Medan Chapter 5 (Simarjarunjung - Sipiso Piso - Berastagi: The Diary)

Good Morning Yall! Today 2nd December 2016, we will leave Parapat, so sad. (click here to read the previous entry!).

good morning! #ootd

Oh yes, throughout this blog, you will find few pics with watermark 'bellarina natasya'. My friend took it during our travel, she have a blog written in Malay, if u wanna check it out, click here!.

We checked out of Melissa Palace, it was a nice place to stay beside the 'supernatural' events that occured here, hahaha. I wish the owner 'Selamat Hari Natal' means Merry Christmas. It was December so they were decorating the Christmas tree i saw. A smile and a goodbye to this place.

courtesy picture of mamamuezza.blogspot

We went and had our breakfast first at Nikmat. I had some indonesian version of Lontong, quite good yes. We will drive back to Medan City today, but before that we will stop at a few places along the way.

breakfast :)

Our journey to our next stop, Simarjarunjung, will take around half an hour. It is located in Kabupaten Simalungun, on the north east side of Lake Toba. Along the way here, the view is incredible!. We did asked Pak Nanang to stop at the rest area for us to enjoy the view. He said yes but didnt stop. He stopped in the middle of the road and not the rest area, how stupid. (geram nih). Its not safe to stop there, he should have stop at the rest area. Haishh.

on the way to Simarjarunjung

selfie with miss Sha

But yes, the view will make you stop and stare, hihi like a song. Around half an hour later driving up and down the hill, we reached Simarjarunjung. This area looks like a resort, altho not lots of villa here. TIPS: I think, you can skip this place and spend more time in Berastagi

Simarjarunjung hill

We stopped at a place that serve tea and banana fritters. Somehow people come here to drink tea, but i didnt see any tea plantation around it, weird. Anyway, we enjoyed our hot tea while the breeze of simarjarunjung wipe our face,,hihi. The banana fritters was okay, Malaysian fritters is better to be honest. The price was quite expensive for what we ordered, total for 6 person is around 200,000Rp. The area surrounding is a bit messy, cos i guess they like to throw away rubbish just like that, hmm sad.

the tea with milk, courtesy of mamamuezza

We then walked a lil a long the lake. And of course its time for group photos! hihi. Jumping, running, in a group, we came out with few interesting pictures!.

cos its 11.30 and the club is jumpin jumpin!

Next stop is Sipiso-Piso!, the tallest waterfall in Indonesia located in Batak highland, connected to Lake Toba. The journey took us around 2 hours! yes. The drive was via a scenic road along the Batak Karo villages and plantation, farms etc. As I said in my previous entry, there are 2 types of Batak, the Toba and Karo.

churches in Batak Highland

There were lots of churches, like every 5km or so since the majority is Christian. They planted lots of rice, corns, coffee berries and others. So i guess most of em are farmers. We passed by a small town here in Kabanjahe area, a district. There were lots of school kids walking along the road as the school morning session just ended. We saw this van carrying school kids, pretty cool huh, but dangerous as well.

now that is a rare thing u can see

I saw a few restaurants with the word 'B1', at first i thought it was selling pork. Maybe pork barbeque or something. But later i found out that B1 means dog meat. Holy crap!, they eat dog meat here still, the Karos tradition. I hope it will change soon, for them to stop eating dog meat, so sadddd. :(

a small town in Kabanjahe district (sorry the van is moving fast!)

Finalllyyy we reached Sipiso-Piso waterfall! pheww. The moment I step out of the van, the local seller came at our door, offering service to take pictures, to take tour etc, haishh. It was sooo annoying, we cant even sit and enjoy the view. I gave em an angry stare and then after that they went away, hihi. TIPS: If they came near you and started offering this and that, said NO instantly and walk away. Don't ask anything if u r not interested as that will lead to they following you around.

The majestic view of north Lake Toba

Sspiso Piso, The tallest waterfall in Indonesia!

You know if i have more time here, i would love to hike to the top of Sipiso Piso, must be wonderful. But since we dont have that much time, we just enjoy the view of this majestic waterfall from far. The waterfall lead to the most north part of Lake Toba. The view over here made me feel like i am not in Indonesia, hihi. The breeze is quite chilly btw. I took this video for a memory of this place :)

We met one group from Korea here, surprisingly one of the guy said hello to us in Malay. He said he is working in KL. We chat a lil in Malay!, the world is wonderful yes. Besides the attractions here, they also sell some shirt, sweater and souvenirs here if u r interested to buy em. After a while, we hop on back into the van to our next destination, the town of Berastagi. yippie!

It took us another 2 hours drive to get here, my oh my..haha. Again along the way, we saw small town and lots and lots of small farms, most likely being run by the villagers themselves. You can also find churches in each 3-5 km.

iconic tower in the center of Berastagi, but some constructions going on as well

We reached the Berastagi town in midday, surprisingly lots of villas and traffic. Now here is the thing, my excitement to come here is because this place is located within 2 volcanoes Sinabung and Sibayak. Sinabung just erupted less than a year before we came!.

So yes, this is the main point i wanna come here. BUT our 'amazing' supir, Pak Nanang took us to a fruit market and thats it. I was like whatttt! . How disappointing :( . My dream was crushed into pieces (dramatic i know). TIPS: The place to visit here, to stand between 2 volcanoes is Gundaling Hill. If u book a Supir service, remember to include this place in the itinerary, dont end up like me. Its sad!. and again, i dont recommend this Supir, at all..sorry.

The Berastagi market

On the bright side, the fruit market sells lots of fresh fruits that u can bring home as they can pack it for you. Mango, Salak (snake fruit) and Markisa (passion fruits) is few of the most famous fruits here. The sellers is very talkative as well, knows how to attract you to buy, u can taste em for free too! .

the fruit market

im not a fruit!

I bought myself some mangoes and Bella bought Salak to bring home to KL (u can bring it pass immi yes dont worry). The souvenirs shops along the market also sells lots of goodies you can bring home, it was quite cheap to be honest. TIPS: If u have a good bargaining skills and loveee fresh fruits, this market will be a 'heaven' for u!.

What i hate the most is they exploit horses for tourism. They even asked us to take a ride, hmmm nope definitely not. Not gonna support animal abuse, especially after what we saw in Lombok.

horses exploitation detected! #sayno

Pak Nanang then took us for lunch at a local restaurant, Restoren Coffee & Resto Puncak
, serving north Sumatran food which is very similar to Malay food. It has a good vibe and the most important, wifi! :P. The food was okay, good maybe cos we were really hungry. The staff is nice, the surrounding is clean, so yes u can have a good lunch here :).

Restoren Coffee & Resto Puncak by mamamuezza.blogspot

Being disappointed not being able to see what i want, i dont really talk much to the Supir, waste of time. So we just head to Medan city from Berastagi. It was around 3PM at that time. As we pass some small resorts in Berastagi, suddenly our Supir said 'see there, that is Sinabung mountain, erupted few years ago'. I was like 'yeah watever, we can jus see it from the van, moving' . But it is pretty yes, oh well my wish doesnt come true this time, itsssoccayyy :P .

Mount Sinabung

The road leading back to Medan city from Berastagi was downhill like a snake making its way to its nest, hihi. Suddenly the van comes to a complete stop, traffic jam. Pak Nanang was babbling saying 'u people are late, if we head to town earlier we wont be stuck here bla bla' . He blamed us for the traffic. We were like, 'whateverrrrr'. Luckily there were wild monkeys on the side of the road that distract us from the traffic and our annoying Supir.

traffic come to a complete stop

The monkeys were asking food from us. I think they are used to be fed by tourist. Sha gave em some biscuits and fruits. They really enjoyed it that they decided to make love on the spot, true story hahahaha.

The traffic then moved very friggin slowly. It was weird u know, there must be something else cos we were stuck for 1.5 hours already. Some of the drivers cut the queue to the opposite side of the road, that made the traffic even worst. Idiots, haishh. Then we found out that a lorry carrying drinking waters lose control and crash to the side of the road, blocking it. It crashed into a karaoke house, hihi. That was the reason the traffic became soo bad. See, not because of us as Pak Nanang claimed, meh! It was beyond control.

the accident, u can see they arrange back the drinking water bottles there

It took us almost 5 hours to reach Medan city, can u imagine 4! because of the traffic. We were tired just sitting in the van at that time. Pak Nanang stopped at a petrol station to refuel and we took that chance to go to toilet and buy something to eat for dinner at Indomaret.

We arrived at our hotel, Wisma Sederhana, around 9PM - 10PM, and we didnt went out bcos we were out of energy. I bought a cup noodle from Indomaret and that was my dinner. I did ask for a knife at the receptionist bcos i wanna slice the mango i bought from Berastagi market but they dont have it and they were too lazy to take it from the kitchen. Even the hot water for the noodle was not hot. What a day!!! grr... they should just change the hotel name to Worsema Sederhana, lol.

The nex day was our last day in Medan, we will be visiting the markets. Ill publish it ASAP okayyyyy, hahahaha. I know i am soo late in writing, also bcos i was disappointed in this trip i guess. Oh well, stay tuned for my last entry on Medan!  XOX