Parapat Travel Guide

Parapat is one of the coldest kotas (town/s) outside Medan (where I am based uhmm.. for a while). LIke you would rather stare at the fish afloating, flying, and playing in and on the water (yeah.. there's tons of cute little fish visible when you look closer). They are as countless as the sand. The beach is clean, but plunging in the water in proper swimwear seems to be not a thing there.. (ID is a conservative country ..awhh except Bali?)

From Inna Parapat go to the left corner then right up on the perpendicular street and there is a chinese restaurant immediately to your left. We walked the street looking for a good place to eat, eventually we have to go back to that restaurant.

We ordered fish, and noodles for the kids.

There might be other restaurant further down the street but we don't want to tire ourselves walking.

There are lots of souvenir/handicraft shops left and right of the street.

in going to Parapat, ya can get a bus, a taxi or a private car ride from Medan. However, it is kind of expensive with only a 30-min difference for taxi and private cars. With buses, it requires 4-5hrs for travel period.

so before you go to Parapat to visit the lovely Lake Toba, watch out for the touts that hang around the ferry point particularly on leaving Lake Toba as they will no doubt confuse and eventually rip you off, we had the unfortunate experience of a tout getting on our taxi (after we said "no thanks we actually can find the bus station ourselves") said tout proceeded to chat away with taxi driver and they both obviously decided to rip us off, we were brought about 1 km outside parapat to a private minibus operator and after a heated discussion had no choice but to get out of the taxi and get a minibus from there which ended up at nearly double the price.the tout actually had the cheek to come back 15 minutes later and collect his commission in front of us!!!

There are lots of beautiful views of the lake along the way to Parapat where you can stop and admire the view or have some photo op.