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!!
