Medan & Danau Toba, Indonesia, April 2012

I went on this company trip with my current job early in 2012 and for the longest time, I left all the photos still in my camera ... I'm not sure why I took such a long time to post all the photos, but because they were taken such a long time ago, I cannot remember most of the names of places we visited ... Most probably the reason why I took such a long time to have all these photos posted on this blog was because it was a so-so trip and I had little sleep during the trip, so didn't really enjoy it ...

In some dude's palace in Medan ... I can actually see my boss in this pix, and yeah, my cherished colleague J, who has since left the company

The guide mentioned something about Dutch influence in the design of the palace, which would make sense since Indonesia was colonised by the Dutch for a couple hundred years, I think

Some temple which I cannot recall the name of ... All I remember is that it started to rain pretty heavily when we reached the place ....

I think this is the market at Berastagi ... The only thing I remember of it is the accumulation of horse poo along the roads, giving them a nice sheen of brown ...

This image was captured when we stayed at our first hotel ... I'm hoping to find a kind, upright and faith-believing hunk at the end of the rainbow :) ...

This is the first hotel we stayed at... Can you see the name there? No, right ...

I think I can see my team leader in this pix ...

The Sipiso-piso Waterfall, methinks ...

It looks like a pix out of winter, doesn't it? ...

This is not a window, by the way ... Why would a window face the ground? From there, you can guess what it's for ...

This is the main living quarters of a traditional Batak village, I think ...

The food is okay, I guess, but me being picky meant that I didn't really sample a lot of the dishes ... The ubiquitous Jawa fermented bean curd cake, tempeh, was there, but I didn't feel like trying it ... I like soybeans when they're in liquid form, such as soy drinks ... As for fermented soy, I like one savoury dish using fermented soy, called "Kuah Masak Taucu", or fermented soy in liquid form, known to Malays in the Southeast Asian region as kicap, sort of a corrupted form of ketchup ... Hang on, I think the word ketchup comes from kicap ... Anyway, growing up and up to today, one of my favourite meals is white rice, with liberal dashes of kicap and telur dadar, or egg omelette ... Yum, yum, love it ...

I think this is the journey back to the mainland from Samosir Island, which is in the middle of Lake Toba ... Calling myself stupid enough times would not make it any better that I did not take any photos of the market we visited on Samosir Island ... After we visited this sacred burial ground on the island, which we were not allowed to take photos of, if I'm not mistaken, we were left on our own to explore the market ... I ended up tagging along with J, who turned on his charm with the ladies and got really good bargain prices after much haggling ... Plus, his Indon was pretty good ... Me, being a lousy haggler and also because I didn't have much money with me, did not buy that many stuff ... We were so wrapped up with our haggling manoeuvres that we were the last ones to arrive at the boat where everyone else was already waiting for us .... Only after I sat down on the bench did I realise that I did not take any photos of the market, with its colourful wares and equally colourful vendors ...

This is the bathroom in my room at the second hotel we stayed at ... Cannot remember the name of course ... I think it's in Parapat, then again I'm not too sure ... Anyway, the bathroom's colour scheme is reflective of the Batak culture ... Something to do with the spirit world, and two other worlds ... Whatever it is, each of the three worlds is represented by one of the three colours: white, red and black ... Since I was stupid enough to put off putting up these photos for so long, the explanation for them also got lost along the way, as I was also stupid enough NOT to write them down and felt that storing them in my obviously absent-minded brain was good enough ... Plus, the bathroom is much better than the one in the first hotel we stayed at ...

This is one cool driver ... He could slip through really tight bottlenecks, some times while we were ascending to higher roads ... Unfortunately, could not remember his name and my Bahasa Indonesia could barely pass muster anyway, much less my knowledge of the Jawa dialect ... Anyway, if I distracted him with my incessant nonsense, we would surely have gone off the cliff, and boy, there were some really deep gorges and we were practically staring into the pit of death ...