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!!
