Silintong Hotel Samosir

... from anything we know!! A sea boat drops you straight to your door with your weekly shop from the mainland market as there are no shops on the island other than a few 'newsagents' if you could call them that?! They don't sell newspapers etc but they do sell bottled water and snacks and are usually in the front of someones house!!<br><br ...

... tribes from Burma and northern Thailand. The Bataks differ from other Indonesians living in Sumatra in that they are mainly Christians rather than Muslims. They are renowned for being party loving people and are also very musical. Everywhere we went, the sounds of guitar playing and heartfelt singing filled the air, no doubt fuelled by a few glasses of the local palm wine.<br><br>Lake Toba is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and the island of Samosir ...

... visa time, and really want to go to the island of Nias to surf for a couple of weeks. <br>We arrive on a Saturday night and find everywhere's full. Toba is a popular weekend getaway place, and it takes us a couple of nights before we can move into our Batak house at Romlan. Abolutely worth the wait and it ends up being our home for the next 2 weeks as the urge to leave just doesn't seem to come. It's probably due to our ...

Lake Toba is a lake and also a super volcano measuring 100 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide and 505 metres ...

After relaxing for a few days we decided to take a day trip. We hired a scooter to go and check out the rest of the island. We headed off thinking it would be a short ride there. 45 minutes and a numb bum later we arrived at the hot springs of Samosir Island. Well what can we say...not much. Guide books and people in town highly recommended us to go and see this attraction. Our experience ...

... back to Thailand. I am going to make my way back to Thailand, so I can be waiting for her with open arms and a big kool-aid smile. Question - What is the fifth most populous country in the world? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace. Peace JW

... on the horrible broken seat,chivalry is certainly not dead, I won't forget it! To make matters worse the bus was dangerously over loaded and here we were swinging around sharp bends on hillsides, with a crazy driver that thought overtaking on blind bends was ok arghhh!! We just didn't look out the window. It was certainly a tough one but these kinds of things just keep making us stronger. We arrived at Lake Toba just after sunset and needless to ...

... s house were we were to spend the night. But first, we went to a small waterfall to take a well deserved shower before relaxing at Ismails´ramshackle house. We had sweet tea and coffee and later lots of yummy food such as rice, beef, chicken and vegetables. The highlight was to watch Isamail´s mom preparing lemang tapei,glutinous rice cooked in bamboo. It goes very well with tea or coffee! The next morning, we headed through the village and took a look at the ...

... explore the town but got rained on. I went to the Apache cafe, which is managed by a handful of young chaps who invited me to hang out with them. Here, I had my first Sumatra Cafe and I played cards with them and just talked the evening away. Two of the chaps, Don and Joco speak english very well, so I felt in heaven to finally get a chance to talk to someone. I started to write down 3 pages of useful indonesian phrases and practiced them with the guys. The next day, I went to the ...

For obvious reasons there are no pictures of this event. Had an encounter with Aceh militants yesterday traveling from Ketambe to Berstagi in southern Aceh. The Labi-Labi, a sort of a miniature cattle truck with a roof used as a hop on hop off taxi, was flagged down by the first aggressive faces I've seen Indonesia. It was pretty obvious who these large angry men where when they started slapping the driver around. The money ...