A not so pleasant Lake Toba trip

A lot of you may ask, why this kind of post's title? How unpleasant is it?

Well, there's always some consequences facts that we need to face when we book our holiday trip with friends on one year before during the cheap fare promotion. And, since its cheap, people tends to last minute cancel the trip to accommodate for others thingy. If it is due to emergency, I can understand; but if you cancel this trip because you arranged another trip & "forgotten" about this trip... Then sorry, I will not call you for my next holiday trip anymore...

This trip supposingly to be a 4-person trip, but in the end, 2 person decided to cancel off & "burn" the air ticket, coz its cheap & they don't care...Well, only left me & another friend then, but... my friend got chicken pop on the second day of this trip...  

The trip began with 2 guys arriving at the Medan's Kualanamu International Airport. The airport looks kinda nice & the road condition nearby the airport seems to be good as well. We got into a cab & travel for 6 hours to go to our destination - Danau Toba. 

Let me tell you, these 6 hours were the most suffering journey I ever have. Not only the cab "does not" have aircond, the road conditions become worse & worsen when you travel further away from the airport. Medan is the 4th big city of Indonesia, I expect it would be like Surabaya's conditions... and the hot weather is killing me :(

When we reach Danau Toba, we have to take another 30-45 mins of boat ride to our hotel. Lake Toba is the largest volcanic lake in the world & which is about 100km long; 30km wide; 505m deep. I'm kinda happy a bit when I saw the hotel that I insisted to book during the discussion with my friends. The hotel is Mas Cottages & located in the Samosir Island. Our room was just in front of the lake & its about the mid of all places :)

Its not very windy during that time but at least not as hot as the Medan City. But too bad, my friend chicken pop started to "pop out" one by one. We thought of renting a motorbike to go to the nearest clinic or hospital but the local people here keep on criticize on the medical center at here & advice us better to buy some medicine & eat... 

As we are still deciding whether to go for doctor's treatment or not, our tummy need an urgent treatment instead. We climb some staircase and reach the top of Mas Cottages, you can have breakfast, lunch & dinner here. The view is so nice, you can see the lake so clearly from here & the environment is kinda peaceful as well.

As the time is kinda late after we ate, we decided to only rent the motorbike on the next day to ride around the island & look for any medical center too. First night we slept quite early because there's nothing to do and the wifi is kinda slow as well + my friend really need to get more rest too...

We began our journey on the next day after breakfast, its nice to ride around & not wearing any helmet :p Of course we don't dare to do so if we are back at our country hehe... But the local police did stop us because of the helmet. Apparently the police & also the local people here thought my friend is a Pinoy while I'm either from Taiwan or China until we force to speak our-so-called fluent Bahasa Malaysia... 

The island is nice but once again sorry not much photos to share as most of the photos had me inside of it... The most memorable place will be this Huta Siallgan which was from the long long time ago Batak culture. When we step inside, i'm not sure why but the whole place creep me up. The feeling of uncomfortable makes me wanna leave this place fast... After that, we found a local hospital & my friend went for his treatment. Apparently the local people is right about the medical center :) Not only there's no injection or any other treatment, the doctor gave some medicine which we already bought from some convenient shop earlier on...

On the third day of our trip, most of the was spend on the stupid journey back to Medan City. This time not only it took us more than 6 hours, the cab driver trying to charge us extra to fork up the money for another passenger. Excuse me, I don't think I look like a Taiwanese or China guy. You can see "MALAYSIAN" writing on my face ok... & don't think that I keep quiet means i don't understand what the hell you guys are talking in the cab. When the cab driver use English to ask us for extra pay, I answer him in Bahasa Malaysia and it freaked him out a lil bit. In the end, we do not need to pay the extra money but the whole journey is just so tiring & frustrating...

Well, the Medan City tour is cancel off because it will be better for my friend to rest in the hotel room with aircond. And me also slowly fall into sleep after some time. Though its really bored just staying in the hotel room, but at least my mind can be relax after some few busy months in the office. 

Though the whole trip is not that pleasant, but I will definitely come back to Medan again to complete this "incomplete" trip... But maybe just a weekend to go around the Medan City will do if the air ticket is cheap~ 

Medan, here I come~ :)

Finally my trip is coming

I need some holiday :)

L² went Thai: ChiangMai + ChiangRai + Pai + Lamphun

Sawadeekap, I almost forgot to blog about this trip which happened in Sept 2015 hehe... At first I was busy tidying up all the pictures and trying to find those picture without me and my friends, but lol, we love to selfie "wefie" too much and there are not much pictures with just pure scenery lol~ After tat I get busy with the year end job till now... So let's have a look at these picture (so few of them)...

Oh ya, it happened during my birthday :) So happy to have my friends to celebrate my birthday together for the first time at oversea, thank you krap~

No matter which part of Thai

Temples are always the place to visit

 The beautiful color changing clock tower

 My favorite fried squid

 The best Char Koay Teow i have in Thai so far

Of course, not able to compare with my hometown Penang's hehe

 The awesome Singha Park

 Really love it here, so refreshing

 Look like New Zealand huh?

 With my fav Giraffe here~

 White Temple is the main reason I fly all my way here

Heard that it has been ruined a bit due to the earthquake previously

So i must must must come and visit it now before too late

Choi...

 This "umbrella" is make of those silver tingling thingy

 Don't forget the famous beautiful gold toilet in the white temple

A lot of news saying that those "CHXXA" tourist

Has dirty this holly places

Luckily its not being "damage" yet...

 After White Temple, Black Temple is another must see spot

This black temple is only allowed to visit before 5pm / 6pm

Rumors say that it is haunted after the sunset

Is it true?

 A lot of weird thing inside

But i did not blog it coz we are doing selfie with it haha

How about have a look at some glam thing instead?

The Golden Bird, nice huh?

 A lot of drums and animal skeleton around here

The best is, there is a big snake and scary owl at this place

 Next, we went to visit the long neck village at Chiangrai

 Pretty long neck girl doing their sewing job at the hut

 Pai is more modern with a lof of cute & funny things

Such as the Strawberry Farm

 Fantastic TreeHouse

The UpsideDown house

Sorry folk for the late post ... I will remember to do so on my next trip, stay tune :)

A short getaway~ Perhentian Island + Redang Island + Lang Tengah

Finally I decided to blog a lil bit of my short getaway this time, Perhentian Island :) It is located in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, belongs to the Terengganu State. Well, we did not take the fancy way of traveling over there. Instead of being convenient by plane, we traveled all the way by bus, and the bumpy road has make my ass so pain...

After long hour of night journey, we finally reach the jetty early morning. It was an exhausted way of wait over there with nothing to do. I would suggest someone ope a mamak shop there, it definitely will bring good business, especially for all those travelers who waited at there~ 

Finally the jetty open and we been through some hoo-ha and got our way to the Perhentian Island~ The Coral View Resort is the place that we book, the room are wonderful, view is great and the small little private beach is awesome as well. But, but , but.... the restaurant attached to it is bad~ the so call owner or person in charge in that restaurant has a very bad attitude and manner. I forgive him because I won't let such bastard spoiled my mood anyway, but if for recommendation, i would suggest you walk to other stall/restaurant rather than this~

 This is how Coral View Resort looks

 See how nice the view is?

During this short trip, we went snorkeling and island hopping at Redang & Lang Tengah. Its a bit frustrated that most of my pictures got either me or my friends inside. And as I have swear to myself few years ago, no-photo-policy in my blog, I have no pictures to show u guys here :p

But overall the trip is very relaxing, a lot of nice coral to be view when snorkeling time. We saw bunch of baby sharks at the sharks point of Redang Island. We even saw big big sea turtle swimming around~ The sand is nice, i used it as a original spa hehe~

 I got this from the website

But this is totally how the sea turtle looks like over there

 This was from the website as well

I never saw so many baby sharks swimming so near me before

Amazing~

Last but not least

wait, this is not shit

this is sea cucumber which we saw a lot

we even took it in our hand and play with it

kinda slimy and its weird

think they look better when they are served as food hehe

Time for another local trip~

Perhentian

I'm coming :)

Getaway ~ Koh Lipe

After my Surabaya Trip in mid of last year, I have been working very hard at the office everyday. Finally I managed to get away for vacation to the beautiful Asia-Mauritius, Koh Lipe.

Me and my friends got ourselves the cheap Air Asia ticket to Langkawi, then we take the boat to Koh Lipe. This is the cheaper way compare to if you travel to Bangkok and take internal flight to Koh Lipe. The whole vacation is so relaxing, most of the time we just enjoy ourselves at the sea, sunbathing, snorkeling and island hoping. Though the place is small but the expenses is not that cheap, most probably it has gone expensive, thanks to those caucasian~ And the white girls love sunbathing topless there :D

Nothing much to talk about this trip, but its just for myself to relax and charge back my energy for 2015~

 Sea View

 Island hoping~ we manage to get it 500THB per pax

 Street view 

 Barbecue prawn~ yummy

 My most enjoyable dinner in Koh Lipe is at "King Crab Restaurant"

which 4 of us have seafood that cost us around 5000THB 

Surabaya: A Volcano Trip

Basically this is a volcano trip when we decided to book the ticket to Surabaya. The whole trip is mostly on the journey travel from one point to another point, off skirt of the Surabaya. First stop is the famous Mount Bromo. We left the hotel at local time 2am and took a 45 mins jeep to Bromo...

Look at the beautiful sunrise

After that we start to hike all our way up the Mount Bromo... It was still ok, but of coz the girls who went with us feel exhausted and decided to take the horse ride instead lol~

There is this building? on the way...

 On top of the mountain, we saw all these heat wind blew out from the mountain's mouth... so nice but look dangerously too

After this tiring Bromo trip, we travel again... On our 6 hours journey, we passby this beach... nothing special and so hot as well... And they ain't any hotties there as well~

The next volcano is Ijen, the so call blue fire mountain. We woke up 1am at the local time and have to hike fast to see these blue fire... If we arrive later than 5am, we won't be able to see any blue fire at all and it will be a waste right? This volcano is a sulfur volcano and the strong smell keeps making me to have running nose... But i think its worth it...

 Look at the blue fire? Spectacular right? 

There is actually a lake at the volcano

It is a hot spring and the water is warm of coz :) 

As the day getting brighter, we realize how dangerous the journey was... and we have been hiking it during the dark time... i'm proud of myself now :P 

Beautiful view on our way down the hill

 This souvenir is actually made of sulfur

But we did not buy any as it cannot go through custom

Another 10 hours back to the Surabaya City, its the 2nd biggest city in Indonesia... There is actually nothing special in the city, wat u can find u can mostly get it in KL... A simple tour and we are on our way back to Malaysia...

 Submarine museum, awesome!

Icon of Surabaya, Jaws fighting with Crocodile

 Finally we went to a Tobacco museum

We can see a lot of old old tobacco packing and products

of coz there are around 300++ workers there to produce the tobacco as well