Piso waterfall. The 120 meters height waterfall drops from an opening on the rock face to the bottom. Beside the beautiful view of the waterfall, we could also see the Lake Toba from the northern.

 

Sipiso Piso waterfall

 

  The Lake Toba view from northern

 

It was time to say goodbye to the huge lake as that was the last stop where it could still be viewed. I’ll be back someday.

It was a drizzly journey so the driver had to be extra careful and thus longer time to reach Berastagi. We bumped into a lot of incident that showed us how the local people live, deal with accident etc. We finally reached the hotel in Berastagi at about 1945. Along the journey, I asked the tour guide’s help to get me a birthday cake for Mum’s 57th birthday. We managed to keep it secret and successfully surprised her after dinner.

Happy Birthday, Mummy!

 

Off for the night and another long day waiting.

To be continued.