The Lake Toba Ferry

This is the ferry that takes us from Parapat to Tuktuk, across the lake. It plies back and forth all day until seven at night, which was why I missed it that first evening, not that I would have found anywhere to sleep, even if I had caught the last ferry.

Today, after moving house, to a nice little room with clean white walls - yes really! unbelievable but true - door with no cracks (so no mosquitoes) and little bed with not only a bottom sheet, but a top sheet too - first time ever! I spent the morning trying to draw/paint with the watercolour pencils that Robert gave me as a birthday present before I left. I can't say that my efforts are particularly good - it's a new technique and I'm learning - but fun.

Today I met Nick, a musician from Brighton, who had the great good fortune to move to Brighton ten years ago, "because it was cheap" and bought a house, which he now lets, and travels on the rental income, with his guitar. He doesn't really want to go back to Britain to live at all, though he makes occasional visits in the summer, when he can play music at festivals and travel around a bit.

I also met an American who has set up a business in China, manufacturing bling for gangster rappers in the US, but who is thinking of diversifying into publicity for travel in Indonesia. "This place is ready for this" he said, and I thought "Maybe they prefer to have fewer tourists, rather than more, like in Thailand" but I didn't say anything.

Bagus Bay is calm and peaceful, with a roofed restaurant area, open at the sides, with views over the scratchy grass, that passes for a lawn, the lilly pond and the containing wall to the lake beyond. Out on the edge of the lake people go swimming, boating (Bagus Bay has three little boats for anyone to use) or just sitting, as I, and Nick with his guitar, were doing.

I also met up with Peter, who travelled together with Polish Eva, who admitted that her English was so bad that travelling with her had been intensely frustrating. And the young American, who had travelled through Papua New Guinea, West Papua, Lombok, Bali, Java and now Sumatra. We met originally on the ferry, when he was grumpy and tired, not having slept a wink on the overnight bus from Bukit Tingi because he is so tall. The seats for sleeping on these buses are built for people about five foot tall. People over six foot cannot lie down. This evening he looked well recovered.