After leaving Bali we caught a plane to Medan, North Sumatra for the next part of our adventure. We stayed one night on the way and one on the way back. I had looked into staying longer here but after some research decided against it. So happy I made this decision as from what I could see from the car and hotel window it looked quite drab, apart from the enormous colourful mosques dotted about the place.

We flew on Garuda Air with a brief stop in Jakarta. Garuda changed our flight at least twice leaving us with no opportunity to stay anywhere but the airport hotel, we didn’t check in until 9.45 pm. When we arrived in Jakarta I panicked as I thought we had missed our connecting flight, only to be told there was an hour’s time difference, phew!

Downtown Medan is over an hour’s drive from the airport and as we had 10 am start the next day it didn’t seem worth the effort to stay in town. We stayed in Horison Sky Airport Hotel and the less said the better! Although as Anthony pointed out you get what you pay for.

The room was dark and small, but the worst was the smelly pillows. Actually the fact that there was no alcohol served here was probably a close second.

On the way back after our four night odyssey around Lake Toba we stayed at the Four Point Sheraton. As I mentioned before though, driving through the streets and from the window, I was in no way enticed to explore further.

Dreary, grey and polluted

Anthony wouldn’t have minded a walk around but I pointed out to him there were no actual pavements or sidewalks to walk on. You would be lucky if you could walk far without being hit by a bike or van.

This lovely young girl came up to me at Medan Airport and asked if she could interview me for her Uni assignment. I was very happy to oblige. She asked me questions about where I came from and where we had been travelling.

As you can see not much to say, but I will definitely have plenty to say about the next part of our journey!