Our experience of Sumatra has been very different to Bali or Lombok so far. There are far fewer tourists, and no touts at all. The people are very friendly and we are never hassled. If we leave the area of Tuk-Tuk, and go elsewhere on the island of Samosir, we are the only white people we see. We have had an entire classroom of school kids rush outside to gawk and wave at us, a local man stop on the side of the road for us because he want’s to help us (we had stopped to take a photo) “Please, there must be something I can do for you.” In the end we agreed that he could show us his village and have a coffee in his house. There have been kids rush into the street as we ride past to give us a high five, and a wide-eyed small girl gasp and cover her mouth at the sight of us white-y’s. We have learned that for our driver, “If I no eat chilli it’s like I no eat.” And we learned that the reason they cut down the big trees is because “There are too many ghosts when the trees are big.” It’s been quite surreal, and very cool. Here are a couple of pics of our lazy days here.
