I have been to Lake Toba a few times now and always have a great time staying there. It is one of the most quiet and relaxing places I have ever been to.
The people are very friendly and it is a very cheap place to stay. I am planning on adding more information to the site in the coming months.
www.laketoba.info

I am in Jakarta now for a few days and experienced heavy rains here for the first time. Of course it rained often in Medan where I have been living, but the drainage system seems to work well there. Not so in Jakarta. I was using the free wifi in a hotel restaurant and when I thought the rain had subsided, I tried making a quick dash back to my hotel in backpacker ghetto of Jalan Jaksa.
The street looked more like a river. The footpaths along …

After catching our flight to Padang and a bus the next day to Bukittinggi, due to an illness in my girlfriend’s family we had to go back to Medan.
We only had about a half-day sightseeing in in Bukittinggi. All of the flights were full back to Medan so we had to take the economy bus. It was about an 18-hour trip, which was a little painful at times, but an interesting experience.
If you look at a map the distance isn’t so great, but the …

With a fresh new visa stamp in my passport I am starting another mini-adventure in Indonesia. The first leg of the trip will be from Medan to Padang. I checked my Lonely Planet and it said the bus takes around 20 hours. I don’t mind traveling by bus or train, but I have a tolerance level of around 10 hours. So I decided it would be better to fly.
Indonesia Matters has a great article on the pros and cons of booking airline tickets in Indonesia. …

My sister recommended me the book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
. She warned me that it was a “girly book” but I like travel books and since one of the countries the author visits is Indonesia, I thought I would give it a read.
Some parts of the Italy section were good. It was supposed to be about food, but food was only the topic in a few paragraphs. Nothing like an Italian version of a “Year in Province”. …

I went to the crocodile farm here in Medan yesterday. I have never been up so close to them, it was a little frightening. They had some in concrete pens and more swimming in a lake. Entrance fee was around 5,000 rupiah. For an extra 50,000 you could feed a duck to them.

Well, I didn’t get to drive the train, but it was as close as I was ever going to get to driving a train. Coming back to Medan after a four day holiday in Indonesia, the buses and trains were packed. Now I have been to Japan and China so I thought that I would be fine traveling on a packed train, but Indonesians take it to a new level.
When the train pulled into the station, people ran to the doors that were already full. The people …

You never know what you are going to come across walking around Indonesia. Today it was some bats being sold by the road side. My first thought was maybe for a pet, but then I remembered bat being something of a delicacy in Indonesia.
I was kind of curious as to how you cook bats, so thanks to Google, I found this recipe:
FRUIT BAT SOUP
Serves 4
• 3 fruit bats, well washed but neither skinned nor eviscerated
• Water
• 1 Tb finely sliced fresh ginger
• 1 large onion, quartered
• Sea salt …

After reading this editorial in the Jakarta Post I wanted to write my own article on why I think Bali is more popular than other islands in Indonesia.
The editorial tries to answer the same question, but only seems to talk about religion and the main religion of the Balinese – Hindu.
While Balinese Hindus are preparing for the observa-tion of Nyepi, hopefully it is not regarded as offensive or ridiculous to ask a tempting question: Will Bali remain as magnificent as what it is now when Hinduism is not …

I am quickly finding out that travel in Indonesia is always a bit of an adventure. I decided to visit Lake Toba for the weekend to get out of Medan for a few days. The trip is about a 4 hour drive from Medan to Parapat, which you then travel by ferry to Samosir Island.
The road into Parapat is pretty good by Indonesian standards, although it can get narrow in places and there are a few tight bends. The road goes downhill as you …