The bus cramped many people in it. I think there were 7 people in the row in front of me.

Finally arrived at Parapat at around 10.30am. The 500 km ride took almost 17 hours!
Parapat is actually a small town beside lake toba. Lake Toba is the largest lake in South East Asia (1130 km^2) and was formed when a giant volcano erupted around 70 thousand years ago. Archaeologist mentioned that the eruption killed most human then and caused volcanic winter which decreased the earth temperature for few years.

Indonesia has a lot of Volcanoes, a lot of it are still active.
Volcanoes in Indonesia

Samosir is something like an island in the middle of Lake Toba but is connected to the mainland as well. The size of Samosir is similar to the area of Singapore. Tuk Tuk is at the eastern tip of Samosir where most of the hotels and guesthouses are located.

[mappress]

Took the hourly ferry at 11.30am to Tuk Tuk.

Kids swimming in the lake

Met a German lady who is the owner of Toba Cottage (50,000 Ruppiah) and managed to convince me to stay there.

Rent a motorbike (40,000 Ruppiah) for a few hours and ride around the quasi island.

Lake Toba area is populated mostly by the Batak people. Many years ago Batak was a cannibalistic tribe where they ate human. People in Padang area are pretty conservative Muslims but the Bataks are very strong Christians. There are around 6 million of them living around Northern Sumatera.

View around Samosir

Batak architecture

Tomb of a Batak King

Today is actually a public holiday in Indonesia. It’s the day of Silence, Hari Raya Nyepi which is a Balinese new year celebrated by the Hindu. I heard that in Bali, even airport is shut down to keep the sound level low.

Because there are so many different ethnicities in Indonesia, the government is trying hard to unite the country. Races are not that obvious since everyone speaks Bahasa Indonesia fluently. Unlike Malaysia, on Indonesia national identity card, ethnicity is not a required item. Only religion has to be shown on the ID, there are only 5 major religions (Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, Protestant and Catholic) that can be chosen, atheism and agnostic are not one of the option so pretty much everyone has to pick a religion.