Scandinavia: Spring - May 2016

This is Part 3 of my 40 Days Spring Adventure with my mom. The last of the backlog blog posting. Thank God! When we started this trip I was pretty tired already. Luckily we joined Trafalgar Tours' 12Ds 11Ns Highlights of Scandinavia. A lot less stress than going on your own. I was so thankful that we managed to reach Copenhagen without any mishaps. Since I was a bit tired at this stage of the journey, I did not take a lot of scenery pictures. Thus, most of the photos for this part of the journey were courtesy of my mom :)

There were four Malaysian couples who signed up for this Trafalgar trip. So there were ten of us Malaysians altogether. The biggest in the group. Our Travel Director was Jacqui. Young, energetic and competent lady. She handled almost everything from sightseeing explanations, checking in and out of hotels and making sure our luggage were not lost during transit from the hotel to the bus vice versa.

Since this was my second trip with Trafalgar, I can see that they have an excellent standard operating procedure. The rotation of seats, unscheduled "hidden treasure" stops, giving small gifts and thank you notes from the CEO to repeat customers, providing us with a taste of popular local candies and chocolates. They even gave gifts for birthdays and honeymoon couples!

What I don't like about Trafalgar is the price quoted is not an all in price. Tipping is not included and they have a lot of optional tours. So when you compared itineraries with other tour companies, make sure you factor in the optional tours costs and tipping in the pricing. If you do not wish to join their optional tours, they will give you lots of free time to do as you wish. This is actually a good thing for people who likes to explore the cities on their own.

If you read my Iceland post, I mentioned that I believe Iceland is the most beautiful country in the world. After going through A LOT of Scandinavian photos, I think Norway is a close second. These two countries really know how to capitalise on their God given awesome natural resources. They don't have to build the tallest building in the world or the biggest theme park to attract visitors to their countries. All they have to do is just keep the nature clean and working fine :P

Our itinerary was as follows. We covered 3 countries in 12 days. Denmark 4 days, Norway 5 days and Sweden 3 days.

14 May 2016    Prague - Copenhagen
15 May 2016    Copenhagen
16 May 2016    Copenhagen - Odense - Frederikshaven
17 May 2016    Frederikshaven - Gothenburg - Oslo
18 May 2016    Oslo - Vradal
19 May 2016    Vradal - Bergen
20 May 2016    Bergen
21 May 2016    Bergen - Fagernes
22 May 2016    Fagernes - Lillehammer - Karlstad
23 May 2016    Karlstad - Orebro - Stockholm
24 May 2016    Stockholm
25 May 2016    Stockholm - London
26 May 2016    London - Kuala Lumpur

Travelling in Norway was a bit surreal sometimes. During the journey you will go through a lot of tunnels. At one point you will experience a nice spring valley with lots of wild flowers, light green grass, trees with leaves and clear blue sky, then you went through a tunnel and came out to a black and white scene with thick snow, frozen lakes, trees with no leaves and no sun. Felt like being inside an old black and white movie! Then you went through another tunnel and it was spring again :)

While in Stockholm we went to the second largest IKEA store in the world at Kungens Kurva. Guess where is the largest IKEA in the world at the time of this post? South Korea! Do google for more info :P People don't really go to Scandinavia countries to shop. Our currency is so minuscule compared to theirs. Everything is expensive there. Only chocolates and chips are cheaper than in Malaysia! But since we are a fan of IKEA, I bought a few stuff there even when I suspected the same stuff will cost cheaper in IKEA Mutiara Damansara. What to do? I just want the bragging rights to say that I bought the stuff at IKEA Sweden. Silly right?

Total damage for the 40 Days Spring Adventure was around RM42k. Trafalgar's 12Ds 11Ns Highlights of Scandinavia cost US$3631 (RM15433). Our British Airways flight tickets from KUL-London and Stockholm-KUL were RM5770. So for this part of the journey (inclusive of tips and 1 optional tour), we spent around RM20k.

Our 40 Days Spring Adventure was a once in a lifetime experience for me and my mom. I doubt I will ever go for this kind of superlong holiday in the future. By the time we reached Scandinavia, I was so tired already. Cannot wait to go home :P Future holidays for me, the maximum duration is three weeks. Having said that I am glad that we attempted to do this at least once in our lifetime :)

I have uploaded 936 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them here:
http://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

Hashtag specific for this trip:
#mks2016Scandinavia #mks2016Denmark #mks2016Norway #mks2016Sweden

Njoy!!

Eastern Europe: Spring - May 2016

This is Part 2 of my 40 Days Spring Adventure with my mom. We started the journey at the city of Salzburg. If you like flowers, early May is the right timing to go to Eastern Europe. The temperature was superb. As if you are walking in an air-conditioned space :)

This is my mom's first visit and my second to this part of Europe. My first time was back in 2002. It was such a touch and go visit then that I didn't really get to experience anything. This time round we decided to spend two weeks in four cities. We bought their transportation pass and get to experience all their public transportation; inter-city train, subway, funicular, bus, tram and ferry :) We had plenty of time to take pictures too. Most of the pictures in this post were taken by my mom. I was too busy taking selfies that I forgot to take scenery photos :P

Our itinerary was as follows. What I loved most about the itinerary was the relaxing pace. We had plenty of time to explore the city. We had time to stroll along the river, sit at the park and just blend with the locals. We even had time to go hiking :P

1 May 2016     London - Salzburg
2 May 2016     Salzburg
3 May 2016     Salzburg
4 May 2016     Salzburg - Vienna
5 May 2016     Vienna
6 May 2016     Vienna
7 May 2016     Vienna - Budapest
8 May 2016     Budapest
9 May 2016     Budapest
10 May 2016   Budapest
11 May 2016   Budapest - Prague
12 May 2016   Prague
13 May 2016   Prague
14 May 2016   Prague - Copenhagen

For this trip we stayed at AirBnB's accommodation. I like the one in Prague the most. The apartment was like a hotel :) The Vienna apartment was great too. The host was very nice and the place was bright and modern. In Salzburg, the place was cozy but the host was very rude. In Budapest, the place was huge and in great location but the furniture was a bit dated. The costs of the accomodation were as follows:

Salzburg - RM783 (€163) - 3 nights
Vienna - RM850 (€177) - 3 nights
Budapest - RM912 (€190) - 4 nights
Prague - RM701 (€146) - 3 nights

We took trains to move between the cities. Very convenient and relaxing. OBB trains were new and nice with free WiFi on board. It was quite empty during our journey so no need to pay extra to reserve seats. Mav-Start train was a bit dated and no WiFi :( The tickets came with compulsary allocated seats. The train was quite full during our journey. The costs of the inter-city trains for 2 persons were as follows:

Salzburg - Vienna (OBB) - RM182 (€38)
Vienna - Budapest (OBB) - RM182 (€38)
Budapest - Prague (Mav-Start) - RM182 (€38)

Our flights for 2 persons from London to Salzburg (Ryanair) was RM545 (£88) and from Prague to Copenhagen (Norwegian) was RM546 (€114). Ryanair flight tickets include luggage of 20kg each. Norwegian flight tickets include chosen seats and luggage of 20 kg each. I like Norwegian. Hassle free and customer friendly. They have self checked in kiosks at the airport. Ryanair was a bit calculative with their customers. You better make sure you have printed your boarding pass before you go to the airport. There is no self service kiosks. They also allowed a very limited time to board the aircraft. At Stansted Airport, the gate was announced around 30 minutes before departure and closed around 10 minutes before departure. So you only have 20 minutes to walk (very far) to the gate. To be safe, no toilet stop in between :P If you decide to fly Ryanair, do read in the internet their customers' experiences so that you will not be caught by surprise.

Austria accepts Euro but Hungary and Czechia have their own currency. I changed £101 for Ft19000 and Kč1700 in London. Enough to buy some food, fridge magnets and transportation pass. The costs of the transportation for 2 persons were as follows:

24H Salzburg - RM37 (€8)
72H Vienna - RM151 (€32)
5/30 Budapest - RM157 (Ft9100)
72H Prague - RM112 (Kč620)

I have uploaded 790 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them here:
http://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

Hashtag specific for this trip:
#mks2016EasternEurope #mks2016Austria #mks2016Hungary #mks2016Czechia

History Lesson:
(for those who are wondering why I use Czechia instead of the Czech Republic)

After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in the so-called "Velvet Divorce" in 1993, the name "the Czech Republic" was created as the official long-form name. The official short-form is Cesko. While almost all languages adopted variants of Cesko for the short-form at this time, the English equivalent "Czechia" though attested as early as 1841 is still quite rarely used in the English-speaking world.

However in 2013, Czech president Milos Zeman recommended the wider official use of Czechia and on 14 April 2016, the country's political leadership agreed to make Czechia the official short name. The new name was approved by the Czech cabinet on 2 May 2016 and was published in the United Nations UNTERM and UNGEGN country name databases on 5 July 2016.

On 23 September 2016, the Permanent Committee of Geographical Names began advising Britons to use the name Czechia. On 26 September 2016, the International Organisation for Standardisation included the short name in the official ISO3166 country codes list.

Six months after the name Czechia was adopted, The Guardian reported that the new name is hardly in use, even on the official Czech government websites. Google replaced the Czech Republic with Czechia on Google Maps on 18 January 2017. The CIA World Factbook and U.S. State Department both now use Czechia instead of the Czech Republic.

On 22 May 2017, a Forbes contributor released an opinion blog saying that "Czechia has won the Czech Republic name debate" and that "If you're feeling petulant, it's the Czech Republic. If you want to be cool, it's Czechia" in reference to the significant progress that has been made for the short name in recent year.

Note: I noticed the change when I screen printed the Google Map for our plan trip to Baltic :P

Njoy!!