Lovin' the Lake Toba

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September 7th 2007

Published: October 5th 2007

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JenGui

Leavin the dirt behind us

filthy little market/bus station where we waited for the bus to take us to a little lake paradise.

Lake Toba...How we DO love Lake Toba.
Its been 5 days sice we've arrived and we are damn happy to be here.
The goin' is SLOW, the food is DELISH, the air is COOL and the accommodation is CLEAN.
Life is sweet in Toba.
We don't really want to leave on Sunday like we've decided to do. But if we want to see other things in Sumatra and then Java, unfortunately we must move on.
Though we could do as Martin and Sara, a Swiss couple we met here, and just decide to give up all of our plans and donate our time and money to stay here and help the locals rebuild their hotels and tourist attractions so that the tourists would actually return to visit one fine day.
Or do as Johnny from Berlin does and stay in Toba for two months every year in between living in Thailand and Malaysia.
When we first arrived last Sunday we checked into Carolina's hotel for 2 nights. It was FABULOUS there. A real HOTEL...they know what they are doing.
IT'S SO CLEAN!! We didn't even remember what clean felt like.
Carolinas has a great location for swimming, nice gardens and Batak

thats livin'

a bunch of happy students travelling the only way that indonesians seem to travel...dangerously...

Architecture.
And the room was only 68,000 rupiah (about $7.50). But we decided to leave to move to a different hotel that was recommended to us (thank you Frantiska!).
Liberta Homestay...wow. It's ALSO lovely here.
We have the whole 2nd floor of a lovely little Batak house. We are only paying 40,000 (about $4.40) with hot water, which is quite the luxury in Indonesia.
Sure, there may be little critters living in the walls who leave little shits scattered about (Guillaume hasn't quite noticed the quantity, otherwise he would have flipped out by now) but its incredibly charming here.
Mr.Moon, the most attentive and very intelligent owner, makes us feel SO at home here.
We have not been doing very much, I might add, and we are very content about that.
That is precisely the reason why we are here and wanted to stay for a whole week.
We have just been eating, chatting, reading & walking around.
Yesterday we took a motorbike to check out a bit of the island. We saw a couple of "tourist attractions" and they were fine, just fine. Though, I have to say that I was more excited by the teeny kitten that I

waiting

after the bus dropped us off IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE..IN THE POURING RAIN we had to wait for a while until someone else picked us up

was offered on the street.
It rains a lot here, which is nice because then we don't have to fake an excuse to the other guests or ourselves for not doing anything ("oh ya, we are just staying in today...it IS raining you know!"
Not that we actually care. We can watch movies or lay in bed and not think twice about it.
Guillaume and I are not, by nature, the type of people who MUST get out and about and see every sight there is. We are quite thoroughly content to just bum around.
Unfortunately, from now on we really do have to be on the move if we want to see and do the other places and things that we hope to.
So this has been a great little interlude. The longest we have stayed anywhere in the past 3 months. And a perfect place to stay, also.
We really love it, but...our batteries are recharged now...therefore...we set forth....to West Sumatra.

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