Bob Sumatra Tours

Based in Medan, North Sumatra, Bob has been conducting tours in English for tourist from around the world since 2006. As natives of Medan, Bob and his team know the city and all of Northern Sumatra, Aceh and West Sumatra. Currently Bob offers organized tours:- Lake Toba Package Tours, Medan Package Tours and Sumatra Package Tours. Bob Sumatra was also featured on Discover Indonesia: Explore Medan with The Smart Local.

Lake Toba

Lake Toba(Danau Toba) is the largest volcanic lake in the world and is in Sumatra, Indonesia. Samosir island within the lake is an island within the island of Sumatra. Lake Toba is an immense volcanic lake covering an area of 1,707 km² (1,000 km² bigger than Singapore) with an island in its centre. Formed by a gigantic volcanic eruption some 70,000 years ago, it is probably the largest resurgent caldera on Earth. Some studies say it might have been associated with causing previous ice age/climate change.

The island in the middle - Pulau Samosir - was joined to the caldera wall by a narrow isthmus, which was cut through to enable boats to pass; a road bridge crosses the cutting. Samosir island is the cultural centre of the Batak tribe who are now mostly Christians. The Batak Culture has a lot of Rituals and Parties.

Tripadvisor Reviews

10/10 would recommend Bob

We started planning our trip to Indonesia a year in advance and wanted to get a driver for five days to explore Medan, Lake Toba and the Highlands. We had managed to get in contact with exactly one driver (despite contacting many other agencies), however, after three texts he stopped replying.

Having such issues with finding a driver we were about to shorten our trip, when I read about Bob in another TripAdvisor forum. I texted him over WhatsApp and received a reply within five minutes. As we had already informed ourselves about certain hotels we asked him whether we could change them and he accommodated our wishes immediately. We did choose the Tamam Simalem Resort as one of our options which Bob warned us about and turned out to be right - better listen to Bob. The other hotels which we chose were very nice but we also saw some of his options and they seemed just as good so it’s up to preferences.

We quickly agreed on a price and got an overview of the itinerary. We paid the deposit upfront via Western Union which worked quickly and without issues. As we came from Bukit Lawang with another driver instead of arriving at Medan airport we worried that there might be issues meeting up, however, Bob was very flexible and communicated with the other driver directly to find a meeting spot.

He is a very safe driver, which isn’t usual in Indonesia, and managed to deal with the difficult traffic extremely well!

After a day he had quickly understood what we were mainly interested in and adapted the itinerary for the rest of the tour accordingly. He speaks English very well so there were no communication issues and on top of that functioned as a translator with the locals - very few of them speak English. He knew a lot about the country, its different regions and locals as well as plants so we learnt a lot of interesting facts apart from also seeing plenty.

All in all Bob is very interesting and fun to hang out with and managed to fulfill our expectations! Would recommend to anyone planning a trip to Sumatra and would definitely book again next time!

Testimonials