Samosir Island:

Welcome to Samosir Island

We had 2 days on Samosir Island. This is a lovely place, a decent amount of tourists and again brilliant local many of whom will stop and chat to practice their English. The majority of tourists at our hotel are Indonesian and Chinese. Our guides had to upgrade us as their normal hotel they use was full. We did have lunch there and saw more of a balance of guests with a decent number of Europeans. Our upgraded one was to a five star luxury hotel and we think it showed the difference in what tourists prefer, with the Asian ones going for luxury and European ones going for quaint and more intwined in the nature.

Our first day was spent on a tour of the Island. We saw an old Batak village with King Siallagan's Stone Chair and an execution stone. We also took part in a traditional dance, the last part was to dance with money between your fingers, these notes became the tip! We felt they played that well. James was chosen by the guides to be the one they demonstrated the execution methods on. We also went to great viewpoint overlooking the lake.

Jet Skiing

The second day I had an easy morning in the gym and swimming, the others went jet skiing, from the pictures they had a great time.

The jet skis were incredible, we got them up to 75km. James and Karen drove themselves while El asked our guide to drive hers with her on the back. This seemed sensible right until he immediately put it on sport mode and dashed off to find the bigger waves. She fell off her seat but fortunately stayed in the jet ski.

Happy Birthday

For tea we went to a local restaurant, Samuel named after the owner's sun. The guides had arranged a birthday cake for James which was a good surprise for him. The owner Daniel is also a singer and after a round of Happy Birthday he sat at our table and performed some local and western songs accompanied by his guitar. It was a lovely way to end the day with a local meal listening to an acoustic cover of Baby Can I Hold You.

I'm not looking forward to the journey Back

After leaving Samosir which is the biggest island in an island in the world we headed to Banyak Island. This initially involved a tiring 7 hour drive up and down hills with no straight parts just constant hair-pin bends. Risky continued with his tactics of overtaking anywhere and hooting to warn aother cars, lorries etc of what he was doing. We survived but saw the aftermath of a nasty looking accident. We then had a 90 minute boat trip, the boat wasn't quite what we expected, a lot smaller and the guys at the jetty did seem concerned about the weight of us and supplies for the hotel. After lots of discussion but the boat owners and guides we set off. The initial bit was very bumpy, I think we all wondered why we hadn't put the life jackets on. We made it safely across just as the sun was setting.

The island looks amazing and we have 3 days on what seems a desert island, with very few other people.