Southern Europe: Autumn - October 2018

After five months of being country bound, we are ready to embark on a new adventure. Well not really 100% new since we have been to some of the cities before but this is going to be our first time visiting Monaco. Hurray! My first visit to Italy was during summer back in year 2003, it was so hot back then. So not enjoyable. This time round I'm hoping that the weather will be more pleasant :)

This tour is organised by Wan Vacation Sdn Bhd a.k.a selamatbercuti.com. Our first trip with this company. This company seems to be employing a lot of young people. Let's hope they are more energetic and well trained. The price for this 12 days 9 nights half board tour is RM8k per person. The hotels are suppose to be 4 star and the tour is inclusive of breakfasts and dinners. Lunches are on our own. We are flying Qatar Airways. Love their inflight meals :)

 

The itinerary is as follows:

18 October 2018    Kuala Lumpur - Doha

19 October 2018    Doha - Rome

20 October 2018    Rome - Pisa - Florence

21 October 2018    Florence - Modena - Venice

22 October 2018    Venice

23 October 2018    Venice - Bergamo - Milan

24 October 2018    Milan - Serravalle - Eze Village - Nice

25 October 2018    Nice - Cannes - Monaco - Nice

26 October 2018    Nice - Barcelona

27 October 2018    Barcelona

28 October 2018    Barcelona - Doha

29 October 2018    Doha - Kuala Lumpur

 

I am so looking forward to take pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa again. I'm going to bring a tripod and will try to take picture while "pushing" the tower this time round. I also just bought a 360 camera. Quite excited to see what I can do with it. I hope the weather will cooperate :P

I will upload the videos and photos as and when possible during the trip. You can find them here:
https://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

The 360 photos will be uploaded here:
https://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.photography

Hashtags specific for this trip:
#mks2018SouthernEurope #mks2018Qatar #mks2018Italy #mks2018Monaco #mks2018France #mks2018Spain

My World Countdown:
Monaco#63

My mom's would be #52

Njoy !!

POST MORTEM (updated 14 November 2018)

As promised, a more timely post mortem. I was thinking of the best format to do it so that it is more organised and easier for me to write :)

Tour Company: Quite professional and easy to deal with. Responded well to queries. The write up of information and reminders prior to departure was very well done. For this tour however they did not provide us with a daily bottled water, which I find to be a bit stingy.

Itinerary: On paper it looks good but in practice it was very tiring for the group members. On the first day after 18 hours journey from KL to Rome, we continued with another 12 hours of tour plus dinner. We only checked in the hotel after dinner at around 9 pm. For the rest of the tour, my personal opinion is too much time given for shopping and too little time allocated for sightseeing. I don't think we spent even an hour at Park Guell and yet on the same day, hours were given to shop at La Rambla and later at the football stadium. Visit to Colosseum was also super short.

Airlines: We flew via Qatar Airways, my favourite airline. It has been awhile since I flew with them so I can see that they did some cost cutting measure. The vanity set container was now plastic and the inflight meals and snacks size have shrunked. Luckily they still tasted good :P We had a fabulously short transit time in Doha and the flights were all on time. Excellent!

Tour Leader: Our Malaysian tour leader (Rozana) was polite and capable but a bit laidback. You can tell that she is an experienced tour leader but during this tour she merely did the bare necessity. She didn't bother monitoring the loading or unloading of our luggage, didn't wait/assist until tax refund process was completed for all tour members and didn't even explain the history of the places that we visited (those without local tour guide). One good extra thing that she did was she bought us a bit of salad during one dinner when we complained that the meals provided during this tour lacked vegetables.

Local Tour Guide: This tour did not have a dedicated local tour guide who follows us throughout the tour. We did have city tour guides in Rome, Florence, Venice and Barcelona. The ones in Rome (Irene) and Venice (Monique) were nice and helpful. Florence's was ok but the Barcelona's was a bit impatient.

Bus: Big, new and very comfortable. No WiFi provided at the bus. The bus was not cleaned everyday though unlike some other good tour companies.

Bus Driver: Our bus driver Jorges (from Croatia) was polite and drove well. He just fullfilled the minimum requirement of his job. Didn't even bother to find a drop off place that is nearer so that the tour members who are mostly senior citizen don't have to walk so far. In almost all hotels in Italy we have to push our luggage very far from the bus to the hotel lobby. At one hotel he even dropped us off outside the hotel compound!

Hotels: Acceptable. Some quite good, some a bit dated. All with good WiFi in the rooms.

Hotel Breakfasts: Mostly good breakfast spread with wonderful coffee machines. No complain!

Dinners: Stingy with a capital S! Of my two decades of travels, I think this is the most stingy dinners ever provided by a tour company. No dessert, no after meal coffee/tea. In fact during one dinner, they served us only plain white rice and lamb curry. Not even a vegetable dish!! We went to Europe but funnily throughout the trip (except in Barcelona) we were served Indian food! In Barcelona we were given Malaysian food. The tour company chose the cheapest in the menu and the portion given was also very small to be shared by so many. Fortunately the food were mostly tasty. Do check out my instagram #mksHolidayFood for photo evidence :P

Rapport With Fellow Travellers: Excellent rapport. This group clicked from the very first day even though we didn't know one another prior to the tour. All are world travellers so no issue with punctuality. Everybody was on time every time. They truly love shopping. They shopped every time we stopped from street vendors to luxury outlets. None are safe :P Lovely and fun group!

Timing: We had a great weather. Not so hot and not so cold. The sun was shining bright except for in Barcelona, it was raining for one whole day! By the end of the day my hair looked like I was having a shower and my poor 360 camera lens, so wet! It was such a challenging time to take 360 photos :P

Overall: Except for the stingy dinners, non delivery of some of the places in the itinerary and the long distance between the loading/unloading luggage area to the hotel lobby, this tour was quite wonderful mostly due to the rapport with our fellow travellers. We had a great time and went home somewhat happy with the whole experience :)

FURTHER UPDATES (on 30 December 2018)

I have uploaded 168 posts in my instagram account mkhasha.n.travels (#mks2018SouthernEurope). This time round the videos have no voice commentary whatsoever. I think my voice spoiled the videos :P Do check it out! I haven't uploaded any 360 photos yet. Still mulling over what kind of photos I wish to upload there and the format.

I don't go around checking the itinerary during any trip. I trust the tour leader will deliver whatever written in the itinerary. Thus, I will normally only find out this unethical practice of not delivering on their promise after I'm back in Malaysia, while cross referencing my photos with the itinerary. For this trip, while in Rome, they did not bring us to the Roman Forum, Altar of the Fatherland, Trojan's Column and Trojan's Market. Even the visit to the Spanish Steps were not scheduled until I personally requested to go since it was a walking distance from the Trevi Fountain. In Monaco, the tour leader did not bring us to the Prince's Palace of Monaco. How unforgiveable!

Qatar: Autumn - October 2008

The picture above is an Arab tea. It tastes nothing like a normal tea cause they don't use tea leaves to make it but instead use a combination of herbs. You should try it if you ever set foot in Doha.

I went to Doha this time round on a business trip. We stayed there close to three weeks. Since it was a business trip, I didn't bring my camera with me ;p My apology in advance for the blur pictures taken using my Sony Ericsson mobile phone. Thank God some of my colleagues brought their cameras and allow me to copy their pictures. So you get to see beautiful shots of the deserts :)

Doha in 2008 was a city under construction.. There are high rise buildings being built everywhere. They are seriously playing catch-up with Dubai and might surpass it too! Their airlines, Qatar Airways in my humble opinion is already better than Emirates.

With natural gas reserves of approximately 896 trillion cubic feet, Qatar has the world's third-largest reserves, behind Russia and Iran. Coupled with only roughly 250k Qatari nationals, this is one rich country. They can afford to build anything!

My trip was pleasant. The food there was great. Costs of living are high though. Everything there are expensive except for cars and petrol. Taxi ride minimum fare then was QR30 which was equivalent to RM30. A lot of Malaysians like to work in Doha because of their tax free status and very high pay. Suitable for family too with good international schools and low crime rate.

Note: I've decided to include pictures of Doha during my in-transit visits back in year 2003 and 2004 in this 2008 album. So you can make the comparison ;)

135 pictures of Doha for your viewing pleasure can be accessed at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy!!

Western Europe: Spring - March 2004

This trip took a place in my history as the most expensive shopping that I ever did overseas. Never to be repeated. I bought an Omega watch and an orange colour pearl set set in Lucerne. I also bought a diamond ring in Amsterdam.

On hindsight, the watch was a useful buy. The other two were just nice-to-have. I got caught in a shopping frenzy. I plead temporary insanity ;P Lesson learnt. Nowadays whenever I travelled, I will only buy their local food and fridge magnets :)

The other unique thing about this trip was half of the tour members disappeared in London! I was told that this phenomenon was not uncommon. It seemed like the Western Europe tours arranged by our local travel agents were used as a means for the youngsters to get to London to work illegally. No wonder some of them didn't even look like tourists and the tours even though expensive were always sold out.

The youngest in the "jump ship" group was 18 years old with tattoos on his body. But I think he was detained and not allowed to enter London. They probably sent him back to Brussels. The young ladies and some of the young men managed to get in. Now you know why the UK Government want to slap entry visas on us.

This trip was organised by Parlo Tours. It was from 25 March to 4 April 2004. There was a stopover at Doha and like the last time, we were given a free Doha tour. I'm sharing two photos of Doha. The weather was very pleasant this time round :)

The price of the tour was RM5.5k per person. We covered 11 cities / towns: Paris, Lucerne, Engelberg (Mount Titlis), Heidelberg, Schaffhausen (Rhine Falls), Lake Titisee (Black Forrest), Cologne, Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Doha. 7 countries in 11 days: France, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, England and Qatar.

Although it was pretty hectic, it was a very enjoyable trip . The weather was superb too. The scenery were awesome! I've uploaded 243 photos of this trip 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!!

Italy: Summer - July 2003

There were many firsts in this trip. The beginning of a fruitful long-term "relationship".

First time I joined a trip organised by Parlo Tours. I've been a fan eversince and have joined many other subsequent trips by them.

First time I flew Qatar Airways. They were quite unknown then with less frequent connecting flights. The plus point to that was.. we get to tour Doha while waiting for our connecting flight. The airline even provided us with 4* hotel accommodation together with scrumptious buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner :) We don't get to enjoy that now unfortunately. Aaah.. the good old days!

First time I took public transportation alone in a foreign country and got lost in the process. All because I want to buy a Gucci purse at Duomo shopping area ;p Thank God for the beautiful Italian lady who can speak a smithereen of English. She went around to find a map and then showed me how to get back to my hotel using the metro. Now, whenever I got lost.. I will always remember this incident and feel very confident that there are many good people that will show me the right way :)

Now why did I go to Italy in summer? It was so hot. Most especially when we were in Doha. Because there was a promotion of course! And also I was in a "travel mood".. I just want to go somewhere. Regardless of what season.

The best part about going in summer was the day light hours. If I'm not mistaken, it turned dark only at 9 pm. So we got to enjoy the sights longer. Other plus points were good weather (no rain) and good light. So there was no need to use flash to take photos or bring raincoats. We brought umbrella though... Typical Asians relationship with the sun ;p

This trip costs RM4.1k per person (full-board). The tour was from 11-20 July 2003. It was quite long due to the 2 days transit in Doha. The actual days spent in Italy was only 7 days. We covered the following cities: Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento, Florence, Venice, Pisa, Verona, Lake Lugano, Lake Como and Milan. We entered Italy via Rome and departed from Milan.

I've decided not to put up any Doha photos in this article's facebook album. I will cover it in other article with pictures taken in 2008. Doha in 2003 was just like a cowboy town. Doha in 2008 was much more vibrant. I'm just sharing these two photos of Doha. Ripening dates and an Arabian horse. Such a sweet looking horse :)

 

If you're interested, I've posted 219 photos of my trip to Italy in my M Kha Sha facebook account.

 

You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

 

Njoy!!