Greetings from Lake Toba

I'm surprised that I'm creating this post on the shores of Lake Toba in the north of Sumatra because for many years this place has been a technological backwater. When I first visited in 2002, it was difficult to even get a mobile phone signal and now I'm accessing the Internet from the hotel's free hotspot. It certainly demonstrates how the telecommunications infrastructure in Indonesia has improved over the past six years, although it still has a long way to go.

As wireless Internet connectivity improves with the rollout of WiMAX and the cost of Internet-enabled devices continues to fall, the Internet will become more accessible to Indonesians and play more of a role in the education of its students. Fixed phone lines, that would allow at least dial-up access to the Internet, are never going to penetrate to the more remote areas of this archipelago and thus wireless connectivity of some sort (GPRS, HSPDA, WiMAX) is the future.

But enough of technology, I'm currently looking over a lake that is 900 metres above sea level and is more than 500 metres deep at its deepest point. The tranquility of the location is in stark contrast to the violence of the eruption that created it. About 75,000 years ago, an explosion occurred here that was so powerful and so catastrophic in terms of its effect on the world's climate that the human race at the time may have been reduced to as little as 1000 breeding pairs (see Lake Toba catastrophe theory).