the illusion of freedom

For those of you who live in south east asia and know a lil bit about the buddhist lifestyle probably know that there is this ritual where you need to buy wildlife animal and set them free. Of course the thought is good, to set free wild animal that aren't suppose to be caged, but is the end really justify the mean??

The most popular animal to be bought and set free is the passer montanus bird (called burung gereja/church's bird in indonesia)
In most temple here in Medan-Indonesia you can almost be sure you can spot a man selling this birds outside the building. Temple goers buy them in groups and set them free, and go home feeling good about themself, proud that they can be categorized as one of those person who try to make the world a better place. Ohhh the beauty of ignorance, did they really help those birds??

why would the guy sell this birds at the 1st place anyway?? why would he go the trouble to catch them?? need time to think.......??





....insert you own personal fav thinking music here....




its simple economic's principle called supply and demand, those birds are almost of no economic value if not because of the demand from these people. stop the buying, and the catching will stop too.

YOU are the reason they end up being caged and treated badly (those seller are poor people who had trouble landing a job themself, its not exactly like they are running a bonavide pet shop, they can't really afford to keep feeding the birds and hundreds and maybe even thousand are kept inside a small cage so that it can fit behind his bike, some of the birds die inside the cage)

YOU did this to them, but yet you walk home thinking you have been a saving grace to them!!

if you really do care about the well being of these wildlife, then donate your money to one of the wild life organization fighting to help this animal, or get involve in their project. But i know for a fact that most of the people who buy those birds from temple won't be bothered, because they doesn't want to take time out of their "busy" life to actually do something meaningful, going to the temple and spend some money to buy and then release those birds take only 10min, and they can feel good about themself for days and weeks. Make me remembered an episode from the sitcom friends where Joey argure that there aren't any unselfish good deeds, all good deeds are selfish.


Somebody should really tell the temple's elders and explain it to them so they can stop their followers from continuing doing this stupid good deeds.

cya later alligator

Been holding back to post about the crocodile breeding farm in Asam Kumbang (Medan - Indonesia) for a while because i thought i should keep building my photos collection from the place, but then i realise i will never get enough photos, so here is the post, and if i do get some new good photos from the farm you will prob see it from my facebook sometimes in teh future then.

okay, so here in Medan we got this crocs breeding farm that have been operating since 1959, from the newspaper clipping that read in the location they started out with only 2 crocs that was captured by the locals somewhere in the North Sumatera river and expanded into this big tourist attraction (by big i mean size, because the owner been struggling financially to keep the farm alive since forever) and housed around 2.500 crocs today, which consist of down-stream crocodiles (buaya muara / Crocodylus porosus) and swamp crocodiles (Tomistoma schlegelii).

The place is located around 10km from downtown Medan. entry fee is only IDR 5.000 per person + IDR 3000 for car parking. They feed the crocs around 5pm with dead chicken, so best time to visit is around this time, as many of you already know that crocodile is ambush predator and master of playing dead, so outside of the feeding time you prob wont see much happening.

alrighty, i'll let the photos speak now....

if you would like to end a life of a poor lil chick or duck you can purchase them at the location for IDR 30.000 each, you get to throw them straight to the swamp and watch the crocs fight over it. And you can always bring your own poultry, but i heard they no longer allow you to bring a dead birds for feeding anymore in fear of poisoning.

The smaller crocs are put inside this concrete basin, but one or two of the really really big one is in one of these basin too, perhaps to guarantee sighting for visitor, if they were to thrown into the swamp with thousands other we prob will never see or appreciate their size

one of the giant

the famous tail-less crocs

the swamp

meet the stars of the show

below is the feeding vaganza pics, some reader may find this pics disturbing, you have been warned.....




haaa!! apparently some of the more gory pics cant be upload due to some error of blogspot, you lucky bastards.

the other time i was there they happen to be moving some of the crocs to a different location, it present an opportunity for me to go where no other visitor ever go before, inside the swamp!!!

photo op

some of the captured crocs waiting to be load to the truck and escorted somewhere else (some rich dude somewhere in Medan wanted an exotic pet i guess)

oh well, error while uploading pics again, you don't get to see those crocs all tied up just lying there powerless anymore

lake toba vaganza part 3

the last part,

This the trip i took with my photography club, TPC - Toba Photographer Club. The spots is Balige, Tara bunga, Muara Nauli, its located at the south end of lake toba, 6 hour drive from Medan, 2 hour from Perapat, but we took the midnite trip so there were no traffic at all.

We reach the town of Balige at around 5am and stop by the best gas station in the entire town that is owned by one of our member, with the local knowledge he is gonna be the one bringing us to this various spot with the killer view. And from Balige we drive for another 30min to this place called Tara Bunga, some of you might heard about Tara Bunga hotel before, the hotel owned by T.B Silalahi, one of the former minister in indonesia, and owner of the T.B Silalahi centre here in Balige, check out the site here

and here is us going in to the spot in Tara Bunga to catch the sun rise, its a small village road where you can see from the pics below its kinda a problem for a big tourist bus to get trough.


P.S click to view photos in bigger size

this roof is getting in our way

this house is actually build illegally on the wrong place

this is the owner of the house

our friend the local Balige, Mr. Sebastian Hutabarat get into action to get us out of this pickle. I am actually getting my own hand in pushing this roof too right after i snap this one shot.


this is the aftermath of the roof.

all the hunters

and soon the sun come out to break the cold, all the freezing photographer start to warm up and get their gears ready, oh and having a friend who is kinda a local public figure is great because he arrange for some bull and some farmer to come out and "pose" as our model in the padi/rice field

the hunters in action





this is the same location but on the other side, Tara Bunga is kinda a peninsula, and we simply switch side for this view.

loving the diff layer of blacks on the cliff

having a brekkie with a killer view


this is prob about time i show the spots in a map, so you can get a lil idea of where is where. Perapat here is on No.1, and Balige (2) is about 2 hour drive from Perapat, Tara Bunga, this 1st location where all the sun rise shots took place is No.3. and for the sun rise we were facing east or facing the town of Balige (1) itself, and for these 2nd view we simply swtich to face west.

group shot

we donate some trees and some money to the locals to take care of all the trees.

the planting of the tree, Im not part of the officialls member given the chance to symbolically plant the trees, but no crime in snapping one photo right :p

from this side we were actually facing samosir island, but its kinda mysty so samosir is hiding behind all those myst.


With samosir gone behind the myst the horizon looks like those of a sea


some local kids is washing her toys and stuff, its good that they actually have the sense to clean their stuff, but its bad that there weren't many clean water resources and they had to clean it in a river thats not very clean, as you can see the water is drak brown!

the cousin of one of our member who is not a photographer decide to tag along the trip and try her talent on being a model, good for us as we can take a break from snapping landscape shot and have some model shot.

the office of the village chief. You get the idea of how basic this village is when the office of the village chief is smaller than the garage of most city houses.


and now we make our way to muara nauli (spot #4) and location of our hotel. as you can see from the map, there is a small island in front of the spot, its Pulau Sibandang (#5) and its right in front of the hotel we were staying, here we make our way down to the valley and you can see pulau Sibandang from above (yes, its the one with the arrow pointing at it)
the road on the way down to hotel (#4)
the valley of Muara Nauli. Its so hugh and beautifull, can't get it all fit in a cam lense. you just have to see it with your own eyes to really appreciate the beauty of it all.

reaching the hotel. check them out here

the back side of the hotel.

and thats Sibandang island (#5) opposite from us


the furthest out part of the hotel which is now covered in water and plenty of small Pori-Pori fish (specialty of Lake Toba) swimming around

Sibandang island

looking back at the hotel

the hotel is good, clean, friendly staff and everything, its just the lack of activity that might kill it one day (actually i heard they are bleeding money already). Muara Nauli is a small valey in this part of Lake Toba, and unlike Tuk-Tuk or Tomok where its a cultural centre and everything, here there aren't much going about. The hotel does have a tour package where they take you to Tarutung (another town around 1hour drive from Muara) for sightseeing and some soda water spa. Too bad this trip we didn't went there, so can't tell you much about it. But if you are up for a bit of exploring and love a killer view, a 3-4 days trip down this region wouldn't be so bad.

later the afternoon we go around a different spot around Muara.

and thats Samosir up there near the horizon

bulls is everywhere in this part of the world

some of the road condition here

not a pretty sight, looks like the only way this villager know hot to get rid of their rubbish is to burn 'em. you can see all the smoke spot down at the valley all over the places.

another spot in Muara, this is late in the evening, suppose to get some sunset fun, but the sky decide to let rip a heavy rain instead

the room of the hotel, very clean, with hot shower

and thats about it for day 1, day 2 start early morning for another sun rise action. and i will post it later here....(should have know that it will take me hours to finish this post)

here come part 2 of part 3 :p

sunrise hour, this spot is only about 10min from the hotel.

nope, thats not the sun up there, its the moon

fisherman with their canoe come along, actually we pre-ordered them the day before.


this kids were having a camping and a nice sleep when suddenly even before the sun break the sky 24 photographers with all their gears and stuff invaded their turf.

after this, we hired a boat to take us around the area and finally stopping at this little village called Bakkara.

view of the hotel from inside the boat

live free!!!

this is a mango tree. its called mangga udang (shrimp mango) a specialty of this area. Its much smaller in size than your average mango. everywhere in the hill you see the mango trees.


mango trees everywhere

reaching Bakkara village.some of them suddenly more interested in model shot than landscape

fish market

and this is the pori-pori fish they sell


working hard harvesting the rice

the padi/rice field

the local children is in shocked being "attacked" by a bunch of photographers

and finally had lunch at the
house of the village chief, barbeque pori-pori fish and the best sambal (chilli sauce)
i ever tasted in my life called sambal andaliman, it was made from some local ingredients.

and below is just a selection of shots from my tele lense, it started with the day 2 sunrise and the rest of the shots is mostly of area and activity around the route of our boat riding taken from inside the boat itself, and some after we reach Bakkara.

local kids having fun

happy to be photographed, and happy to shoot back, and the 3rd one looks like just finish peeing

a very simple fishing net made out of tree branches

local boy looking at a boat full of photographer, not an everyday sight in this part of the world. and his water buffalo is equally shocked

a series of birds shot, all kind of birds hang around in the tree in this area, and they were scared away by the loud boat's machine.

thats it folks, i think this is the longest and with most pohotos post ever. and it took me 2 days to finish posting it. hopefully it will tempted somebody enough to come to this region. its truely is a very beautiful place.