listening to: interview with Pak Amin
DISCLAIMER: THIS POST IS SO CONFUSING! I COULDN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND MY ENGLISH IN THIS JUMPY PLOTTED STORY!
But not my fault. I'm in a rush when writing this!
So I'm still in the sort of dreamy mood at the moment. It's hard to focus my mind 100% onto work and get back to the serious pace once again. I've been doing okay... Though I did make a mistake of putting the plug of the voice recorder in the wrong hole when I interviewed a political expert over the phone yesterday. That resulted to the slightly less accurate transcript for I couldn't listen to it again. Sigh...
After the church wedding...
The church where Ernie and Ken got married.
The bride and groom.
ANYWAY... life's been good. Especially great even last week when I was on vacation in Samosir island surrounded by the biggest lake in Indonesia (after Ernie's wedding). It's gorgeous! One of the must-see places in this country. All travelers, listen to me. GO TO LAKE TOBA!
In summary of the place..
It takes about 6 hours in total to get there (probably 5) from Medan. We went on a bus journey to Pematang Siantar, had a delicious lunch at some Chinese restaurant there, then went on again in rougher, curvy roads up and down the mountains for an hour (good that Pam wasn't joining, she could be so sick), arrived at the small port town called Parapat, and crossed the huge lake by the hotel's boat (I felt like I was going in a luxurious trip, really) for about 30 minutes to an hour.
Me with the boat.
Me and Ernie on the boat.
Parapat.
Me again on the boat on the way to Lake Toba.
Carolina Hotel was awesome. It's got nice view to the lake and for a deluxe room I got (1 living room, 1 bedroom and a bathroom with hot water), Rp 145,000 a day was a good bargain. Second day in Samosir island we were just lazying around at the hotel. I started the day with taking Ken and Ernie's post wedding photos, though. It was a great fun. Maggie, Ken's sister, joined the photo shoot too. This is one of the shots..
Day after many of us went on a boat trip around some parts of Samosir island. We basically did some historical, touristy things like visiting the old cannibal Bataknese village, Batak Kings tombs, had lunch at a small island called Pulau Tao (GREAT scenery, I even swam there though it needed a LOT of encouragement, but now I can say that I HAVE SWUM IN LAKE TOBA!!!) that had only one restaurant (ridiculously expensive compared to the other places in North Sumatra and has a bizarre perception of what FU YONG HAI is). So I ordered this Chinese omelette (with sweet and sour sauce on top, I mean supposed to be) and I was served this scrambled egg that consisted of 90% cabbage, 5% egg and 5% carrot!!!!). I was very annoyed. But anyway, that was the ONLY disappointing cuisine experience I had in North Sumatra. The rest was awesome. The whole Sumatra island clearly has the most delicious food ever in Indonesia. And oh, I had this Terong Belanda juice literally everyday. You can hardly find it anywhere else in the country.
Me and other people trying the Batak dance. Very easy. Just walk and wave the ulos and shout HORAS!!!
I just wished I could do more shopping there, though. We were in a very tight schedule on the boat trip and once they almost left me in one of the places because I was busy getting myself a white T-shirt with a Lake Toba embroidery on it.
I wish I could say much more, but lunch time is over. I've got to get back to work.
Ciao.
woa....danau toba! kerennya....kapaaaan bisa kesana ya?!?! hasil jepretanmu bikin tambah pengen kesana :p
ReplyDeletebtw, makanan north sumatra apa aja sih la?!
AAAAAAAAAAAHHH PINGIN KE DANAU TOBA!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteSEINDAH ITU KAH?????
I would have made hundred thousand pictures and this blog would have been longer, had it been MY holiday hahahahhahaha...
Lho La, the wedding ceremony was in Jakarta, then all the families + the grooms family went to Toba? Ernie orang batak ya?
Shier: kenapa ya friends networkku selalu menitikberatkan pada makanan? hahaha... well, aku ga tanya namanya satu2.. asal makan aja semuanya. tp banyak babi dan rata2 pedas. aku juga makan salak pematang siantar yg warnanya MERAH MUDA. aneh sekali. rasanya sih sama aja, lebih sepet dikit. tp jadi ngerasa kayak makan jambu vs jambu monyet yg pink itu.
ReplyDeleteSheila: INDAH SEKALI!!! foto2 yg kupost disini masih satu bagian dari 3 Giga yg kuabisin buat moto2 disana. itupun karena ternyata aku bawa portable harddiskku yg udah penuh foto! jadi ga isa transfer. dan akhirnya aku harus banyak delete foto2ku. huuu...
btw... aku kan ga banyak waktu buat ngeblog lhooo... ini aja udah cepet2an makan siang trus cepet2an ngeblog. tp ntar ditambah2 deh, kalo inget.
weddingnya di Medan (bukan Jakarta). trus dari sana, keluarga dan teman suami Ernie ke Danau Toba. Only me on her side. I asked one of her cousins why nobody else in the family was coming, she said cause: A. they've got to work, B. they've been to Lake Toba a lot. and C (most important) they can understand English, but they have difficulties in putting their thoughts into verbal sentences. And sometimes they were lost to what those English people said. Most of them forgot that these people were not native English people and a lot of them were not used to speaking English a lot in their daily lives, so when they spoke the language too quickly, they didn't understand them.