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(Matthew)
So, after almost a month the the island of Borneo, the Malaysian part of it anyways. I was ready to move on to new things. we were supposed to fly out from Khota Kinabalu (K.K as the locals call it) through Air Asia. we had already booked our flights and we thought we were supposed to fly out at 11:00 am. but it turns out that we were supposed to leave closer to 9:00. so, we missed our flight and had no good excuse. we were all kicking ourselves, especially when we realized their was absolutely no way we could get our money back. so, we had to spend another night in K.K and left the next morning. we flew to K.L and then to the City of Medan in the Indonisian province of Sumatra. our book told us that the city wasn't a great place to hang out. that turned out to be a huge understatement. the city is dirty and noisy, there are tons of people, and the sun almost never shines because of clouds of smoke and smog that blanket the sky.

we stayed at a place that was right across (like 100 ft) from a mosque. kevin and dustin told me the next morning that the mosque started up a little before 4:00 am. i slept through it. i've become even a sounder sleeper than i was before since coming on this trip. the sounds coming from the mosque have to be experienced to be get any sort of idea as to what they sound like. it's kind of like singing and kind of like chanting and it's broadcast over speakers all across the city. we took some recordings of it with kevin's ipod.

the next morning, we caught a mini bus from near our hostel that took us to a minibus terminal. along the way we saw some sort of protest. i think it was against the government. people were chanting and waving signs and there were lots of policemen. we piled into another minibus and headed for medan. the drive only takes a couple of hours, or it would have if our driver hadn't kept stopping and picking up people and parcels. there were points where we were so packed in that i could barely move. and to make things worse, there were at least three people in the mini bus that were always smoking. it was bad. and then the driver stopped and picked up some Durian. Durian has to be the strongest smelling fruit in the world and it's not a pleasant smell. i was very happy when we finally reached the shores of lake toba.

we just missed the ferry so we had to wait another two hours. while we were waiting, a young guy came up and showed us some pictures of his familie's hostel. it was nice and the price was right so we decided to stay at the "Regae Huts." it ended up being awsome. we were they only people staying there and our place was right on the water. i went swimming at least two or three times a day.

i'm sure the other guys will write more so i'll wrap this up. basically, Lake Toba is an amazing place to go and relax. the resorts are beautiful and cheap. the lake is gorgeous and great for swimming, fishing or canoeing. there are almost no tourists because they all stopped coming after the Bali bombing. but the province of Sumatra is very safe for tourists and it's a great place to vacation. so, visit Lake Toba.

love, matthew

(Kev)
Lake Toba is the largest lake in all of Southeast Asia. It is 100 kilometers long and 30 kilometers wide. The reason why Toba is so large is because it was formed by a volcanic eruption. The lake is situated in the caldera of the huge Toba volcano which erupted approximately 75,000 years ago. I read that the Toba eruption was one of the most massive eruptions ever to be recorded, and that some evolutionists believe that it was this very eruption that triggered the last ice age. The resulting effect is a panorama of beauty that stretches for miles and miles. Lake Toba has rolling hills, waterfalls, and of course a very large body of water. We stayed on an island on the lake called Samosir, the island is larger than the country of Singapore and it actually has another small lake in the middle of it. We were told that we could moped around the island in about 7 hours, and although we did moped, we didn't go all the way around the island this time.

I loved this place and the best part was it felt like we had it all to ourselves. Like Matt mentioned their are very few tourists on the island, although i love vacationing with some isolation, I feel bad for the locals who rely on tourism so heavily.

Toba was also great because it was the first time we had a real breakfast in over a month. For some reason I have been unable to find the classic breakfast anywhere in Malaysia except for Langawi. The classic breakfast for me is pancakes, bannana porridge, and french toast. It feels great to be back in a land of the bannana pancake, but beyound that being in Toba gave us our first real chance to just relax since we were on the beaches of Thailand. Our hostel was only a dollar a night and it was right on the water.

While we were in Toba we decided it was time for a shave, but we did it the fun way and took lots of pictures, most of which are on the next blog. We looked really funny, so we thought you might get a laugh out of them too. Toba was great, and it made the horrible bus ride out their worthwhile, and let me tell you that bus ride was not fun!


(Dustin)
First little bit of advice for anyone going to Sumatra......get in early to Medan and get out the same day to the country side or wherever you want to go because the city just is not a travellers "happy place." The only hostel we stayed in wasn't all that nice and the last night we were there the power was out so our little fan didn't work. Also the air is just filled with dirt and pollution and leaves a layer of grime on your clothes and skin. The amazing thing is that you only have to go a little ways out into the county and everything turns beautiful again.

Lake Toba was amazingly cool for being that close to the equator and the water was SO nice for even being that huge of a lake. Like the other guys I feel pretty bad for the tourist industry there, the place is amazingly developed for tourists with tons of places ranging from dirt cheap to really nice and still cheap. I think we got our place so cheap just because of the need for SOMEONE to stay at the place, we were the only ones there. The people were very nice and helpful with everything we asked and the girls all over giggled and would try to talk to us whenever we went by. Really you could just sit on the deck of the place we had and relaxed in the sun and water for days on end.

We did some relaxing but also had some fun on mopeds and the whole shaving thing. Thats what down time in a relaxing place will do to a bunch of people. It was really chill there and I really hated the idea of having to go back through Medan just to get out to the other places we wanted to see. This turned out to be another of those times where you really don't have enough time to do what you wanted to do. We got a 7 day visa instead of a 15 or something like that and really found that it wasn't enough time. We wanted to see too many cool places and couldn't even really spend as much time at the ones we actually chose to hang out at. This time instead of making the money last as long as we could it came down to using our time as efficiently as possible.

Anyway later,
Dustin

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