The man wanted to take me somewhere other than Amplas, vaguely pointing at the side of the road while uttering “minibus Toba.” Medan was awful ugly low-level cement and brick buildings in drab colours. He did however have a taxi-driver friend to take me to the bus station a big, cigarette-smoking man with unfriendly eyes. I would have to take a bus from the Amplas Bus Station south of the city. No, there were no longer any “tourist buses” operating to Lake Toba (indicated in some of my out-of-date guidebooks). The “Tourist Information Office” in Medan’s Polonia airport is a tiny, bare office with peeling white paint – no maps or glossy tourist pictures here – and an old wooden desk occupied by a chain-smoking 40ish-something man. My readings had effusively vaunted the friendliness of Indonesians. He gave me a disappointed, defeated wave. Lucky for me I had a return ticket to Malaysia. “Onward ticket?” The guidebooks don’t say anything about Visas or proof of onward transit. After purchasing the Indonesian government’s $25 US, 30-day tourist Visa, I passed to immigration where my passport was thoroughly examined, the inspector looking back and forth between the photo and guy standing in front of him. Everyone was sour-faced, even the stewardesses (you can usually always count on a stewardess for a smile). The other passengers didn’t look any friendlier nobody smiled or even looked at the token white guy in their midst. She gave me a dirty look as I sat down, got up, and sat a few rows back. I was also surprised by the reaction of the middle-aged lady occupying the seat next to me. I was nevertheless surprised to see that I was the only Westerner getting on the Malaysia Airlines flight from Penang. Medan is a transit point, nobody actually stay here longer than it takes to jump on a bus or plane.
Grey clouds and pools of coffee-coloured water in the fields testified to the onset of the rainy season and contributed to the rather dreary, uninspiring scene. Cracked and potholed roads, reddish-brown with mud, split the landscape, the roads bordered by one-story corrugated metal shacks and brick buildings, all with rusty roofs of the same dirty brown. Unlike Malaysia, the hills and fields were a sickly, yellowish-green. Flying into Medan, Sumatra’s largest city and the entry point to the province of northern Sumatra, I was first struck by the washed out colors below.
I kept repeating this to myself, wondering how my initial impressions could be so far off the description given in the guidebook. “A natural wonderland of luxuriant forests, fast-flowing rivers, vast swamps, cool highland lakes and imposing volcanoes…”. Medan to Lake Toba…and impressions of Sumatra Medan, Sumatra (Indonesia)
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