During the Chinese New Year break, I had a little gathering with some of my best friends during secondary school. We were classmates since Form 3, year 2001.Well, PuiSee and I were good friends back then, I barely talked to Melisa nor ZhiFang, not until Form 4. Funny thing was, we were classmates ever since, from Form 3 - 5, then another two years spent on Form 6.
And if u know math, this year is the our first 10 years anniversary. So we thought of planning and going some where, to have little trip, among ourselves. Sadly to tell, we never been to a single trip before, even we know each other for 10 years now. Initially, PuiSee suggested to go Beijing, China, she said we got to visit to the China Great Wall, one of the seven wonders in the world once in our lifetime. ZhiFang and I both are easy going people, as long as it is a school holidays, (ZhiFang is a primary teacher) and as for me, a bit shame to say that, I am still a student, so I have the time. That's made it down to Melisa, the busiest person among us. And she was fine with it, so we set our trip on June school break.
We made the decision instantly, and we decided to go by very coming June, so guess what, we couldnt get a cheap flight to Beijing. So the plan changed, from Beijing, to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and u know what, we missed the promotion flight to Ho Chi Minh!!! Few days later, there was another promotion, and PuiSee and I decided to go to Medan, Indonesia. Seriously, I dont know there is a place called Medan until that day, haha. The other two were fine with the decision, as long as we able to get on the plane, and get ourselves out from Malaysia, haha.
I did some researches before going to Medan, well, I was forced to, because they let me in charge of the trip, planner! God I hate that so much. Need to come out with a budget control some more, that was a very hard time for me. And guess what was troubled me the most? I bought the wrong ticket from Kuching to KL, we were supposed to fly to Medan on morning of 30st May, but I bought the same day ticket, evening time, to fly from Kuching to KL. I am an idiot! That wasnt the worst, after knowing I purchased the wrong ticket, I checked with AirAsian again, luckily I was able to get RM25.00 ticket, excluded the taxes to KL on 25th of May, I thought I could go back home first then headed to KL later. And damn it, I forget I had a training to attend, from 22nd to 28th of May. Jezz, I felt like killing myself already, but what to do, I repurchased another ticket on 28th, night flight. Luckily I was still able to get a flight with RM 25.00, else...sigh
Medan isnt a very interesting location to me, but I found out there is one spot in Medan worth to travel to, the Lake Toba. I searched for the information, and Melisa also helped to send me some links. It isnt the place interested me, but the views, from the photos, wah, incredible nice!
I spent two nights at KL, then finally the four of us got on to the plane, started our first trip ever, woohoo....
Medan is actually only 1 hour distance from KL. Well, Medan airport, very much smaller compare to all the airports I had been to, but only restricted to local airport. haha. The first thing when we got out from the airport, wasnt taking pictures, but checking with the taxi service, we checked before, from Medan to Lake Toba, it takes 5 hours. So we dont want to waste the time, got ourselves a taxi, Toyota Avanza, costed us Rp 600k.
The traffic, a complete nightmare, trust me!
We stopped some where for our lunch. They served the lunch like a buffet style, but smaller and less variety. They served, and charged only those we ate. It was around Rp 50k. Well, if u like hot and spicy, then u gonna love the food in Medan.
We stopped and took few pictures before we reached the Parapat town to get a boat to the Samosir island which is surrounded by the Lake Toba. The weather was nice, bright sun but cold, because it is a highland i think. Once we approached the boat, always someone approached us to recommend himself as our tour guide, and we decided to go by our own, budget constraint. The boat fee is Rp 7k.
After around 1 hour spent on the boat, we finally reached the Samosir Island. There are a lot of cottages, and we booked a room with Samosir Cottage. We took the family room, 2 rooms, 2 king size begs, tv, fringe, bath room, no hot water because it was broken! Rp 350k per night. We chose Samosir Cottage because from the posts I read, people chose Samosir Island, but only for Malaysian. The rooms are big, but too bad the hot water supplier broken. It was so so so cold to take shower in cold water under such a weather.
After setting down all the luggage, we went for a walk, to see how's the people living there. But we were actually still in the tourist zone, so we saw lot of souvenir shops, restaurants, and cottages, but not many local people. By the way, the people living at Samosir Island is known as Batak, just like Iban and Bidayuh in Sarawak. So, the food in Lake Toba, non-halal. We were hungry, so we simply went into one small restaurant., Orari Restaurant. The food price around Rp 12k to Rp 20k per dish.
Well, I forget what was the name of the food, but kind of obvious those were fried beehoon, fried noodles, then pork with homemade sauce, and the middle one, something like the pohpiah we used to eat in Malaysia.
Here stated the amount we spent for the first day, roughly, I lost the bill i kept, sweat
Taxi - 600k
Lunch - 52k
Boat - 28k (7k pp)
Cottage - 700k (2 nights)
Dinner - 70-80k
The next day, taking shower without hot water in the morning was miserable. We all knew that today we were going to ride on motor, and went around the island, so sun block was a must. I applied the sun block on my legs and arms, and thought applied on my face later after the breakfast. The cottage provided two set breakfast, either fried noodles or fried rice, but there were four of us, so we made extra order, egg waffle and bacon toast. I liked the egg waffle lots! haha.
We got real excited when we saw the motorbikes, couldnt wait to start the journey. Too excited, caused me left something I wished to do before, yupe, the sunblock!!!
On the very beginning of the journey, we were seriously excited, few minutes on the ride, then stopped for few minutes to take pictures, haha.
When the sun was approaching the center of the sky, we started to worry, because, we even finished 1/3 of the journey!!! We stopped and asked the people around, when they showed us where we were on the map, seriously, we started to worry if we able to get back to the cottage before dark. Either turned back or went on. We decided to went on, and we started to speed! I doubted the motors were modified, because no matter how fast I went, it showed on 60km/h, which based on my experience, it should be 80km/h at least!
Even we wanna to speed up our journey, the road condition started to change, from a smooth blacktop to stone crushed road. God, we couldnt even speed to 40km/h. At that moment, I knew we were all not in a very good mood! And we actually passing by the villages on the island. I believe that is what we used to rural area. People here lives a simple life, though the kids kept saying "money, money, money", I believe they are all friendly and kind hearted.
After almost 2 hours speeding, we finally reached the town with the hot spring, which is located on the middle of the map. We were a bit relieved as we knew we might be able to get back to the cottage by time. Speaking of the hot spring, disappointed. The hot spring was created because of the volcano. And I rather call it a hot stream, but it is a stream. The people takes that as a business opportunity, they stored the hot spring in a little pool, and the visitors have to pay for the entry. There are three-five this kind of hot spring provided shops. We just rode through, and stopped to take the pictures, then be gone!
In the rest of the journey, we were still speeding up, because when we got into the town, it is blacktop road again, hoorey. We didnt stop for taking pictures anymore, but the one sitting behind, for instance, ZhiFang and PuiSee tried to capture the nice scene while we were speeding, haha. Stil lot of quality pictures taken.
It had been a long long day!!! We were so tired and body sore!! Too bad there was no massage service, haha. We went for dinner, and they said wanna tried the BBQ fish, so we ordered one. Honestly, it was just ok. The fish was however fresh, as we saw the owner caught one in front of us, haha.
And yupe, we didnt take our lunch, I dont have the urge, because of the long riding, haha. We skipped our lunch, even though we could have our lunch when we were in the hot spring town. And of course, we didnt apply lot of sunblock, we were all burnt!!!
We had our own little activity during the nights. We watched the local drama, , got to say, not bad actually, but I found myself so hard to understand Bahasa Indonesia, and of course, no subtitle! And I brought manjong cards, and we had small punishment for those who lost the game, beer!!! 2 nights, total, 3 bottle, and 4 cans. Crazy us.
Dinner - around 50-60k
Motor - unable to recall... But it was cheaper than the people offered me before I got on the boat. And we rented the motorbikes from the Samosir Cottage as well, they actually rented from the villagers, so the motorbike condition is quite not bad.
The third day, again started with the cold water, and we need to prepare ourselves to check out and got back to Medan town. While we were having our breakfast, another couple from Malaysia sat next to us, and seeing 4 of us seriously burnt asking if we were on ride yesterday, and the guy talked to us, he himself also burnt. We talked for awhile, then we got to say, the world is small, coz the guy also from Sitiawan, in fact, senior from our secondary school, the very senior of course, haha. He was on vocation with his couple, and they were the crazy one as they were going for another island riding, for proper visiting, salute! One thing he mentioned about us, he said when he saw the way we started the engine of the motor day before, then he knew this group of four surely anak kampung!!! Because we were very get used with the motor, haha. We almost missed the time of the boat, and when we were in hungry, we forgot to pay for the breakfast bill!!! I paid only when I returned the room key, the worker showed me the bill, that was embarrassing.
We actually booked a van back to Medan through Samosir Cottage, and booked the hotel rooms at Medan as well. The hotel at Medan town is ok, but the driver, errmmm, no, unacceptable to me. He was splitting all way back from Parapat to Medan. And because he needed to split, so he let the windows open, and didnt turn on the air condition. At Parapat, it was ok because the weather was nice, and cold. But not all the way to Medan! Not to mention when the traffic got crowded, and lot of dust! However, one benefit of having the van service through Samosir Cottage is that the driver will bring you around to visit to another visiting venues. And of course, some of the venues required entrance fees, which they will charge us more because they need to pay the driver the fees of bringing people to visit these venues. And the driver we got, kind of asshole, he charged us quite a lot, but what to do? He told us if we wanna to go to visit the waterfall, which was supposed to be included in the service, according to the manager of the Samosir Cottage, we needs to pay another 100k\150k because it was a bit far from where we were at that moment. We managed to cut it to 80k, and just 1 or 2 minutes we made the deal, we were at the waterfall park. What the H***??!!
Backed to Medan town, we went to the shopping mall twice, the first night we stayed at Medan, and the second day, before we heading to the airport. The mall isnt any special, just that we prefer to find a place with air cond to have our dinner and lunch. I was very surprise when I saw the people smoking indoor! Due to that, the air cond, wasnt much help!!!
The first two food shown in the picture above were Baso, the local cuisine. It was just ok to us but PuiSee liked it alot, haha.
Van - 600k
Rooms at Medan - 350k each (x2, the disadvantage of having the cottage to book the rooms for us because they actually forbid us to share the room, and they will fine us because they knew exact how many people we have! But save the troubles.)
Dinner - Roughly 100k (downtown, shopping mall some more)
At the airport, we bought, layer cake!!! But got to say, the cake really nice, should give it a try, wasnt too expensive, I forgot the price though, we paid in RM if i not mistaken. Our flight backed to Malaysia was delayed for almost an hour. That's so bored at the airport, especially when the airport was so so so small.
Thanks to the delay, me and ZhiFang unable to get the bus back to Sitiawan from the airport. Luckily PuiSee and her boyfriend dropped us at Puduraya bus station, and it was 10pm already, and we havent eat our dinner yet!!! We bought 10.30pm bus backed to Sitiawan, so unable to have dinner with PuiSee and her boyfriend. We said our goodbye with Melisa at the airport, to PuiSee at the bus station, and I said goodbye to ZhiFang when we reached Sitiawan by 2.30am!
How much did we spend? PuiSee only changed RM400, Melisa and ZhiFang RM500, and me RM600. Each of us able to remain some balances after all, if dont feel like buying souvenirs, then RM400 should be enough.Like what we did, we did not save much for the budget for accommodations, not a high class hotel of course, but at least everyone of us had our own single bed to sleep every night. If you able to find a way to sneak in the hotel, and shared a double room with four person, then definitely saved a certain amount.
Finally finishing this blog, wanna write it immediately after the trip, but I was unable to get the pictures, not even single one! Because I didnt use my camera, and my memory card is still with Melisa, because hers was full when we were riding around the island. This raya holiday break, PuiSee, ZhiFang and I gathered for lunch two days ago, and finally we have the complete set of the pictures as ZhiFang took the pictures from Melisa while Melisa backed to Sitiawan.
That was a great trip, looking forward for the next trip, guess should be Beijing or Taiwan!!hahaha...
More pictures, my facebook account, only for friends though, haha.
2 comments:
Miss the time at Medan~~
we did have a good time lo...
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