Lake Toba back roads

Today we hopped on some local 5 speed bikes and took off to see the countryside near us. So great! The road around the island is one lane mostly paved, there are some pretty rough portions, but lots of people also live back of this, on small lanes that pass right against the pali-like cliffs. In these places, If it weren't for the obviously different clothes and architecture, then with the waterfalls, cliffs, volcanic stones and old weathered buildings, you could easily think you were in Hawaii. While we were out in the country, biking slowly along the "highway", we noticed that a number of women all dressed up in unusual formal finery were all heading over to a church, so we went up into the churchyard as folks began to arrive. the scene could easily have been in Hawaii, with the missionary style church steeple and palms against the cliff and all the people in their nicest clothes catching up with each other.

in fact there seem to be churches everywhere, and the gravemarkers in the fields look like churches too, so there seem to be even more. Very hard to believe that just days ago we were listening to ayatollahs preaching.

Well, I don't think there are any rice fields in Hawaii, nor water buffaloes, and the older women are wearing batik sarongs and cloth stacked on their heads to cushion the water and other loads they carry, so I guess we are in Indonesia after all!

Getting out in the country was very refreshing. Once we were out of Tuk-Tuk, the weirdly deserted tourist enclave, we got nonstop calls of 'halo' and 'horas' from all the little kids we passed by. They were very enthusiastic: " HoOOras! HoOOras!" People were out working their corn fields, rice fields and farms, lots of small mats were spread out on flat places in the road to dry cacao beans, corn kernels and even some green coffee. We saw some farmers plowing with one horse tractors, lots of folks planting out rice seedlings, an older guy alone breaking up a whole field of mud into clods with just a hand shovel, and some scooter delivery boys at work - one guy on a scooter with an enormous bunch of helium balloons including sponge bob and hello kitty, one guy with stacks of bags of potato chips banana chips and crackers, so many they extended five feet above him and three feet to each side, I have no idea what it's like to drive a motorbike with that kind of wind resistant, wobbly load!

Lots of the old houses are still standing, ....

Oops! Got to interrupt this because some new guests in our hotel want their picture taken with Craig! Turns out they are from the town on the other side of the island, where we went yesterday, with the hot spring. It's kind of fun to be the center of photographers attention!

Now for tomorrow, a beautiful half hour ferry ride mostly full of locals going with us by boat to the mainland town pf Parapat to shop (which seems like a nice, bustling small town lots more local action than tuktuk), followed by a wild 4 hour descent with crazy Indonesian driving patterns similar to south India, through semi industrialized, trash laden but charming Indonesia, which we have really enjoyed. From here its on to a week solid of eating in the food capital of Malaysia, the city of Georgetown on the once British island of Penang, pronounced, oddly, Pee-'nang, not puhnang' as we had always thought. Back to a place where clothes are more modern, prices more like those at home.