and the Palace of the Kings of Batak Simaulungun.
Our guide was the youngest son of the last king. The king’s long house was quite a place- a kitchen, private bedroom- and most of the longhouse dedicated to a communal bedroom for all his wives.
Once we reached Lake Toba, it was a short ferry ride from Prapat to Samosir Island. Our hotel was on the Tuk Tuk Peninsula. The lake, SE Asia’s largest, was created by a massive volcanic eruption about 75,000 years ago. Rising out of the water was Samosir Island, formed by a second explosion some 45,000 years later. The lake and the island were lush and tropical (don’t know if our clothes will ever dry here). After a quick walk around the peninsula and making arrangements for our motorcycle rental for tomorrow, we stopped at Tabo’s Vegetarian and Internet Café. Since it was a long distance call to Medan for the hookup, we only read and responded to the critical emails (there were 34 in our box!). After emails, we did a bit more exploring and had dinner at “Linda’s”…a tiny place with great views and a cook/waitress named Theresa, who was a real live wire (and made great tomato soup and veggie curry). We ended the evening with a cold bottle of French white wine from the hotel- $18 - but worth every penny.
We were learning about the local people, the Bataks. There are more than 6 million in Sumatra, broken into 6 groups. Around Lake Toba, they’re the Toba Batak. They were among the most warlike people in Sumatra (a British traveler in 1783 told of a “cannibalistic kingdom that had a highly developed culture and a system of writing”). Today, most of the Bataks are Christian. But they still incorporate elements of traditional animist belief and ritual, including cosmology, ancestor and spirit worship, and “tondi” (the concept of the soul, which develops before you are born and exists near the body and from time to time leaves, which causes illness. It’s necessary to make sacrifices to your tondi to keep it happy).
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