Balkan: Winter - November 2015

This was my second trip to the Balkan region. This time round we covered two new countries, Bulgaria and Romania. Wrong timing to go though since by 5pm it was already dark that it felt like 8pm :( The downside of joining an organised tour I suppose. You have to follow their dates. The earlier October departure was cancelled due to insufficient numbers.

What I dislike about this trip besides the short daylight hours was the food. I truly truly hate cold appetiser during winter. Since we joined the non Muslim group, in some restaurants we were served vegetarian dish. It was at best unpalatable and at worst fit to be thrown to the dustbin. Luckily cappucino was served almost every lunch and dinner. Those were good :)

Another thing that I dislike was the frequent and super long toilet stops. Such a waste of time. It resulted in us reaching Ohrid, Shkodra and Podgorica when it was already dark. Imagine going to Ohrid, a UNESCO Heritage town and cannot see their beautiful architecture at all. The beautiful Ohrid Lake was totally dark so your can't see the lake with the nice houses at the background at all. What a disappointment. Same thing with Shkodra and Podgorica. The so called city tour was conducted at night. You can't really see anything :(

What I likeed most was the visit to Kotor Fortress. We were given a few hours free time to explore this city on our own. Since it was winter, the medieval city was quite empty of tourists. So you get the city all to yourself :P

Our itinerary was quite packed. Six days to cover five countries. A nomad holiday :P
21 November 2015    Kuala Lumpur - Istanbul
22 November 2015    Istanbul - Otopeni - Bucharest
23 November 2015    Bucharest - Veliko Tarnovo - Sofia
24 November 2015    Sofia - Rila - Skopje
25 November 2015    Skopje - Ohrid
26 November 2015    Ohrid - Tirana - Shkodra
27 November 2015    Shkodra - Kotor - Podgorica
28 November 2015    Podgorica - Istanbul
29 November 2015    Istanbul - Kuala Lumpur

This tour was organised by Parlo Tours. Tour price was RM6.7k on twin sharing basis. The hotels provided was quite good. The people that joined this tour were mostly friendly and fun loving group except for this four siblings that were a bit selfish. In the bus, 4 of them took 9 seats! Our tour leader was Lai. A serious guy who did his job well. I just wished he took care of our menu better and arranged to rotate the seats in the bus.

I normally felt energised after a short holiday but I came back from this holiday feeling a bit tired. I blamed it on lousy food, the gloomy cold weather and also Turkish Airlines. On our way home, our transit time was 7 hours but the flight was delayed by 5 hours! Imagine 12 hours in Istanbul Airport with no free WiFi. Horror!! Free and fast WiFi in airport should be made a standard practice. We all paid expensive airport tax after all. The least they can provide besides clean toilets is free and fast WiFi right?

I have uploaded 780 pictiures and 16 videos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them here:
http://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

Hashtags specific for this trip:
#mks2015Balkan #mks2015Albania #mks2015Romania #mks2015Bulgaria #mks2015Macedonia #mks2015Montenegro

Njoy!!

Japan: Autumn - October 2015

My third time going to Japan. For somebody who doesn't like Japanese food and didn't really enjoy her previous tours to Japan, I sure ended there quite a lot! The good news is I came back from this trip with a better appreciation of Japan and don't mind going there again :)

This time round I went with friends. We decided to go on a budget trip. Total costs for 15 days (14 nights) was just around RM4.3k inclusive of tickets to Disneyland, Disneysea, Tokyo Tower and all other attractions. Cheap right? How do we keep the costs down? We flied Air Asia, brought almost all food from Malaysia, stay at cheap accommodation and buy public transportation passes. I think the main reason why I like this trip is because I get to eat Malaysian food :P Previous trips because I followed group tours I had to eat Japanese food :(

You need to be very fit if you wish to take their mass transit system. It is normal to walk around 10 km a day. Even if you just want to change train lines within the same station, you need to walk very far unlike in London. The places that you wish to visit are also mostly far from the stations. So if you are the type who only walk to your car, better join a tour instead of going to Japan yourself :P Another reason why I like this trip is because I get to experience their public transportation. It was so much fun. Really! You came back also healthier :)

 

Our itinerary was as follows:
29 October 2015     Kuala Lumpur - Tokyo
30 October 2015     Tokyo
31 October 2015     Tokyo
1 November 2015   Tokyo - Kawaguchiko - Tokyo
2 November 2015   Tokyo
3 November 2015   Tokyo
4 November 2015   Tokyo - Nagoya
5 November 2015   Nagoya
6 November 2015   Nagoya
7 November 2015   Nagoya - Osaka
8 November 2015   Osaka
9 November 2015   Osaka
10 November 2015 Osaka - Kyoto - Osaka
11 November 2015 Osaka - Kyoto - Osaka
12 November 2015 Osaka - Kuala Lumpur

We visited Disneyland and Disneysea. I am not really a fan of theme parks (but as always I sure ended up there quite often!) but for these two parks their night fireworks and laser shows made me like theme parks a bit :) So if you go there and like me don't really like to queue for rides, you must stay for the night shows. They are spectacular :)

We went to Lake Kawaguchi to take a look at Fuji Mountain. The day was grey but we were lucky to still be able to view the top part of the mountain while we were cruising on the lake :) Lake Kawaguchi is actually quite big. Make sure you do a research on where is the best place to see autumn leaves and Mount Fuji. We went to a wrong place so we did not get to see so many autumn leaves :( Another thing, if you wish to ride on a scenic train in Kyoto make sure when you board the train it is still daylight. Truly a waste of money if you board at night.

My favourite in this trip is the visit to Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium. First time I get so close to dolphins, belugas, penguins and killer whales :) Do check out the pictures at #mks20151106. They are all super duper cute!

I've uploaded 837 photos on Instagram. You can access them here:
http://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

Hashtag specific for this trip:
#mks2015Japan

Njoy!!

Indonesia: Summer - May 2015

 

This is my second trip to Medan-Lake Toba-Berastagi area. The first time I went there was in 1995 with my university friends. Normally when I went to visit the same city, I can appreciate their development over the years but somehow when I went to Lake Toba I personally think that the area was better looking back in 1995. The water was cleaner and greener. The area also felt more magical. Now, it just felt tired. It is no longer thriving with visitors.

President Joko Widodo recently announced that they have plans to revive the area. His first order was to dismantle all the fish cages that pollutes the lake. I hope he will succeed. It is such a waste not to optimise the tourism potential of the largest volcanic lake in the world.

This trip marked my flying with Air Asia after boycotting the airline for so long. The last time I flew Air Asia was in 2008. This was also my first trip flying via our new airport KLIA2. I was quite impressed with KLIA2, I did not expect that our new airport is so huge with many restaurants and retail outlets. The Air Asia flight was however delayed. Why am I not surprised?

For this trip I went with a group of friends, so it was great fun to reunite with old friends and make new friends even though everything else was lousy. We bought our own plane tickets and the hire a local tour for the ground arrangement. Our tour operator over promised but under delivered. The reason why I decided to join the trip was due to the visit to Batu Kapur Hot Spring, unfortunately that and a few others in the itinerary were conveniently forgotten due to lack of planning and time constraint.

The transport provided from Kualanamu Airport to Lake Toba was horrendous. They squeezed all twelve of us (with our bags!!) into a van for a five hours drive in a hot weather. The aircon was not strong enough for the weather. During the trip my friend's Delsey luggage was damaged due terrible stacking of the bags during the long journey.

Out of the three hotels, two was fortunately okay. One was very dated. Since this is a full board ground arrangement, the food provided was quite tasty but the portions were very stingy. Our last dinner, the restaurant's cleanliness was questionable. I was strucked with diarrhea for the first time during overseas travel. Luckily it was mild so by the time I reached home I was almost recovered. My stomach is usually very tough after going through a few boarding school and colleges :P I suspect it was the spicy sambal or the soursop drink that caused my downfall. Serve me right for eating uncooked dish and drink iced drinks at dodgy places!

For this trip the total damage was RM820. Air Asia flights (RM245), Man Togie ground arrangement (RM375) and shopping (RM200). Lessons learnt from this trip are cheap trips not necessarily value for money and I truly don't like to go on a shopping trip. So tiring.

Our itinerary:

28 May 2015  Kuala Lumpur - Kuala Namu - Lake Toba

29 May 2015  Lake Toba - Berastagi

30 May 2015  Berastagi - Medan

31 May 2015  Medan - Kuala Namu - Kuala Lumpur

I've uploaded 92 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy !!

Taiwan: Summer - April 2015

 

The first time I went to Taiwan was in 1997. I remember it well cause it coincided with Lady Diana's death.  I remember watching television in my hotel room, while typhoon raging outside listening to the tragic story. It was my country independence day too - 31 August.

Now after close to 18 years later, I figured it is time to revisit the country. Furthermore my visit back in 1997 was only to Taipei. This time round I got to move around a bit :)

Our itinerary was:
28 April 2015  Kuala Lumpur - Taoyuan
29 April 2015  Taoyuan - Taichung - Nantou
30 April 2015  Nantou - Yilan
1 May 2015     Yilan - Yangmingshan - Taipei
2 May 2015     Taipei - Yehliu - Taipei
3 May 2015     Taoyuan - Kuala Lumpur

Surprisingly I found the present day Taiwan less vibrant than before. The roads were quite empty. When I went there in the 90s, there were so many youngsters on motorbikes. The locals call them them suicycles (suicide motorcycles) but now so few of them on the road.

Sadly except for Yehliu Geopark (highly recommended), I found Taiwan so boring. The buildings are dated and messy. So uninspiring. Even the iconic Taipei 101 lacks energy. But one thing good about Taiwan according to the local guide is its low crime rate. The city is very clean too :) The immigration officers are friendlier too compared to the 90s :P

The tour was organised by Poto Travels & Tours and the price per person was RM3759. It was a full board tour. Since we followed Muslim tours, can't really comment about their authentic local food. Their halal restaurants are quite limited. The food that were served to us was mostly palatable.

I just want to put on record that I was quite disappointed with Poto for this trip. Their itinerary stated that there is an opportunity to pluck fruits from the trees at the leisure farm. The reality was you can't even spy any fruits on the trees! How misleading!

 

I've uploaded 225 pictures for your viewing pleasure. You can view the pictures at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy!!

Malta & Tunisia: Spring - March 2015

I've been wanting to visit Tunisia for quite some time after I heard people say that Tunisia is a very beautiful country. Unfortunately I went there with high expectations but came home disappointed. I agree that their natural landscapes are quite pretty but I found that their tourists industry is not up to par. Their so called 4 or 5 star hotels do not deserve the rating. Their service people are not friendly and some are downright rude. The food served at the hotels' buffets either tasteless or tastes weird. Their desserts may sometime look pretty but don't expect too much in the taste department :(

There were so many things that went wrong in this tour:

First, Tunisair Express for flight to Tunis from Malta overbooked their seats, so the 3 of us (out of 15) had to go on a roundabout flights Malta-Djerba (Air Malta) Djerba-Tunis (Tunisair Express) instead. We were scheduled to reach Tunis at 1.40pm but the 3 of us ended up reaching Tunis at 6.30pm. The Tunisair Express plane was so old that I felt like kissing the ground after we landed safely!

My fellow travellers that made it on the original flight were not spared the "drama" either, out of 12, 8 lost their check-in luggages! The luggages were left in Malta. They only got back their luggages four days later.

Second, my brand new travel luggage was a casualty in this trip. I don't know what they did but 2 (out of 4) of the wheels were almost ripped off the bag! Their airport baggage handling either in Djerba or Tunis or maybe both were simply deplorable. If I'm not mistaken, one other tour member's bag was also impacted.

Third, not all places mentioned in the itinerary was covered. Too much time was given for shopping and so little time was given for the most important place of visit, Roman amphitheatre at El-Jem. Imagine being given 1 hour to tour the place and do your prayer at the nearby mosque.

Fourth, we had a lousy Malaysian tour manager. Instead of taking care of us his customers, he behaved like a tourist himself. I think he shopped and took pictures more than the rest of us. We were in transit for seven hours in Istanbul and he didn't even bother to tell us where and when to meet up after we had our morning prayers. So we ended up loitering and waiting for him to eventually showed up.  He didn't even know that we can claim some meal vouchers from the airlines and neither does he knows that he can't bring liquid in bottles more than 100ml on the plane. A weird behaviour for a so called world traveller if you ask me.

Fifth, if you are not a great bargainer and are used to fixed pricing environment, be very careful when you buy stuff there. Their traders will not bat an eye when they fleece you. Imagine I bought the same silver (so they claimed) bracelet for TND10 at one place (the original price they quoted was TND20). Then thirty steps later, another shopkeeper offered it for TND5. A few days later when I went to their bazaar, another shopkeeper offered the same bracelet two for TND5. A few minutes later, one of the fellow tourists told me that she bought the same bracelet for TND2 each!

The saving grace for me is that this tour is combined with Malta. Malta is a bonus country for me. Never expected to set foot on it. It is not even in my travel list but I am so glad that I was given the opportunity to visit the country. My first impression of Malta (form the air) is "white and dense". The buildings are typical Arabs squarish houses. Nothing impressive. But after visiting for three days, I find that I like Malta a lot. It is a very cosy country. Quite expensive since their pricing is in Euro. I like what they served for breakfast, a lot of desserts and they tastes heavenly :) Our local Malta tour guide was also very sweet. When she found out that we love putting lemons in our dish, she gave us lemons from her own backyard :)

This tour (25 March - 6 April 2015) was organised by Safir Go Travel. The price per person on twin sharing basis was RM10600. Frankly I'm not impressed with the service provided by this company, so I doubt that I will be joining them in the future.

Our itinerary was as follows:
25 March 2015     Kuala Lumpur - Istanbul

26 March 2015     Istanbul - Malta

27 March 2015     Malta

28 March 2015     Malta - Gozo Island

29 March 2015     Malta - Tunis

30 March 2015     Tunis - Kairouan

31 March 2015     Kairouan - Gafsa - Tozeur

1 April 2015         Tozeur - Chebika - Temirza - Douz

2 April 2015         Douz - Matmata - Gabes - Sfax - El-Jem - Monatsir

3 April 2015         Monatsir - Sousse - Nabeul - Tunis

4 April 2015         Tunis

5 April 2015         Tunis - Istanbul - Kuala Lumpur

6 April 2015         Kuala Lumpur 

 

I've uploaded 450 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

 

Njoy!!