Danau Toba
INDONESIA
Wild Rides & Epic Dancing
By AARON
Thursday, July 21, 2011
I try not to stereotype, I really do. Being an American traveler, you fall prey to stereotyping all the time – “All Americans are fat”, “Americans don’t know where China is on a map”, “All Americans love George W. Bush”. Soooooooo, when a group of about 25 French students boarded the ferry to Samosir (the island in the middle of Danau (Lake) Toba), and a horrid body-odor stench permeated through the cabin, you can see how it would be hard to not laugh. Or puke.
Finding a nice room at Bagus Bay Homestay was the easy part once we got to the island. Finding anything else reasonably priced in said guesthouse was a bit more of a challenge. Even the water refills at the most expensive hotel in Tuk-Tuk (the name of the town we stayed in) were half the price of Bagus Bay. Boo. So it was through this newly acquired knowledge that we found “Hita’s”. Hita’s is owned by, you guessed it, Hita, and she offers good food at great prices and is about the sweetest lady on the island. So after a nice dinner at one of her two tables out front, we decided to call it an early night, for we had a scooter to rent the next day and a whole island to explore.
Next morning we scarfed down some great chapati and eggs at Hita’s, and rented a scooter for under $10USD; it even included the gas as well! That day we rode all around the island, stopping from time to time at each of the little towns along the way, and finished at around 4pm with beers overlooking the lake. What a great day.
Our final full day was spent relaxing in Tuk-Tuk. We swam in the lake, ate lunch at a nice resort hotel and surfed the web. We also were finally successful trading our books on the island, which seems to only stock German love novels from the 1970s.
Here’s a fun fact: Toba’s restaurant loves to offer birthday cakes for anyone celebrating their birthday (for a price of course). Here’s another fun fact: Toba’s restaurant will play the happy birthday song over and over for 45 minutes while the cake is being made, baked, served and eaten. Fun fact number three: the singers of said happy birthday song cannot phonetically say “th”, so you get to listen to “Happy Bus-day” about 90 times in that 45 minute time slot. Brilliant.
After Toba’s, Lyndi and I decided to have a mini-Olympics which would be comprised of ring toss, badminton, Spider Solitaire, pool and demon (card game). Lyndi kicked my ass. Thoroughly. I did win at pool, but she destroyed me at everything else.
So a smiling Lyndi and a humbled Aaron made their way to the big, hyped-up Batak Dancers show that perform native dances to native music. And boy did it suck. There’s nothing like watching a bunch of bored 12 year old girls being forced to dance a fishy dance thing with their hands, as they almost look as bored as the people watching them.
You can probably blame the musicians behind them though, who are obviously their parents, and if this description hasn’t got you frantically searching online for “Batak Dancers World Tour”, they cap off the grand finale by whipping out their cell phones to text their friends before they even leave the stage. “Amazing, jaw-dropping entertainment that will leave you begging for more.” Says their parents.
Refusing to end our time on Danau Toba with perhaps the second worst dancing next to me at my wedding, Lyndi and I grabbed a couple of beers, went to the edge of our dock, and watched the stars as we listened to the faint sounds of “Happy Bus-day” radiate from across the water. Even saw a meteor.
