LAKE TOBA - Should You Visit While in North Sumatra

Good morning and welcome to Lake Toba. This is, I've always wanted to get here and now we've just arrived and I had no idea how huge it is, but look, that's the lake there and that stretches for a hundred kilometers. It's the largest volcanic lake in the world. I mean, apparently it was formed by a super volcano, one of the largest eruptions in the last 25 million years, and it's left this giant lake. We're just going to go and try and explore. We're actually staying on an island in the middle of the lake at this place, Tabo Cottages, and yeah, I think there's going to be some really cool things to see here. Without wasting too much time of this video doing the intro, we're going to get on, jump on the bike and see what we can find. Good morning. Are you ready to explore the largest volcanic lake in the world? I just found out this morning. Yeah, and the weather looks great. We just checked in and this is our place. We just got here and they gave us this upgrade to a Batak Villa. Wait, let me show you. We're staying at... Nice. We're staying at Tabo Cottages and this is probably the coolest bit. Check it out, we have a little staircase to go up. Oh, that's cool, it's another bed with a little skylight. All right, I think I'm going to like this place. Oh yeah, it's so nice. We have a hammock just here and then the lake is here. And coming from Medan, which was interesting to see but pretty hectic, to now just a few hours later being by a really peaceful lake like this is really nice. We have three nights here in Tabo Cottages to explore and yeah, I think I'm really going to enjoy this. We just started driving and found this viewpoint. That's the thing about this island, I think, as you drive around I think there's lots of viewpoints because the lake is all around you. We are sort of heading somewhere but we're also not really. We've got like the whole day just to drive and explore. Yeah, look, it's a really nice viewpoint. We've just arrived to Bukit Holbung after driving for about an hour, hour and a bit. And it was a really, really beautiful drive actually, like really windy roads all along the lake and I loved it. But just be aware that like it is very windy roads and if you're not an experienced driver then just be careful because it's very steep up and downhill. But yeah, it was a very nice drive and now we are here and this is our first proper stop for the day. Let me show you why. By the way, the scenery here is just so different to what I've seen in the rest of Indonesia. It feels, I don't know, a bit more, a bit more like Europe or Canada. You've got all the big trees everywhere, giant hills, big lake. Yeah, I don't know. Elodie's been saying it feels more like Austria or something. So different to what you can see in Bali, for example. I was thinking this is the top. Actually, this is the top. So that's where we're going. Okay, I think this is it. Oh, that breeze in the top, wow. Really cool view but as we got to the top, I realized I've left the key in the scooter. So as much as we'd like to come up here, I think we need to get down. I'm fingers crossed it's still there. All right, here it is guys. Don't be me. If you learned one thing from this video, let it be not to do that. Don't leave the key in your bike because although I've been fine with it, you do hear of stories of people getting their bikes taken and stuff. But yeah, just don't do that. We've decided now to head back to Tabo Cottages because there's a big storm crawling in over there and it's actually already about 2.30 because we started out late this morning. So we're going to head all the way back and then give you another update then. It's February, right? Hello. We literally just stopped at a random point while we're driving and February said, hey, John. It's a big fence. Oh, cool. Now you're in the vlog. Awesome. Yeah, we're biking up to Sepiso Piso Waterfall right now and we just stopped at this sort of viewpoint. It's next to this teletower but to be honest, it's quite cloudy today so we don't need to go up. We can see it from here. We've got about another two, maybe three hours to drive to the waterfall. It's going to be a long one but I think it's going to be worth it. It is a little bit cold today to be honest. Like you see, it's cloudy and we've got quite high. I didn't expect it to be this cold in Sumatra so we aren't prepared for it at all. Just got shorts. Yeah, let's get on with the ride. We've been driving for three hours already and it is so cold. Like we're driving through clouds because it's all quite high. We clearly weren't prepared for this. We put on every single clothing we have and just pulled over for some hot tea. We're almost there though. We're almost there to the waterfall and yeah, I'll show you in a minute. How are you feeling? So cold. Look at what we're wearing. We just have everything on. Everything. But check this out. We do have a good view. Thank you. Almost there. Yeah, look this is where we're staying tonight. We are so close and we've been driving for quite a while but I think this is where we're staying tonight. It's a town called Tongying and it's near the waterfall we want to go to which is called Sepiso Piso. So we decided to stay for the night here. Just we haven't found a guest house yet but we're going to go try and find one now. And then look at that. That's where we're staying. How cool is that? Made it. And we just checked three guest houses and found this one which is pretty reasonable actually. It was 200,000 for one night. It was going to be 250 and we asked for 200 and they said sure because we're practically the only guests here. That's quite nice. This is the area and right there is the lake. Out here it looks like paradise. Yeah, like you see this beautiful garden and you're like oh my god, we're so lucky to be here. And then you go into the rooms. There's just spiders everywhere. Millions of ants. Dust that's like five centimeters like thick. We're just checking in now in the little registration booklet and the last person to check in that was a foreigner was in November. So two months ago we're the first people back here. This is yours, yeah, because it's a curry one. This is mine, veggie. Luxury meal for us today. Luxury, look at this. Pop me. These are like the cheapest instant noodles you can get. I think he agrees. And it just started raining. Pretty good considering it took us about four hours to get here. So the fact that it just started raining now feels pretty lucky. All right, we're at the top of Serpiso Piso waterfall now which is the one I wanted to show you and it's like over there but there is also a path to get down to the bottom. It's 4 30 now and we're going to try and get down to the bottom and back up before the sun sets. We're about halfway down and you can see all of the mist coming off it. I think I read before that you always get wet on this waterfall so I'm going to try and film but the closer we get the more wet it's going to be. This is actually really cool. One of the coolest things we've done in Lake Toba so far and like I've been to a lot of waterfalls but this is pretty different. You can see it just comes out of a hole. It's like a tap. It doesn't come over the top, it just comes out like a tap and produces this massive stream out of this small hole. Sounded funny. Now you can see the spray. Everything is wet down there. Hello. Hey. That is cool. It's huge. This is actually epic. It's not often I'm really blown away taking so many photos but this is so cool. You're right amongst it. I've just been down here flicking away taking loads of photos right under the waterfall. Thank you. You're my model. This was so nuts. So worth the drive and worth doing the hike down here. My memory card's running out. Silly sin. As a travel vlogger. But I didn't bring another one so I'm going to finish this here and catch up with you guys in a minute. These last few days in Lake Toba have been absolutely epic and so in answer to the title of this should you visit Lake Toba? 100% yes. We've seen some of the things there are to do here but there's still actually quite a lot more and like I said earlier in the video I think it just feels undiscovered and it feels less touristy and so if you want to go somewhere where you feel like you're seeing some really beautiful nature and it's not heavily on the tourist trail then this is definitely a place. It is a bit more difficult to get around at least the way we've done it with a bike. I don't know how the day tours or like package tours would work but I imagine that might be easier. I think you'd have some long days because some of the things that we've been to see are pretty spread out and I haven't really gone into too much detail in this video about how to see all these different things but I am going to include it in a blog below so if you want to find out some more information about all the things we've got up to in this then click that link and you can find out how to get to those places with the Google Geotags as well. I want to say a massive thank you to Tabo Cottages for Tabo Cottages for having us here. It's been a great stay here for the last few days really enjoyed it. Beautiful place and yeah thanks to them. That's it. I'll just leave you there. We're about to head off to Bukit Lawang which is our next stop. That's for the orangutans so really excited for that too. Thank you for watching and this is my life.