Jen's Travelogue—Exploring Lake Toba, Medan Indonesia

Indonesia has a lot of beautiful places to visit and I can say that I have been to Indonesia numerous time already. Bali (few times), Jakarta, Bandung, and Lombok. Being a neighbouring country, it is impossible not to explore Indonesia with cheap flights offering in the market.

This time around I had a chance to explore the great Lake Toba situated at Medan, Indonesia. Stretched about 100Km, Lake Toba is the proud lake of Indonesian people.

Upon arriving at Medan's airport, we were greeted by our tour guide cum driver. From there, the guide drove us to Lake Toba for a 5-hours journey. We then had to take a ferry, transporting the car and us to reach the other side of Lake Toba.
Sorry there is no good picture for the ferry as we were totally tired of the early flight and total journey.

Besides the journey to the Lake Toba, on the route along, we stopped at some of the historic places. One of it is to visit the 'Batak' village.

This is a house for 'Batak' people near Samosir Island. See the roof's design? it is the pride symbol of 'Batak' peoples

Batak Toba culture centres on Lake Toba and the sacred island of Samosir that lies within it. source

Lake Toba

Finally arriving Lake Toba after full day in the car and all the stunning view from our hotels just washed away our tiredness.

Lake Toba is a large natural lake occupying the caldera of a supervolcano Source: Wiki

This is what I captured the day I arrived at this stunning lake. The Hotel that I stayed had integrated the Lake Toba with it infrastructure so the tourist can swim at the lake, enjoy a Banana Boat or Jet skiing

Sunset watching

The Hotel name is 'Toledo Inn'. It is easy to feel close with nature here. The surrounding was just quiet and peaceful

More exterior from the Hotel

Sight-seeing Lake Toba, Berastagi and Medan

Our tour to Medan is full of stops and picture-taking. I'll let my pictures do the talking from now on.

I'm a big tweetie birdy

Since Medan is a volcano site, there are two active mountains in Medan that is a haven for hikers.
Below is the view from Mount Sibayak, the other one is Mount Sinabung (no picture).

Mount Sibayak view

This is Sipiso-piso waterfall

The Sipisopiso is a plunge waterfall in the Batak highlands of Sumatra, Indonesia. It is formed by a small underground river of the Karo plateau that hurls itself from a cave in the side of the lake Toba caldera some 120 meters down to lake level Source

To get to this view, you need to do a 1 hour hike down and 1 hour hike return. What I can say that it is worth it.

Below is the view from Bukit Indah, Simaranjung. Amazing right?

I'm enjoying life and what life has to offer

What do I learned from this trip?

Medan is an unexplored place that is not crowded by tourist so it has great potential to be one of a good destination for Indonesia. Medan is surprisingly very cheap and I definitely will come back again to explore some adventure activities offered by the tour operator.

On a side note, the service level is a concern here and lack of regulation has made a lot of people manipulate tourists sites. It is rather frustrating to keep paying for picture spots, double payment for parking spots, entrance fees that are not regulated and all. Therefore it is advised to appoint a local tourist guide that will take care of all of these. Apart from that I just had a good time.

That's it from Jen!