Today we'd like to take you along with us in a journey of thought and mind, a journey through a wild volcanic landscape of rivers and lakes, soaring through a variety of languages and cultures to bring you to the beautiful Indonesian state of North Sumatra. This journey will require many a bus transfer.
After we left the sulfur-spewing volcanoes of Berastagi, we proceeded to take no less than three crazy crowded smokey buses, veering wildly down the winding mountain roads to our final destination: the serene, gleaming volcanic lake known as Danau Toba. This magnificent monster of a lake is 100 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide, and 505 metres (1,666 ft) at its deepest point (despite some local claims that "no one knows how deep it is"). When you compare this to all the other volcanic lakes in your mental repertoire, you'll undoubtedly find that this volcanic lake is bigger----indeed, it is the biggest in the world!Some 70,000 years ago this super-massive volcano produced the biggest eruption the Earth has seen in 25 million years, creating the incredible lake we see today. This explosion was so big that it is believed to have caused a volcanic winter with a worldwide decline in temperatures, perhaps the event that killed most humans then alive, creating a "population bottleneck" in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today.
All very interesting to geologists and archeologists, of course, but what's particularly fascinating today is the people living in this beautiful massive volcanic lake. They are known as the Batak and lived a relatively isolated existence in the mountains of North Sumatra, particularly on Lake Toba, for hundreds of years before the Dutch colonials made roads to their land. The story goes that the first Westerners to make contact with the Batak people somehow enraged their hosts and met their untimely demise at spear-tip. Then they were eaten. Yes, as you may have speculated from today's title, the Batak people were notoriously cannibalistic. Criminals, adulterers, spies, and the enemies of the warring Batak would be tried by a counsel of Batak elders in a circle of stone chairs by an ancient Banyan tree and if found guilty, they'd be lacerated with knives, rubbed down with chillies, garlic, and salt, and summarily cooked up. (And you thought the electric chair was harsh!)Apparently in 1816 some very lucky Dutch missionaries arrived on the surf of a coincidental bountiful harvest, preaching the wonders of their Christian god, and the Batak people took this as a sign and added Christian elements to their extant animist beliefs. This marked the turning of the tide of cannibalism and there were fewer and fewer accounts until 1890 when the Dutch rulers banished the practice entirely (though there is a rumor that a jealous wife killed and ate her cheating husband on the island only a couple of years ago).
In this largely Muslim country, it is interesting to see the different culture of the Christian Batak people. Yet, coming from their traditional animist background, their churches and graveyards all have a unique traditional tribal Batak flair to them. Many of the churches have traditional Batak-style roofs, curved upward like the bow of a ship, as do many of their homes to this day. All of their structures have cool tribal designs with twisting lines (almost like Celtic knots), lizards, and faces. We rented a motorbike and explored Batak tombs and ruins, sailing up and down the roads past goats, buffaloes, and Batak houses galore. The air was ripe with the smell of flowers (between the fumes of burning trash).We spent the better part of a week on Danau Toba, swimming, reading, playing Jenga, listening to sublimely chaotic traditional Batak music, and having a great time with the hospitable locals. Sarah learned to cook a delicious vegetable dish with a spicy peanut sauce called gado-gado from a wonderful lady named Fiona. I taught her son some basics on their piano. On Sunday there were swarms of school-children from all over North Sumatra trying to practice speaking English with tourists and we spent virtually all day with these rambunctious youths.
When it was time to leave we headed to Bukit Lawang on no fewer than three more buses and en route met a wonderful girl named Sonya who lives there. She rents a room from a family and invited us to CouchSurf with her (see CouchSurfing.org), which was a wonderful time. We stayed with them, went grocery shopping at the local market (everything so fresh!), cooked together, traded turns on my little guitar, and had a grand old time. We went to "The Bat Cave" hoping to help save Gothem City but we couldn't find our esteemed hero in the cave, only some stinky leathery beasts flying all about us.
One day Sonya took us tubing down the river! Jetting through the rapids, spinning wildly in the rocky river, was an unforgettable experience. As was seeing orangutans at the third of four orangutan rehabilitation centers in the world we've been to, which I actually do forget because I was sleeping when Sarah went there at 8AM (I wanted to sleep in 'cause we moved to a hotel----family came to
visit our hosts----and a band started playing at 12:45AM, resulting in a
frantic search for an alternate domicile----late night).When we got to Medan, capital city of North Sumatra and the third largest city in Indonesia (population 2 million----a big ol' city), we again got to experience the wonders of CouchSurfing. Our host, Tonny, picked us up from the bus station, took us out to lunch, took us shopping for fabrics to send to crafty friends at home, arranged for us to speak to a group of teenage students at an orphanage, and invited a group of his wonderful friends to join us for dinner near City Hall, a fancy little colonial Dutch building.
The next day he took us to a huge Taiwanese Buddhist temple (getting pumped for our jump into a sedentary life in Taiwan come January), which had an amazing all-vegetarian restaurant attached. Unfortunately we were feeling a bit off after eating at a restaurant in a huge 5-story super-air-conditioned mega-mall (after having no problems all month eating at all these hole-in-the-wall leave-the-food-out-all-day local places where they might not even have a sink where they could wash their hands) so we didn't eat too much that night when Tonny arranged an awesome potluck [slash] karaoke party with his friends and the CouchSurfing community in Medan (I was awarded candy for 3rd place at Karaoke----still got it!). What a spectacular experience in a city that has been referred to by some (including the Lonely Planet Guide) as a major contender for the worst place on Earth.Well folks, that's all for our program today but feel free to stop by next week for another exciting installment of adventures in Asia!
(Fun fact: "Orangutan" comes from the Indonesian words "orang" & "hutan:" people [of the] forest!)
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