Orang Terkaya Di Sumatera Zaman Dahulu Tjong A Fie

Tjong A Fie (Aksara Tionghoa : 張阿輝) (Guangdong, 1860-Medan, 1921) adalah seorang pengusaha, bankir dan kapitan yang berasal dari Tiongkok dan sukses membangun bisnis besar dalam bidang perkebunan di Sumatera, Indonesia.Tjong A Fie membangun bisnis besar yang memiliki lebih dari 10.000 orang karyawan.Karena kesuksesannya tersebut, Tjong A Fie dekat dengan para kaum terpandang di Medan, di antaranya Sultan Deli,Makmun Al Rasjid serta pejabat-pejabat kolonial Belanda. Pada tahun 1911, Tjong A Fie diangkat sebagai "Kapitan Tionghoa" (Majoor der Chineezen) untuk memimpin komunitas Tionghoa di Medan, menggantikan kakaknya, Tjong Yong Hian.Sebagai pemimpin masyarakat Tionghoa, Tjong A Fie sangat dihormati dan disegani, karena ia menguasai bidang ekonomi dan politik.Kerajaan bisnisnya meliputi perkebunan, pabrik minyakkelapa sawit, pabrik gula, bank dan perusahaan kereta api.

Air Terjun Sipisopiso Yang Begitu Indah

Ketika seseorang berkunjung ke Sumatera Utara, tujuan utama wisata mereka pastilah Danau Toba.

Air terjun Sipiso-piso pun berada di tepi Danau Toba, sayangnya objek wisata yang sangat menarik ini kurang dikunjungi wisatawan karena letaknya di tepi yang berbeda dengan kota Parapat, dimana wisatawan biasanya berkunjung.

Sipiso-piso terletak di sebelah utara Danau Toba, sekitar 24 kilometer dari Kabanjahe. Air terjun ini merupakan yang tertinggi di Indonesia dengan ketinggian 120 meter. Air terjun Sipiso-piso terbuat dari sungai bawah tanah di plato Karo yang mengalir melalui sebuah gua di sisi kawah Danau Toba.

Ketika saya berkesempatan berkunjung ke tempat ini, pemandangan air terjun sungguh luar biasa. Air terjun yang kecil namun tinggi jatuh di antara tebing berwarna kehijauan.

Dari gardu pandang yang dibangun pemerintah di Merek ini pengunjung tidak hanya dapat menikmati pemandangan air terjun, melainkan juga Danau Toba.Air terjun Sipiso-piso berada di sekitar 800 meter di atas permukaan air laut.

Rumah Adat Karo / Rumah Siwaluh Jabu

RUMAH ADAT KARO

 Rumah Adat Karo sangat terkenal akan keindahan seni arsitekturnya yang khas, gagah dan kokoh dihiasi dengan ornamen-ornamennya yang kaya akan nilai-nilai filosofis. Bentuk, fungsi dan makna Rumah Adat Karo menggambarkan hubungan yang erat antara masyrakat Karo dengan sesamanya dan antara manusia dengan alam lingkungannya.  Pemilihan bahan untuk membangun Rumah Adat Karo serta proses pembangunannya yang tanpa menggunakan paku besi atau pengikat kawat, melainkan menggunakan pasak dan tali ijuk semakin menambah keunikan Rumah Adat Karo. 

 Keberadaan Rumah Adat Karo juga tak terlepas dari pembentukan Kuta (kampung) di Tanah Karo yang berawal dari Barung, kemudian menjadi Talun, dan menjadi Kuta dan di dalam Kuta yang besar terdapat Kesain. Pada sebuah Barung biasanya hanya terdapat sebuah rumah sederhana, ketika sebuah Barung berkembang dan sudah terdapat 3 rumah di dalamnya disebut dengan Talun dan bila telah terdapat lebih dari 5 Rumah Adat disebut sebagai Kuta. Ketika Kuta sudah berkembang lebih pesat dan lebih besar maka Kuta dibagi atas beberapa Kesain (halaman/pekarangan),  disesuaikan dengan merga-merga yang pertama manteki (mendirikan) Kuta tersebut.

Objek Wisata Danau Lau Kawar

Danau Lau Kawar di dataran Kabupaten Karo, Sumatera Utara dulu merupakan salah satu obyek wisata yang cukup tersohor, meski  belakangan nama danau itu nyaris tidak terdengar.

   

Obyek wisata danau di dataran tinggi Karo di kawasan Gunung Bukit Barisan itu masuk wilayah Kecamatan Naman Teran. Perjalanan menuju Tanah Karo yang banyak menyimpan potensi wisata itu cukup menyenangkan dengan pepohonan di kiri-kanan badan jalan. Atau, jurang ditumbuhi rerimbunan pohon.

   

Pastinya, hijau rerimbunan pepohonan dari hutan tropis itu tak pernah membosankan saat dipandang dan terlihat oleh mata kita dari balik jendela mobil, atau kaca depan penutup kepala (helm) jika mengendarai sepedamotor. 

Suku Karo dan Keunikannya

Suku karo sendiri adalah suku asli yang mendiami dataran tinggi di Kabupaten Karo, Sumatera Utara, Indonesia.
Suku karo memiliki bahasa sendiri yaitu bahasa Karo.

Hal-hal unik dari suku karo:

• Pakaian suku adat karo didominasi oleh warna merah dan hitam. Dan penuh dengan perhiasan emas.

Hotel dengan kadar Karbondioksida 0% "Wolgan Valley"

Wolgan valley merupakan hotel di benua Australia dengan bangunan yang unik dan memiliki konsep bangunan yang ramah lingkugan. Hotel ini dikatakan memiliki kadar karbondioksida 0% di sekelilingnya karena memiliki 175.000 pohon asli di sekeliling hotel. Semua bangunan di hotel ini dibangun dengan standart emisi yang rendah agar menghasilkan kadar karbondioksida 0%. Hotel ini menjadi tempat yang cocok bagi anda yang menginginkan udara bebas polusi.

Gambar:

Everest set to become new Brokeback mountain after Nepal U-turn on gays

As recently as 2007, Nepal classified homosexuality as a crime, punishable by up to two years in prison. Gays and lesbians were harassed and beaten by police, and denounced by Maoist rebels as “a product of capitalism”. Three years on, this Himalayan nation is not only about to become the first in Asia to allow same-sex marriages: it is promoting gay weddings on Everest in an attempt to become the continent’s top gay tourism destination.

“We’re completely changing this country. It’s a newborn republic — and we want to showcase this change,” Sharat Singh Bhandari, the Tourism Minister, told The Times. “We also want to re-establish tourism as a major industry.” He aims to attract one million tourists in 2011, more than double the number last year.

He kicked off the marketing campaign in October with a written message to the International Conference on Gay & Lesbian Tourism in Boston — an unprecedented gesture for an Asian minister. “As the world knows, Nepal is the land of Mount Everest, world’s highest peak and the birth place of Lord Buddha, light of Asia,” the message said. “I, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to invite and welcome all the sexual and gender minorities from around the world.”

Nepal is also due to host the first Asian Symposium on Gay & Lesbian Tourism in Kathmandu in June. This sudden turnaround highlights the extraordinary change that has swept the country since a democratic uprising forced King Gyanendra to renounce absolute power in 2006 and the Maoists won power and abolished the world’s last Hindu monarchy two years later. The new republic is still unstable, with the Maoists and their rival parties unlikely to agree on a new constitution — supposed to guarantee gay rights — by a deadline of May 28.

But a same-sex marriage law is working its way through parliament after a Supreme Court ruling in 2008 that ordered the Government to safeguard the rights of “sexual minorities”. “Before that, people did not know if it was natural or unnatural, legal or illegal,” says Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal’s leading gay rights activist and the only openly homosexual MP in South Asia.

Much of the credit for this progress goes to Mr Pant, whose own life story mirrors Nepal’s transformation. Born into a conservative Brahmin family, he had no concept of his own sexual orientation while growing up in rural Gorkha district. He had not heard the word “homosexual” until he went to Belarus on a scholarship in 1992, and did not learn about gay rights until he visited Japan in 1997.

On his return to Nepal five years later, Mr Pant founded the Blue Diamond Society, an organisation campaigning for gay rights that now has more than 120,000 members. Today, he also runs a travel agency called Pink Mountain and advises the Government on how to tap a market worth more than $63 billion (£41 billion) in the United States alone. “The tourism thing is an obvious idea — we should have thought of it much earlier,” he said. “With proper marketing, we could bring in half a million a year.” While some officials fear a backlash in more conservative rural areas, Mr Pant says that most Nepalis are instinctively tolerant “as long you don’t walk naked or do something explicit”.

The tourism board is already talking about same-sex weddings on Everest, elephant safaris for gay honeymooners and other specialist activities. Mr Pant wants to broaden the drive to promote all Nepal’s tourist activities. “There are plenty of gays and lesbians who want adventurous, sporty, outdoors kind of tourism,” he said. “In other Asian countries which offer this, they are either not welcome or considered criminals.”

About Borobudur Temple

Borobudur is a ninth-century Mahayana Buddhist monument in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. A main dome, located at the center of the top platform, is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues seated inside perforated stupa.

The monument is both a shrine to the Lord Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. The journey for pilgrims begins at the base of the monument and follows a path circumambulating the monument while ascending to the top through the three levels of Buddhist cosmology, namely Kāmadhātu (the world of desire), Rupadhatu (the world of forms) and Arupadhatu (the world of formlessness). During the journey the monument guides the pilgrims through a system of stairways and corridors with 1,460 narrative relief panels on the wall and the balustrades.

Evidence suggests Borobudur was abandoned following the fourteenth century decline of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms in Java, and the Javanese conversion to Islam. Worldwide knowledge of its existence was sparked in 1814 by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the then British ruler of Java, who was advised of its location by native Indonesians. Borobudur has since been preserved through several restorations. The largest restoration project was undertaken between 1975 and 1982 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO, following which the monument was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Borobudur is still used for pilgrimage; once a year Buddhists in Indonesia celebrate Vesak at the monument, and Borobudur is Indonesia's single most visited tourist attraction.

So Where we can find Borobudur Temple

Location

Approximately 40 kilometers (25 mil) northwest of Yogyakarta, Borobudur is located in an elevated area between two twin volcanoes, Sundoro-Sumbing and Merbabu-Merapi, and two rivers, the Progo and the Elo. According to local myth, the area known as Kedu Plain is a Javanese 'sacred' place and has been dubbed 'the garden of Java' due to its high agricultural fertility. Besides Borobudur, there are other Buddhist and Hindu temples in the area, including the Prambanan temples compound. During the restoration in the early 1900s, it was discovered that three Buddhist temples in the region, Borobudur, Pawon and Mendut, are lined in one straight line position. It might be accidental, but the temples' alignment is in conjunction with a native folk tale that a long time ago, there was a brick-paved road from Borobudur to Mendut with walls on both sides. The three temples (Borobudur–Pawon–Mendut) have similar architecture and ornamentation derived from the same time period, which suggests that ritual relationship between the three temples, in order to have formed a sacred unity, must have existed, although exact ritual process is yet unknown.

Unlike other temples, which were built on a flat surface, Borobudur was built on a bedrock hill, 265 m (869 ft) above sea level and 15 m (49 ft) above the floor of the dried-out paleolake. The lake's existence was the subject of intense discussion among archaeologists in the twentieth century; Borobudur was thought to have been built on a lake shore or even floated on a lake. In 1931, a Dutch artist and a scholar of Hindu and Buddhist architecture, W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp, developed a theory that Kedu Plain was once a lake and Borobudur initially represented a lotus flower floating on the lake. Lotus flowers are found in almost every Buddhist work of art, often serving as a throne for buddhas and base for stupas. The architecture of Borobudur itself suggests a lotus depiction, in which Buddha postures in Borobudur symbolize the Lotus Sutra, mostly found in many Mahayana Buddhism (a school of Buddhism widely spread in the east Asia region) texts. Three circular platforms on the top are also thought to represent a lotus leaf. Nieuwenkamp's theory, however, was contested by many archaeologists because the natural environment surrounding the monument is a dry land.

Geologists, on the other hand, support Nieuwenkamp's view, pointing out clay sediments found near the site. A study of stratigraphy, sediment and pollen samples conducted in 2000 supports the existence of a paleolake environment near Borobudur,which tends to confirm Nieuwenkamp's theory. The lake area fluctuated with time and the study also proves that Borobudur was near the lake shore circa thirteenth and fourteenth century. River flows and volcanic activities shape the surrounding landscape, including the lake. One of the most active volcanoes in Indonesia, Mount Merapi, is in the direct vicinity of Borobudur and has been very active since the Pleistocene.

"So Move on Indonesia Tourism"