Scandinavia: Spring - April 2017

 

This is my second trip to this region this year and my third altogether. Nope I didn't embark on a new career as a tour guide just in case you are wondering :P I was instead seduced by the itinerary and the fact that my wacky friends are going (the previous two trips I went with my mom). So living by the principles of "Money Not Spent Is Not Yours" and "Don't Live Like A Miser So That You Will Die Rich", I decided to join them. Furthermore the previous trips did not cover Finland.

Since we went during second half of April, I was expecting more flowers and less snow but much to my delight we were blessed with a lot of snowfalls and even an occasional hail. I'm sure the locals think otherwise. They must be sick of snow by now and are patiently waiting for summer. I had such a great time playing with snow. The weather and temperture throughout the visit was also very good. Great time to visit this region if you like snow but hate to travel during winter. You get to enjoy the snow while the temperature is quite mild. If you like flowers however, go during second half of May :)

Going back to Scandinavia weather. Sometimes it was so weird. It will snow for maybe 15 minutes and then the sun will come out. I experienced the same in Ireland, thought it was unique to Ireland. Obviously not. The Irish said that if you don't like the weather, just wait for 15 minutes. I guess the same will be applicable here :)

Of the four countries, I like Norway the best. I think their landscape can challenge Iceland's in terms of beauty. All these Scandinavian countries are so clean. The mark of a developed nation. They are also very protective of the environment. Renewable energy is also a big thing in these countries.

This time round we went with Redha Travel and Tours. It is a young company, incorporated in 2015. It is a small family business that specialises in Muslim tours with rich retiree friends as their main customers. Frankly this is the first tour I joined that is accompanied by three company representatives. Father as the tour leader, mother and son as assistants.

We were joined by a local tour guide, Ece Boran in Copenhagen. An energetic, friendly, patient and fun Turkish lady. She loves to take pictures and videos of us. Her name however is one of the most difficult names to pronounce. The "c" in Ece is suppose to sound in between "j" and "c", so we ended up calling her AJ or Acer. The right pronunciation (I think) is Ajer. Luckily she is a good sport :)

Our bus driver Melis is an Estonian. Superb driver and kept the bus (and most importantly its windows) very clean during the trip. Bravo! He is friendly and funny but since he is not very fluent in English, sometimes we simply cannot understand his joke. Sorry Melis!

The full board 11days 9nights tour price was RM13300 on a twin sharing basis. Value for money since they offered great accommodation, quality food albeit a bit monotonous, awesome private cruises and interesting activities.

The itinerary was as follows:
18 April 2017   Kuala Lumpur - Doha
19 April 2017   Doha - Copenhagen
20 April 2017   Copenhagen - Malmo - Goteborg - Oslo
21 April 2017   Oslo - Geilo
22 April 2017   Geilo - Flam - Sogndal
23 April 2017   Sogndal - Briksdal - Otta
24 April 2017   Otta - Lillehammer - Mora
25 April 2017   Mora - Stockholm
26 April 2017   Stockholm - Helsinki
27 April 2017   Helsinki
28 April 2017   Helsinki - Doha
29 April 2017   Doha - Kuala Lumpur

Overall I am quite satisfied with Redha. Their itinerary was superb. The only problem is they did not deliver all they promised in the itinerary. For example, the visit to Skansen Open Air Museum was cancelled due to a request from some members of the group for a longer shopping time. It was not made clear to the rest of the group that the visit to Skansen Open Museum is cancelled because of that. Visit to Suomenlinna Museum was also cancelled with no reason provided whatsoever.

If you follow my travel pictures you noticed that I rarely get to visit mosques overseas since I mostly joined non Muslims tours which visited a lot of churches (which is fine since Christianity is the main religion in the world and their churches are mostly architecturally grand). So I was quite excited to get to visit two mosques during this trip. How annoying when our trip to Helsinki Mosque was cancelled due to Friday prayers. If during Friday prayers the mosque is out of bounds for visitors, why is the itinerary not adjusted so that we go to the mosque at different time or day? This lackadaisical attitude of "Over Promised Under Delivered" is so frustrating.

Despite all the dramas and broken promises, I still had a great time. The group members were mostly sporting and fun. The weather was superb. We get to take a lot of fun and awesome pictures. It was a wonderful trip. Taglines "Cap Ayam" and "Faktor Usia" will forever bring smiles to the participants. I look forward to our next Baltic tour with Redha hopefully same time next year :)

This is my fourth visit overseas that I did not exchange even a single cent of local currency. Granted that Finland uses Euro. I don't consider Euro as a local currency though :P Just bring Euro leftovers from your previous overseas trips. They accept credit cards almost everywhere, so having cash is not so critical here :)

I have uploaded 977 pictures and 97 videos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them here:
http://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

Hashtags specific for this trip:
#mks2017Scandinavia #mks2017Denmark #mks2017Sweden #mks2017Norway #mks2017Finland

Njoy!!

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!!