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Daua
Toba is one of those great landscape set pieces, nature showing off. It
is the world's largest crater lake, formed by the collapse of an
enormous volcanic caldera some 70,000 years ago; a second later
cataclysm resulted in the formation of Samosir, a mountainous island
rougly the size of Singapore in the middle of the lake. In practice it
looks a little like Lake Tahoe, though without loads of Americans
telling you that this is 'Ghaad's own country'; it also bears a passing
rememblance to the lakes of northern Italy, though obviously it is
considerably bigger than both. The region's other great natural asset is
the weather: even though it is a stone's throw from the equator, at
900meters every day is a perfect English sumer day and the night's are
cool. On the ferry over to Samosir we met a couple of Brits; like us
they had just come from southern Thailand. I asked if they'd enjoyed it,
adding that I found the area cute but very dull, full of wasters and
that I greatly preferred the magnificence of Indonesia.The older one
looked at me a little strangely: 'I thought Thailand was great,' he
said, 'the tourist infrastructure was just fantastic. It's easy to get
from A to B, everyone knows what you want and everything's set up for
tourism.'
After slacking by the lake for a day we decided to explore the island.
Samosir is the home of the Batak people and looked like a pretty
interesting place. The Batak build their houses with roofs that dip in
the middle and rear up pointily at either end, rather like ship's prows
or klansmen's hats, although they are intended to resemble the horns of
the water buffalo, an extremely versatile animal they are understably
keen on. Their other curious custom is (despite having been converted to
Christianity by Dutch and German missionaries) a penchant for burying
their dead twice - once when they die and again later, when they have
the wherewithall to build a suitably stylish tomb
To explore, we (Grant, his girlfriend, Charity, Jane, and Ben and Ian,
the Irish guys) rented motorbikes, first heading to a Batak centre where
we saw a tradional dance, whose sluggish, trance-like motions suggested
that the Bataks may well have discovered an ecstacy-like substance many
years before the west. This impression was furthered by the exhibits in
the nearby museum. Every other exhibit's tag read: 'Made of horn. Used
to keep drugs/ magical things/ special things.' Suitably steeped in
Batak culture we motored on half way round the picturesque island before
deciding to cut back half way down, along the Island's moutainous spine.
This prima facie easy detour soon turned into an epic slog, comparable
with our broken axled journey to the lake. Ian's bike, despite
assurances, hadn't been filled up and ran out of petrol. We had to
borrow a length of tubing from a man in some godforesaken village to
siphon, which left Grant belching petrol for the rest of the day. But
this wasn't enough and later on, in surprisingly steep and heavily
forested hills, he ran out of petrol on an unmade road. So leaving Grant
and Charity with Ian, Jane, Ben and I went off to get petrol as the sun
went down. Dusk descended and the roads deteriorated; just as we thought
we were thoroughly lost (more through luck than anything else), I
spotted 'our' side of the island from a ridge and 20 minutes later we
were at the top of a scarp leading down to our village. Miraculaously
this no-account hamlet also boasted a bar, with a reasurringly pointy
roof and a man who could sell us a couple of litres of petrol. Bearing
petrol, our saviour and Ben roared off to find the others.
Twenty minutes later, we were reunited and refuelled. Surely, we
thought, from here, it can't be more than half an hour back to Tuk-tuk,
our village. In fact, it would be another fun-filled three hours. Rather
than improve towards our destination, the roads went sharply downhill in
every sense of the word; soon we were heading down a steep mass of
broken rock and scree. You wouldn't want to take a Land Rover down it,
let alone a crappy moped, especially in the dark. Charity had long since
left the back of Grant's bike to walk and Jane decided, quite sensibly,
to abandon her's, too. Thus Grant (interestingly, the only person
actually licensed to drive a motorbike in the UK) wound up heroically
driving two bikes down in relay, while the girls walked and I drove or
watched over the bike Grant wasn't driving.
After three spine-jarring hours we were back at Tuk tuk, exhausted and
facing a reception committee of Bataks far less cute than the ones we'd
seen earlier. They were furious we'd bought the bikes back at 10:30pm
and demanding extra money. No way, we countered: firstly there was no
agreed time and secondly, the only reason we were late is that one bike
had no petrol. As it turned out, when you rent five bikes, each comes
from a different person and the whole is organised by the guy at the
guesthouse - who was sensibly staying out of it. Naturally, the person
who'd provided the empty bike had buggered off sharpish. Two others
didn't seem too bothered but Grant and I were faced with a waspish
haridan of a woman who, in sharp contrast to the South East Asian norm
had completely lost her temper and was spitting venom. We protested
pointing out (hidden damage to their suspension notwithstanding) the
bikes were fine and full of petrol; if she wanted more money, perhaps
she could ask the idiot who gave us the empty bike. Eventually the whole
thing ended in stalemate, but not before Grant and I had both been
threatened with extreme violence by a man who was all of five foot tall.
He may have been puffed up like a fighting cock and deadly serious about
giving us a pasting, but it was only through the greatest self control
and cultural sensitivity that we didn't wet ourselves laughing.
From the world's largest crater lake, we headed down to Bukittingi, home
of the world's biggest flower (tick those boxes!); this journey was to
prove another rewarding Sumatran experience. We had bought tickets from
some weird little gimp on the island and it turned out we had bought the
last tickets on the coach which entitled us, not to reclining seats in
air-con comfort but to the scabby seats at the back by the toilet. To
compensate for this we got an entire family (and Indonesian families are
big - not much of the country's prodigious rubber output is consumed
locally) camped on the shelf behind our heads. Naturally we complained
and naturally there was nothing to be done, but deal with it. We were
joined in our complaining by a couple of joyless Swiss, who were
whingeing despite having perfectly good seats. Seemed they thought
they'd overpaid. I told the Swiss guy to think about it in European
terms: don't let 50p ruin your day. He looked askance and asked me 'But
we are not in Europe - why should I think about it in European terms?'
Because you bloody dimwit it is a bank account full of fat Swiss Francs
that allows an imbecile like you to live like a rich man out here.
Bukittingi, despite the occasional rave review is, a rather ordinary
little town. It has a nice canyon and some OK tunnels, built by
Indonesian slave labour under (surprise, surprise) the Japanese in world
war two; these are now sponsored by Fuji Film, which is a nice touch.
Over lunch a cafe owner - as is the custom in these parts - tried to
sell us everything from volcano treks to a bullfight. I hate this sort
of unconnected upselling: if I want lunch, I may want a drink or salad;
it is unlikely I will want a nine day wilderness trek for desert.
Anyhow, he managed to talk us into returning at 4pm to catch a bus to
the bullfight. Not quite as barbaric as it sounds: bullfights in these
parts involve a pair of fairly placcid male water buffalo rather than an
enraged bull and a guy with swords. The fight is over when the winner
chases the loser away. Basically, it's just an excuse to bet on big,
dumb animals cracking skulls.
Back at the cafe at our allotted time and the bus had gone. Great, not
only had he ruined our lunch with his irksome sales pitch, he couldn't
even deliver. But there was little point in arguing and now we really
wanted to see the fight. So we decided to use public transport and after
a series of false starts and complicated changes we got to Kota Bahru,
bullfight central, slapping ourselves on the back for keeping it so real
and saving a squillion Rupiah or about two quid. As we arrived the first
contenders were being paraded around a paddock. I don't know much about
male water buffaloes, but they look like big hairless cows, have huge
pink knackers and really don't appear to be up for any sort of fight.
But after a bit of persuasion they locked horns. It wasn't much of a
scrap: within 30 seconds the winner was chasing the loser round the
paddock and winnings were changing hands, with terse mutterings from the
crowd suggesting the first pair weren't up to much.
The second duo were considerably better matched. Initially reluctant,
once going they cracked skulls noisily and locked horns with some brio.
In each other's horny embrace, the circled around like punch-drunk prize
fighters and pushed each other back and forth, with the advantage
shifting from bull to bull several times; enthusiastic cheering
suggested this twosome measured up to the crowd's expectations.
Eventually the slightly smaller bull delivered an impressive series of
skull cracking blows and gained the upper hoof. Seconds later he was
chasing his vanquished foe round the field with gusto, trampling several
luckless bystanders during his victory lap. The fun over, we trouped out
of the field, passing both loser and winner, neither apparently any the
worse for wear. Predictably the loser looked cowed and the winner, well,
he seemed bullish. And, much to my surprise I felt curiously elated by
the whole spectacle- a wholly unreflective, unironic macho
Hemmingwayesque sort of feeling. And this hitherto unknown side of me
well satisfied, I caught a bus back to town to drink manly beers.
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