Zue's Personal Blog

Early morning, we had our breakfast before took ferry heading to Samosir Island. Lake Toba is in the centre of the homeland to the Batak people but 'Tano Batak' covers an area the size of Belgium within North Sumatra. With their own language, the Batak are mainly Christian, encountering Christian missionaries in the 1850's and 1860's from Holland and Germany. The current estimated population of Samosir is 120,000. Including Lake Toba there are six major Batak regions - Toba Batak, Karo Batak, Kakpak/Dairi Batak, Simeulungun Batak, Angkola Batak and Sipirko Batak. Around 1.5 Million Batak live amongst these regions. The Karo Batak and centered around Berastagi. Three megalithic sites on Samosir bear witness to the glory - and horror - of Batak history. The three consist of 300-year-old stone seats and benches arrayed in a circle. The first set of ruins was used as a confere...

For day 02, not much activities since the journey from Medan to Parapat Lake Toba to hours. After breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, we continued our journey to Parapat. On the way  there, we stop at Paten, a famous shop selling  local foods.  Varieties of foods selection served for breakfast.  PATEN  sell snack mostly made of peanut. We arrived at Parapat and went to a local restaurant for lunch. They served us with Nasi Padang and variety of dishes which one of it is a dish of Famous Ikan emas (Gold Fish) , part of Lake Toba legend. We then went to our Hotel, Danau Toba International Cottage, Parapat.The scenary is superb. The Lake look like an ocean. Lake Toba , the largest lake in South East Asia, and the deepest in the world, was formed 75,000 years ago after an earth splitting volcano eruption. It is the largest and deepest volcanic crater lake in the world. It's 906 meters above sea level with an...