Lake Toba vaganza part 1

ok..here goes

this is the 1st trip to Lake Toba, this is a family day trip with the far away cool uncle that I'm telling you about in my last post.

suppose to start the trip at 6am, but being Medan we finally board the big bus at 6.45am.

the pictures start at this small rumah makan somewhere before Siantar if Im not mistaken, and this stop is not requested by any of us but instead the bus driver wanna have some breakfast!! I think this is the first time ever i ever join the trip when the hired driver called the shot. But being a trip with mostly over 50 people not much dramas came out of this unschedule stop. Everybody is happy for the rest and toilet/tea/coffee break.






























and our own scheduled stop is in the town of Siantar, famous for Kok tong coffee house :p
and this temple where the giant Kwan Yin statue stands grandly.

this is the cool uncle who own a Mustang and Desert Eagle, at the statues of the 12 chinese zodiac

my mum in front of the prosperity stones or some sort, they say its a good place and all of them (exclude me of course) had a picture taken in this same spot.

one of the deity statue

my mum having a chat about this giant bell with my aunts

the giant bell

the giant Kwan Yin statue

family portrait


the bridge that connect the old part of the temple (its currently being torn down to make way for a renovation)


this is the older brother of the cool uncle, having a "moment" with the deity statue


lake Toba fishing farm, taken on board the bus


"the coin kids" who asked passenger of the ferry to throw coins into the water, they will dive and find it, and then they keep it in their mouth, since they are naked. But now that coins money are so worthless they start asking for paper money!!


teng teng for everyone!!



the ladies


the gentlemen




enjoying a local batak songs from the kids on board the ferry on the way to Samosir island


heading for Samosir


looking cool



reaching Tomok (Samosir)


buying and eating Samosir bananas


from a "just looking" to a shopping spree where in total over 30 pashmina were bought, happy day for this local merchant where business is usually very slow, especially in this low season


visiting the old tomb of the king of Toba



traditional Batak Toba house. you can see a wooden human shaped doll in front of the house there, its call the Sigale-gale. its a musical puppet show, legend has it that in the past whenever someone is dead, you can held a ceremony of spirit calling, where the spirit of the dead will entered a wooden doll and moved it, and the living can communicate with their dearly departed.

snapping the map of Lake Toba

me and my uncle in carolina hotel

group shot, this is everybody

another popular spot, everyone got their pic taken in this bending coconut tree


on the way home we had dinner at Simpang Tiga restaurant, at the original simpang tiga location in Perbaungan.

this is it, the next trip is another day trip to Berastagi, Tongging, Simalem.

Lake Toba vaganza

the week i hit Lake Toba 3 times in 3 different spots all in 1 week!!

been staying home a lot, cause once the wedding start to slow down, the aftermath (read: editing, album designing/producing etc) start to stacked up like a giant UNO game that refuse to crumbled down. So last week I (or rather my parents) got a visit from a distant relative (well, distant for me) from overseas that i never see or prob never know existed before. Well, i don't even know what to call him in english, ok lets see, he is my father's mother's big brother's son. He came with his siblings, another 2 males and 2 females, so its 5 in all. Normally i wouldn't take much interest in this kind of distant relative thingy, cause it involve boring old people talk about boring old stuff hehe (sorry everyone). But my mum ask (or kinda half ordered) me to join them in their 1st dinner in Medan to take some photo. There were 14 people there for the dinner, and me and my gf is the only one under the age of 50, but hey turn out i had some fun.

this particular uncle (i just call him uncle i guess) which now live in Canada turn out to be the guy who got all the things i wanted in life, he drive a mustang for heaven sake!!! for those who read my blog religiously (yeahhh...and that's like no one) would remember my post about my dream car, a mustang is one of the few. And he work for the Canadian Royal Police Force so he never get a ticket for speeding (and he confessed that he speed quite much) . On top of that he is a gun enthusiast, not only that he join a club and know how to shoot but he collect them too. When he was telling me his collection and he asked "whats the most powerful handgun in the world??" and i was like "ohhh tell me you don't actually own a DESERT EAGLE!!!"
yeahhhh, again, thats like my fav handgun!!! and right now i can't even afford a decent replica of the desert eagle yet. To continue the rubbing it in my face, his gun collection read like this, an M16, Smith&Wesson magnum revolver, sig sauer, and a few less know gun!!!

OMFEH (oh my fakin everything holy) just dreaming about me driving the mustang itself it enough to make me drool like a fool, but to imagine driving the mustang while shooting the desert eagle at pedestrian!?! ohhh...wait...no, i'm not actually gonna do that (pls still invite me to go to your place and drive and shoot your gun uncle) and i'm not about to go on a rampage to kill everyone on sight in a shopping mall too.

anyway, turn out we really got a lot of same interest and the fact that he speak the better english in all of his sibling turn us even closer, and he keep asking me to go to Canada to visit him, well with the mustang and desert eagle waiting there for me, believe you me, once its possible for me like hell i will go!!

oh dammit...i should prob go back to writing about the lake toba thingy huh?! after all its the tittle of this post....yeah so as all of you Medanese know that its almost a dead rubber to bring an overseas guest to lake toba when they visit Medan. So i gladfully invited myself to join the trip with a bunch of old(er) people, of course no one will have any objection with that either, because they will have tons of great pics and I'm the one who knows the place better than all of them combined.

On tuesday the 17th we hired a big tour bus and go to Perapat, i suggested the Simarjarungjung/Tanjung onta route but apparently thats too adventurous for people their age :p so we take the normal/boring route via Siantar instead, but its ok, since i got to visit that huge statue of the Kwan Yin in Avalokitesvara Temple, the biggest temple in Siantar for the 1st time ever.
We didn't stay the night, its a day trip. And on the 19th we went to Tongging, Simalem and berastagi, a day trip as well. And then on the 20th to the 22nd I went with my photo club's mates to Balige,Hutaginjang, Muara nauli. So as you can see (if you are good with geography) in that 1 week i already hit Lake Toba in 3 different direction, 1st Perapat which is the middle (eastern part of Lake Toba) and then Tongging/Simalem which is the head (northern part) and then Balige which located at the bottom (south). All i need to do is go pass Tele/Paguruan to complete the full circle.

well, post with all the pics will come up later, as you know once i post something with pics in it it normally consist of tons and tons of them. So i need to find a time to go tru the pics and resize and sit here like a nice lil boy and type and load.

untill the pics come up.............

a partial of a partial solar eclipse

As most of us know that today there was a solar eclipse visible from most part of south east asia, as its not everyday you can catch eclipse from your house i was pretty excited with this. At its peak the amount of sun covered by the moon will be around 58%, and thats a pretty good number as more than half the sun will be "gone", though not as near the spectacular sight as the total solar eclipse which almost everybody that ever witnessed it describe as the bestestttttt ever natural phenomenon visible from planet Earth.

well anyway, so the day started great, clear blue sky that is not an everyday occurance in medan, around 3.20pm i was up at my rooftop ready with my gears, little did i know i was only allowed to have fun for like 10-15min or so, as after that a huge blanket of cloud sweep over and taken over the whole sky for the rest of the evening, at around 5pm the cloud is so thick that the whole sun is complete gone. so here is what i able to capture...

oh btw the next solar eclipse visible from medan is on 22nd of July, but thats only a 11% obscuration rate, meaning only 11% of the sun is covered, so its a pretty lame eclipse :p

sun shiny day

(yeah i know my cam's sensor is in need of a good loving from mr.sensor cleaner)

trying to see the sun with the help of an old negative film

in action

the beginning

the greatest eclipse before the cloud ruin the whole show

and the fun is over

this guy prob sick with the cloud and decide to go watch it at outer space

anyway, here i found a pretty nice pic of the eclipse rite on the sunset

second bite of the cherry

Here are the photos from the second trip into my "backyard jungle". brought along my DSLR, but again lacking the real macro lense, talking bout macro lense, my bday is close, and here is what i would love to have




if you got me this then you don't have to got me anything for the next 5 bday and still got invited to my bday party (if i ever held one) hey there is nothign wrong with wishfull thinking rite?!




lets the picture tour begin............

the entrance

these stuff were planted by the illegal aliens, my best guess is casava, but can't be sure at all. any idea anyone?

could be a rat's pit, racoon's pit, or snake's pit, i try to poke it with a long stick but nothing came out, maybe they are nocturnal

variety of different flowers and plants



bug's eyes view



bee!!! macro photog fav. this dude (well, again can't be sure a dude or a chick) is having his afternoon tea and i come bugging him



caterpillar or some sort




variety of small insects that are too small to be proper photographed unless you buy me the lense above.


macro photog all time fav!! flies having sex!!!

you will understand the caption better after you see the last photo of this post.
(click for bigger pic if you can't read)


then i know i gotta leave when i see this.

me walking in there was prob like a friggin all you can eat buffet to this blood crazy lil mozzy. they were all over me and having too much fun sucking my blood they didn't seems to care when i smack em dead. They prob overweight and too heavy too fly anyway from what i see.

imaging all these mozzy all over the place, millions of them, whenever they are hungry they prob fly over to my house and suck at whoever blood they can get their disgusting mouth on.....ahhh if only i can get my hand on one of those fogging machine...................................

a (very) lil escapism (but very fun)

whoaaaaa its been so long that the last time i blog the internet is yet to be invented, well obviously thats not true since i need the net to blog and without the net........ahhhhhh u get the zist (isit just me or my humour is getting cheesier and cheesier??)

well wat make me finally start typing again u ask?! i found a little place for a little adventure - not really just found it, i know its there for like 2 years and been wanting to explore it since forever - and whats even better is that its literally only 5 seconds (yes you read right, i did type seconds and not minute) from my front door!

so its this place between 2 high wall along the side of the residential complex i live in, for those of you playing from medan its cemara asri and you might notice there is a giant sewage or a rather small river (im not sure which) going all the way on the side of this complex, and there is a high wall right on the side of this river/sewage and then another wall further inside which serve as the wall directly to the street of my house, and this hidden paradise is between these 2 wall.

i've been wanting to explore that little place since forever, and at the spur of the moment i did it this evening. After walking for a few minutes and discover that its so large i go back in the house and bring my mountain bike...i didn't bring along my DSLR as its a spur of a moment thing and im happy that i didnt as some of the terrain is rather tough and i actually did fall off from my bike, so you see i cant have a heavy DSLR dangling from my neck while i did all this. so all this pictures is taken with my rusty Sony Erickson k800i

some of the part are narrower than this but with taller plants and stuff

car tracks, some of the local people around this neighbourhood been coming in here and plants stuff, i guess its the deal between the big boss that build this complex and the local people as to keep them being a "good lil boy". the same case with the huge and beautiful mosque right at the entrance to this complex, build by the owner of the complex as a form of "bribery" if you like for the people around the area.

this little no man's land (well not really, as i already said some of the locals did come in here and plants stuff, hell they even build a small settlement hut - as you will see in later picture-) go all the way to the big empty land beside the mosque and lead to the main street. there you can see the mosque on the left of the pic.


and here is the mosque that i took few months ago at about 2am in the wee hour, and when medan had their regular power blackout, hence the nice and dark sky




going the other way around heading deeper into the complex the access is not that friendly as this is what i end up with, but i wont be much of an adventurer if a lil dirt and some wild grass can stop me from my track, so i keep padling aways crossing all this wild unknown plants with all kind of equally wild and unknown insects and other living creatures




as you can see i can't go anywhere further, as this is surely too much for me to get across, at least when i come in here all prepared and fully geared up it might be a different story, which i will certainly try again another day, but still i doubt i can get trough this extremely high and thick bush.



and here is that lil hut build by the "farmer" that grow some of the stuff in here

Hi, if you read this message then i didnt make it, pls tell my mum that i love her dearly. no, not really, im not dead yet, so pls don't go and tell my mum that i am. seriously.....im alive and well, put that phone down!! (as if u know my mum's phone number)


this is not a set up, i really did fall from my bike, luckily i manage to jump off it before i fall down to this big hole right next to it.



my house were always felt like a lil jungle as every now and then i found wild animal roaming around the area, some of my regular reader (im not even sure i got a regular reader as im a very irregular blogger) might remember the post about a big racoon that i found in the middle of the nite. what...oh u never read that one? since im such a nice guy here is the pic




and there is this moneter lizard that practically make nest in one of my storage room. i never did found the rest of his (again, cant be sure if its a he or she) family though, hmmm maybe one day i will be surprised by a meter long moneter lizard....


this lil thing later turn into bees, these damn bees make nest all over the wall of my house, this one is broken open by me. hey i don't want all of them succesfully turn into bees and attack me later on



and here is a rather tame finding, this little dude just hanging out in the middle of the street where all cars crusing by, i was just saving his life when i pull him(wait, i never know for sure if its a he or she) aside and later on into my car and drove back home. but i then set him free again a few days later.

ohh and my neighbour did see a cobra crossing his house before, so there goes the list of wild animals that live with us.

damnit i really lust over an ass kicking macro lense rite now, especially with all kind of weird but beautifull creatures all over my house, if im lucky i might find a snake there at m "jungle backyard". well i will definately go back with DSLR and take more shoot, will post again soon...keep checking back (pretty please)