Lake Toba and on to Bungus and on and on and on...

 Lake Toba, in the centre-north of Sumartra provided our most scenic internet posting yet! Liza demonstrates by writing to people...

 Our hotel was on an island on the lake.... a beautiful place where the height again provided some escape from the heat.

 This is in the 'Batak' region where unlike most Indonesians, they are christian. They have a distinctive architecture which they stick to even with corrugated iron.

 Lake Toba is the 5th largest lake in the world.... A massive extinct caldera surrounded by high mountains.

 It is the worlds most beautiful swimming pool with the swimming temperature just perfect ... so we did a fair bit of testing.

 They even take the design through to the grave..

 I took this so I didn't have to bother to explain it's formation....

 Ancient & Modern!

 These old meeting chairs are circa 1500s

 I liked the old stone staircase too!

 These large signs are everywhere here, they are wedding celebration notices.


We spent about 3 days at the lake then traveled on to Padang on the west coast. A 2.00 pm ferry followed by a tuk-tuk to the bus station, a 2 hour wait and then a 16 hour bus ride to Padang. Indonesian roads are just terrible, climbing and falling along single track mud through a very wet night. Broken paved roads full of potholes are by far the worst and Sumatra seems to have nothing but. I worked out that the 16 hours covered about 450km, and this only had two 20min stops....

We found a very nice place to stay 20 km further south, here is the view from our room.

 And this is our place, how our standards have changed, a squat toilet  and the shower a big bucket with tap.... Liza still complains about having to wash her hair in cold water but they have slackened considerably and timing washing to the heat of the day makes it quite pleasant.

 We took a walk to the pictured (just) waterfall.... The walk once we entered the jungle was a real strain and climb.... we actually didn't make it all the way, driven back by the steep mud encrusted path and the leeches!

 We continued our journey down the west coast of Sumatra, wow it's beautiful with another stupendous bus ride. another 2.00pm start... we went about 3 miles in the wrong direction to get to this garage to fill up.

However like all the garages in town it was out of fuel hence the picture, we were stuck here for about 5 hours waiting for a fuel delivery, which eventually arrived... we then filled up and had another 16 hour epic to Bengkulu. Another 400km journey we seem to be getting good at traveling at about 30 km an hour!

Into the Indoenesian outback

 Our first Indonesian photo is of our neighbor in the first place we visited after leaving Indonesia's 3rd city - where we landed which was Medan. Medan has a bit of a bad reputation which while it will never win a pretty city award seemed a little harsh to me. Our first shopping expedition demostrated the first difference we found in Indonesia, unlike everywhere else we had been where everyone was up and open by 7am we discovered than nothing gets started here until about 9.30. Shopping done we caught an Indonesian bus (well here they are all minibuses) north west.

We moved into the jungle to a place called Bukit Luwang which is where there is a sanctuary for rescued orangutans, Our neighbor - pictured above very politely. woke us every morning by bouncing with about 20 of his mates across every roof in town on their way to wherever they could scrounge or steal some food....
 

 In 2008 a flash flood caused by the bursting of a natural dam upstream, killed half the villagers. The waters rose due to heavy rain so the village evacuated taking the elderly and children to higher ground. Then as the adults were rounding up their possessions the slam waters from the burst dam hit. This is half of a bridge washed away in the disater.

 We went and saw the local bat cave - quite a climb in - not the tree roots coming from above into the cave and gully.

 The river when not being a serious threat is a great place for a paddle and a lie down as it is very warm water.... Every time we went into the jungle we tested it afterwards.

The main reason to go into the jungle is to meet the residents.

Pleased to meet you!

By the time we got here Liza had got a little bored with bananas so decided to share.

In-joke for those who get it... The librarian checks the index!

 There are wild orangutans around here, but they obviously go the other way when humans arrive. These have been rescued and not only can be fed but need to be as they do not really have the survival skills to live wild. They are certainly semi wild and occasionally very aggressive.

'Mum, that woman has a banana and she is not giving it to me!'

 Liza tries to be orangutan friendly.

About 30 seconds after this was taken  an elderly female known as Nina showed up for the first time in 4 months. This orangutan has a real mean streak and under orders from our guides, we fled, cameras and lunch scattering as our guides were genuinely worried. She'd taken lumps out of about 30 people and needs to be pacified very quickly with bananas! Nina is quite a folk story here as she was one of the first rescue orangutans released here about 15 years ago and is now almost wild bit has discovered that people can be threatened quite successfully for food. We were really thankful to be there with the experts who carefully put themselves between her and ourselves, cleared up our cameras and gear leaving her to our lunch. We then had a quick march out of her immediate path....

This is NOT her.

 Our very nice place in Bukit Luang - notice monkey drum roof design!

 Indonesian style washing line

 What all Indonesian rivers seem to be designed for - lying fully clothed in....

We took the 6 hour minibus to Berastagi where we arrived to climb the Gunung Sibayak volcano (2094m). This is the only picture I've got of it from below as it tends to be hot and humid here and it is totally covered in mist from about 7.30 am.

 The mist makes pictures hard to take but here we are just before getting to the crater.

We were lucky in that we managed to find a guide after setting off alone and then realising we were being very very silly. We teamed up with a couple from Singapore and made it to the steam vents here.... Queue the smell of rotten eggs.

We really would not have found the way if we had not found these three. Our guide next to Liza was really knowledgeable.We are standing here on the crater rim.

As you would expect where there is this much volcanic activity there are also some very nice hot springs where we relaxed after another day on gentle inclines!!

We travel from here this afternoon south through Sumartra and onward to Java.... Wow blog up to date for once! Love to all.

Observations about Myanmar

1) I was expecting to see lots of police and army around and we hardly saw any.  We did however see rules and regulations from the ruling party in most of the hotels and sometimes notices explaining where we could and couldn’t go.  

2)  Information is difficult to come by and we had no idea there had been trouble in an area we had ridden through on a bus journey up to Mandalay until we left the country.

3)  It is difficult to get a handle on a country when you can't ask questions.  Asking even simple questions about an average persons lot, like how the school system works, probably wouldn't get you in trouble but might get the person answering in hot water if they were overheard telling the truth about the corruption rather than giving the party line.

4) Corruption is endemic.  The taxi driver gave a cut of our fare to the guy running the taxi rank outside of our hotel, who then gave a cut to the hotel.  Those were just the ones we saw and there were probably a few more in between we missed. We were told that even if you were really bright, unless you paid you couldn't pass your exams and if you were not bright but had enough money you could buy a good grade.

5) Education is very expensive, new rules are in place to give primary education to all, although how much that is currently being implemented is a mute point, but the official price after that plus the necessary bribes means its only afforable for the elite.

6) We didn’t see as many children playing as we have done in the rest of Asia. We are not sure whether this was because there were less children or because they were kept indoors.  When we went to a Shan village however there were masses of children running around so maybe its a cultural thing.

7)  Many tourists say "The burmese are such a friendly people".  They are a very open and smiley people and say hello if they know the word and we as outsiders are still unusual enough to be interesting.  But at times I found them abrupt and as with all countries there are some nice and some not so nice people. We also found that they don't offer information, you have to guess the right question first.  We asked our hotelier whether there was a bank where we could change money.  He said no it was shut.  After much discussion amongst ourselves about what we could do in our predicament I then asked if we could change money in the hotel and was told yes.

8) Its the poorest place we have been to on our travels.  The markets were full of things you might need - food, tools etc: but very few things you might want.  The pictures on the walls  of peoples homes were posters or calenders.  

9) Pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi and her father are shown in lots of hotels, restaurants and homes with apparent impunity.  Despite the support for her and her party being overwhelming in the country, I thought open and public support would have been prohibited.

10) Its an extraordinary place, very beautiful and very cultured but with so much going on under the surface I think you would need to live there for many years to even begin to understand the country and people.  In fact this is the case with many of the countries we have been to with their complex and often tragic histories and current corrupt politics but in this instance the sense of being deliberately excluded was very apparent.

Myanmar, our last days.

We, like most travellers to Myanmar went to the Golden Rock on Kyaiktiyo Mountain. Which was as we have now come to expect as standard in this country, great fun but nothing like what we expected. This is primarily because it is the number 1 destination for all the Burmese tourists and pilgrimage  goers. They travel there, as all Asians tend to do in great big groups and all the catering and the tacky souvenir shops are full of things they want to buy, not for that Europeans want to buy.

To get to the top of the mountain you can either do it the religiously accepted way which is to walk, (5 hours 3000ft) get a truck 3/4 of the way and walk the rest, or get a truck all the way. We were being lazy and did the latter. Our guide book says the trucks which are packed to the gunwales slowly grind their way for about an hour up to the top, but like much of what the book says it is out of date and wrong. While they are still packed to the rafters - about 70 people per truck, they do not grind. They have new trucks now and they roar up. With a one way system in place the drivers do not fear anyone coming the other way and just hit it full bore. Now it does not take them an hour it takes 20 minutes. I would have taken some great pictures up the hill but I was just hanging on for dear life. Yet again we realise how lucky we are to be much more used to travel than our truck companions as a significant number found this very cheap roller-coaster ride too much and were sick.

There are trucks leaving in convoys of 10 or so first up and then down every 15 minutes or so so there are thousands of people at all times around the rock itself. Most of the Burmese arrive and stay overnight at the summit in one of the very large open area dormitories that surround the place although foreigners are not allowed to do so having to use only those hotels which are registered to accept them.

The Burmese take their pilgrimage very very lightly, in fact it is much more of a holiday with the snacks, drinks, picnics and playing games, singing karaoke all seemingly of much more import than any religious undertaking.

The balancing rock itself is to be honest not that spectacular, there are a number in Derbyshire that look more precarious to me, however they are neither kept in place by one of Budhha's hairs or covered in gold leaf so they have not been made into one of the major tourist destinations in the country.

 Local tourists having their picture taken, note the gold on their cheeks, this is worn by almost all Myanmar women, and most of the boys too. It is made from sandlewood.

 Trucks waiting to go down while we came up. This is now one of the worlds cheapest roller-coasters and not for the feint hearted.

 Up we go!

 Just to prove I got there!

 What it's all about... the rock itself.

Men are allowed to put gold leaf onto it...  Note how even here they do not care about litter, the scraps of paper the gold is sold in are just waved into the wind.

Our final stop was Bago which is described as the disneyland of Myanmar stupas and we saw what they meant.

We hired a tuk-tuk for the day and spent it on a speed stupa hunt. By 10.30 in the morning we had visited 5. (Actually not so stupid as another early start was neededdue to the as by now normal heat!)

 No idea why this rat was here but it looked cute!

 All Stupas and temples have water for anyone who wants it although we were told it was much safer to buy bottles!

 No slipping here!

 Notice the waving wife - for some reason this stupa was men only -

 Please chop off your feet for this one!

Notice the metal bars to the right which are for the future construction of the roof. We commented that in England they would be covered up and made to look nice. Our guide said that here they were deliberately left raw so that worshipers would be reminded of the need to give more money so the thing could be completed.

This was the last of our Myanmar days the next one taken up with Yangon to Medan in Sumatra via Bangkok. We had sorted which airports we were using in Bangkok this time so we had no travel issues this time round. 

To finish off the post and now we have managed to get it uploaded here is a very nice video of Inlay lake although I'd turn the sound down as it's just the boat engine!
Inlay lake video