Mangoes!

12 weeks into my Asian adventure and approximately 87 mangoes later I decided to finally share some facts and my love for that sweet juicy fruit.

What prompted me to write this is a fun fact shared with me the other day - more mangoes are eaten fresh than any other fruit in the world.

That is more than apples and more than bananas - how cool is that? Native to southeast Asia and India mango trees are also grown in Latin America and Africa and the fruit itself distributed worldwide.

There are over a thousand varieties of mango and most of them are grown in India. At the convenient for me store there are usually about 4 or 5 types of mango, and my favourite is the Elephant Tusk.

They look like this:

When ripe its light yellow flesh has a silky smooth taste, very refreshing and sweet. It is my fruit of choice to add to a tasty breakfast.

The other type I have tried is the Water Lily mango. They look like this:

Also very tasty and very easy for peeling when ripe.

The other type is called Indian mango. They look like this:

Much rounder than the fisrt two types, it has a very different taste, it has a sweet, rich and highly fragrant. Probably too fragrant for me to have often.

The other type is Phoenix. Mangoes looks like this:

This one is much bigger that the rest and I have not tried yet.

For me mango is a tasty tropical way to have my oats in the morning and it's also an essential ingredient of one of the best desserts I've tried here - the mango sticky rice. It's a Thai thing, sticky rice topped with coconut milk and served with a fresh mango. Yum.

And not only they are tasty, mangoes also help to lower cholesterol. the fiber content makes it a wonderful digestive and they are rich in the vitamins A and C.

In Kevin Grise's words and voice - cooool aaaaaazzz.

Tuk Tuk

Tuk Tuk is a village on an island, in a lake, on an island. The bigger island is called Sumatra.

Sumatra is the largest island that is entirely in Indonesia and the 6th largest island in the world.

We got there by air to the airport in the biggest city on it called Medan, then grabbed a cab to the bus station. I was stunned by the traffic - loads of cars, bikes, a kind of taxi bikes called becaks:

And loads of bikes and smaller vehicles driving on the each side of the road going against the traffic - a little mad to drive there I guess.

We then got on a bus - a really wild old bus that would take us to Parapat which is on the edge of the lake we wanted to go to.

Bus ride was really wild, people were smoking inside the bus, we kept stopping to let more people on board and to me it looked it was full from the start, but they always found a way to squeeze another person in. It is almost as if we didn't stop to let the passengers get on the bus, rather we would slow down let them hop in and then go fast again. Crazy ride. Of course there was no AC, and it was a hot and sticky and tiring ride.

We made it to Parapat so we were just a ferry away from our destination. Decided to grab a bite before we get on the ferry. He had egg fried rice which was decent, I ordered some veggies and they were not bad if only they didn't put on them the mini dried prawns - that kind that you feed to your water turtle pet or to your fish.

The ferry took us across lake Toba, the ride was very pleasant, relaxing and cooling after the wild bus ride.

We finally arrived at the Tuk Tuk village, and checked in a little bungalow right by the water. It was so peaceful and relaxing to stay on the little veranda and look into the horizon.

We woke up the next morning to this beautiful view:

It was time to explore. After breakfast (we tried an amazing ginseng coffee) we headed towards the waterfall. On the way all locals would smile and greet us when we passed by their houses - very genuinely. The weather was nice so they had taken crops out in front of their houses to dry them.

We asked for directions and a few locals told us we couldn't get there, but we didn't give up, we kept walking and kept asking. Finally three local boys decided to show us the way so off we went. At first it was going through a forest and it gradually became steeper and steeper. We were walking on rocks and it was getting more and more humid, we could hear the waterfall and after the next turn there it was. We thought we had reached our goal when the locals told us that us that we can go further up. I did not see a way up. They all took their shoes off and started climbing, grabbing onto the roots of the trees. So we followed. It was a very steep and I wouldn't have even thought of going there if it wasn't for the locals, they showed us how and lead the way. It was a really nice challenge, climbing up to the waterfall by holding onto the roots and digging your toes into the soil. It was surreal, the adrenaline rush was incredible. I could not believe how high we have gone. The view was absolutely worth it.

We took the most refreshing shower ever. And then just stayed on the rocks to enjoy the view...

Going down was not easy at all - my feet were like cooked spaghetti from the adrenaline. We stopped for a break in the forest before we returned to the village. There the locals picked some wild jungle fruits for us to try. They are called salak and look like this:

They are also called snake fruit for obvious reasons. The skin is prickly and rough, once you peel it the fruit inside consists of three parts, the biggest one of which contains a large inedible seed. The fuit is fleshy with a bitter sweet flavour.

Tired from the adventure we returned to the village and went to grab a bite. Interesting thing about the Tuk Tuk village is that most locals open their houses for business. Whether it will be a restaurant, a cafe, a convenience store, laudry services, a tourist information place etc. So you literally would enter into a house sit down in the living room, order and the locals would prepare a meal in their kitchen - the menu is based around the ingredients that every household has in stock - free range eggs (there are chickens around the streets of the village), potatoes, tomatoes, fresh vegetables, avocados, fresh fruits etc. We tried a very tasty kind of bread they have with a spread of avocados (much like guacamole), had some really tasty soups and tried their smoothies. Then on the way back to the bungalow we tried a local treat - pisang goreng or fried banana. Cooked on the street and hot when we got it, it was a simple and nice local treat.

The third day we took a long walk by the lake, barefoot, had breakfast at a really nice little place with a veranda and enjoyed the peace and quiet the village has to offer before we headed back to the airport in Medan.

 

Lovely little village retreat, really enjoyed the time spent there, totally enjoyed the hike to the waterfall! A little village on a little island, on a lake, on an island worth visiting.