Medan-Parapat-Danau Toba-Berastagi, Indonesia..when the journey turnedugly!

Mac 18, 2014

Actually I went to Medan, Indonesia with my extended family April last year but only now I want to blog about it. Initially I just booked flight tickets for my parents, my hubby and me but ended up my aunties, my uncles and cousins wanted to follow us after my mother made some good effort to convince them to join us..lastly, our group became bigger than what I thought it should be..so, the burden to find a good tour operator and to book flight tickets were handed over fully to me...gosh! Since when I became a tour operator without any salary given to me? Ok, I still can accept that but to make everybody listen to my order, clearly it was a hard time for me...hehe..it made me lost my patience most of the time..u know what..we lost some money to unneccesary thing seperti bagi tips yang sangat mahal untuk entah siapa siapa yang tiba-tiba datang tolong angkat beg sedangkan boleh angkat sendiri padahal dah diingatkan berkali-kali untuk angkat sendiri sebab saya dah ada pengalaman yang sama di Bali. Lepas tu semua buat bodoh padahal bukan beg kami laki bini pun..lastly my hubby yang buka wallet bayar...huh! Mana lah "mak cik" tak mengamuk kan?!!!

Kat Parapat..nak naik bot ke Samosir Island, Danau Toba

Rumah orang Batak..Horas!

Medan bukan macam Bali..Medan City is underdevelop compared to Bali. Actually, Indonesia has lots of attraction and beautiful tourist spot but lack of promotion by the government, bad roads and lack of good public transportations and also bad attitudes of some people there had made my journey this time turned up ugly to the level that I don't want to visit Indonesia anymore. Kerajaan Indonesia terlalu mempromosikan Bali sehinggakan mereka lupa bahawa mereka punya tempat lain yang sangat cantik seperti Danau Toba. Cuma impian saya yang nak sangat tengok Danau Toba since I was in secondary school yang menyebabkan saya nekad jua ke sana.

As what I expected, the journey will not be an easy one. Ditipu, beggars datang kerumun dan penjual-penjual jalanan siap tunggu kat pintu restoren while we were eating inside, bad roads, ditipu ketika jual beli, penjual refuse nak pulangkan duit balance etc memang sudah saya jangkakan daripada awal. There was no price stated in the menu..so, the restaurant cashier can charge us how much they want...pathetic..bukan saja di restoren but most of the stalls, and shops pun tak ada tanda harga.

We had been cheated several times including at the airport when the officer there didn't verify some of our boarding pass even though we already paid the airport tax fully. Our tour guide help my hubby to settle this matter and my hubby didn't check carefully and we only realized that we have been cheated when immigration officer didn't give us permission to enter the departure gate..so we need to turn back to the counter but the officer didn't want to verify some of our boarding pass and gave the reason that we didn't pay the right amount of the airport tax. I was really pissed of because I knew that I had given him enough money with extra in case my infant cousin also included in the tax.. Actually he was the one who should return our money because it is free for the infant. But when he realized that there was an infant in our group then only he agreed to verify all of our boarding pass..yeah..because he already took our money that he should return..OMG! I will never ever forget this terrible experience because of this dishonest officer we almost missed our flight. Dahlah kedekut aircond..can u imagine we drop off our bag at the counter without air conditioning in the hot weather? the aircond only available at the departure hall..stingy kan?

Toledo Inn

Danau Toba is extremely beautiful but can you believe that there are no 5 stars hotel there? Bukan setakat 5 stars, dua star, tiga star, empat star pun tak ada. Hotel yang kami duduk adalah hotel yang tercantik di situ (because we took the most expensive package) tapi not even ada aircond pun dan kepala paip pun tercabut..ah..sedihnya! Memanglah pada waktu malam cuaca sejuk tapi pada waktu siang cuacanya panas juga..apatah lagi selepas penat berbasikal keliling pulau..nak beli air ais pun tak ada. Some more, iron pun tak ada..minta kat reception pun tak ada dan tak disediakan..pakai la baju dan tudung berkedut-kedut.

Cuma hotel kami yang cantik hanyalah di Berastagi sahaja..barulah nampak hotel ada star..hehe...Air terjun si piso-piso pun cantik. Tapi overall perjalanan kami amat meletihkan kerana jalan yang teruk menyebabkan perjalanan yang cuma jarak 190 KM jadi sampai 5 jam lebih. Cuma yang seronoknya bas itu kami saja yang punya..11 orang kami..so, seronoklah nak bergurau senda dalam bas. Walaupun dah bayar semua sebelum datang tetaplah kami jena bayar untuk tips driver sebanyak 2 orang dan pemandu pelancong dan jumlahnya telahpun ditetapkan. Shopping kat sini taklah seseronok shopping kat Bandung sebab harga boleh tahan mahal.