A Trip to Medan & Lake Toba

My open diary is in a mess lately; the events are not recorded according to its order. Now its time for me to back track a bit of my life, i.e. my Medan and Lake Toba trip in early September!!! I've finally gathered all the pictures and decided to blog about it all in one post...so you should expect to see 50 over pictures in this post.

I've spent 3 days 2 nights in Medan. We (those in the same trip) were lucky enough to have a local friend show us around Medan town and a place to stay. Thanks for the great hospitality Harvey if u stumble upon my blog :)

There isn't much to do in Medan besides eating...really, just eating! Some of the things to eat in Medan including

1. JCO donuts
I know we can find it in M'sia too but Hey, its origin from Indonesia!

2. Bikang cakes

3. Bakso Mee
-it has a very strong favor but tasted nice

4. Sate Padang

this one that we went to have a lot of varieties. i.e chicken, beef, seafood and eggs.
other stores by the roadside only have the classic chicken and beef.

5. Pecel +Peyek Pecel

6. Gado-gado

7. Curry Mee

8. Lontong

9.KewTiau Kerang at JL/. S Parman No.22 Medan, its opened since 1973

10. Wan Ton Mee- different from what we get in M'sia.

11. hmmm damn i forgotten what is this called already but its good! i shall ask my friend again

12. Cat fish with rice

13. famous local instant noodle -IndoMie

14. ice-cream is the no.1 dessert there. They have ice-cream shops everywhere.
One of the specialty is chocolate ice-cream with blended avocado paste.
I had this at Fountain Ice-Cream Cafe, Medan Plaza.
15. this will be McD caramel ice-cream :)

16. of course not forgetting the famous layer cake, bika ambon and bolu gulung (didn't take picture tho)
17. Locally, they have their own drinks.
all these are local bottled tea. i would say the famous one is TehBotol.

18. Badak its their local Sarsi drink19. Local beer-Bintang.
Sorry to say but it tastes horrible.

20. Bintang Zero catered for muslim but it still taste equally bad.

Like i said earlier, Medan is all about eating. So yea, i think ive covered more or less what i did there. We hired a driver to Lake Toba, its about 5 hours drive from Medan.

we took a ferry there

and these are the 'we' that i am referring to all this while

The lake is set in the caldera of a giant volcano and i swear it has the most magnificent view i've seen so far besides Scotland!

We stayed a night at Carolina Hotel and the room were very affordable.a room like this (well, its one of their best there); similar to our crappy room in PD is around RM30 per night

Some of the view in the hotel compound

a wooden bridge

with sweet pink water lilies growing underneath

ferry passing by

A shelter with Batak Style Roof

we visited the museum but it was already closed down :S

but we saw a pregnant pig nearby *Oink*

We went around the lake and saw more batak house...

This particular batak house is for tourist like me...

They have a weaving machine inside
These is how they produce the batak blanketi did not buy any of them tho

The tribe that lives in Lake Toba is called the Batak Tribe also known as the "hugahuga" tribe in my dictionary. Because they used to scarify human being and eat the body (from what i heard).

They scarify the person by chopping off the head.
can u see the head lying on the table???

Their cemetery is everywhere! Normally in the middle of the field; they field that they own.
and its all in the shape of a batak house.

Day2 at Lake Toba, we rented some bikes to go around

its my first time riding a bike

of course, the PINK bike is mine!
okay im not actually riding in this picture

but i managed to ride the bike on my own :D
pretty fun

hehe camwhore at the backseat
as we were exploring, this signboard caught my attention.
They openly sell magic-mushroom there :S
looks like normal white mushroom...none of us give it a try so im not sure if its real.

At the end of the day, i got my unsexy tanline*sob sob*
its still here until now :(

but i manage to add up to my bridging collection!
-bridging at Lake Toba :)-

i would love to go Lake Toba again some day :)