Hello again well firstly Im writing this a long time after I left Indonesia, I got very lazy and stopped doing my blog, (its hard work you know)!! Its now July 2011 so you can see how lazy Ive been haha.

Ok, so ill pick it up from when I left Lake Manijiau. I knew it was going to be bad journey however I left Bukki Tinggie as the roads and drivers are the worst ive ever seen. So I paid for a luxury car $25 for an 18 hour bus ride to Parapat. The plan was to get to Lake Toba which was quite famous volcano that erupted in about 1900. The ash cloud was so big that it left an ash cloud over India for 2 years and even reached EUROPE!!! Today Toba is a giant crate that is now a Lake. The journey to Toba wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been, the Trans Sumatran highway is certainly not in the best condition anymore. At one point the road completely disappeared, we were traveling at 5km an hours and I was still scared. Lol. The most amazing thing was the driver he had been driving for about 18 hours but only had about 30 mins????? I was in the passenger seat and I couldn’t stay awake, so I don’t how he was!!! lol

I arrived at Lake Toba, my first impression was that it was not as picturquos as Manijiau. I stayed in a lodge that had been recommended to me. The guy made me laugh when he said it was my lucky day as it was just after Xmas. If Id arrived the day before it would have been 6x as much. :O I spent a few days there and went for a bike ride around the lake. Its a very beautiful place to visit, an amazing place to relax in luxury for little money. About $13 a day if that.

For the next two weeks though the trip took a bit of a downer as I started getting stomach pains. I’d seen that most of the locals heading to Malaysia for medical treatment, so I wasn’t in any rush to see one. I headed to the Chemist for a bit of self-medication. I thought I had Garadsis which a parasite that lives in your gut. So i took a load of anti-biotics but nothing. In the end I figured it was the fact I was eating 3-6 eggs and loads of chilli everyday!! I’m better now btw.

After Toba I headed to see my first volcano Mount Seribaic, its a sulphur volcano and was a really good day out. I have to say the fumes do get to your lungs. It was the first time in my life I’ve been somewhere and the Earth actually felt alive, quite weird and scary at the same time. lol. Looking back now it was not the best volcano but still well worth a visit. I think the photos explain better than I ever could. I met a couple of cool travellers. One was a French guy who had got a big pay out from his work and was travelling around Asia. He had been away for three years, we got on to the subject of travel insurance, he said he’d never felt the need to get it. I told him about my experiences in South America. A week later I got an e-mail saying he had broken his leg and it cost thousands. I think I may have the commentator curse !!

From here I did plan to go to Bukit Lwang and see the orangatangs, but figure one day I would go to Borneo so I’d do it there. So invented a new plan as my first visa for Indonesia was running out, to do a visa run to Malaysia and then fly to Java.