I just came back from visiting five Balkan countries: Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina. Such beautiful countries! The above picture is Kravice Waterfalls, Bosnia Herzegovina. Yes, the actual scenery is as beautiful (maybe more) than the picture.
After going through all 1,222 of my scenery pictures, this is the first time that I feel my pictures did not manage to capture the beauty of the places that I visited. So if you have the time do visit the countries, you will not regret it! Though autumn is a good season to visit, I think spring will turn out better in pictures - blue skies, blue seas and blue lakes.
We flew there via Turkish Airlines. It was my first time. The planes were fine. The entertainment was good. The stuff they gave you was okay too. They gave it in a pencil box case. Smart move. It might stop some people from throwing them away after leaving the plane.
What I don't like is the food. The food from Kuala Lumpur was not too bad but the food from Istanbul was really horrible. Even the fruit juice tasted funny. It was truly a disappointment to me cause if you have read my posts on Turkey you would know that I really like Turkish food and I was looking forward to having it on the plane. If they want to improve, they should benchmark themselves to Qatar Airlines. The food served were awesome!
The service on Turkish Airlines was bad too. I found them very unsystematic. A few times we didn't even get the hazelnuts and the bottled water. They should have given them prior to the main meals being served instead of after the lights were dimmed. They served hot drinks (instead of using the empty cups given on the meal trays) in the plastic glass that were used to serve cold drinks! The steward and stewardess don't speak English well and are not very friendly either.
The first city that we visited in this trip is Skopje, Macedonia. We arrived at Alexander The Great International Airport in the morning and went straight for a city tour. Skopje is a city under construction. You can see cranes everywhere. They are rebuilding the city to encourage tourism.
Macedonians are particularly proud of two individuals that hailed from their country. The first is Alexander the Great and the second is Mother Teresa. They built a huge statue of Alexander at the main square and a memorial for Mother Teresa.
We stayed two nights in Macedonia - Skopje and Ohrid. Ohrid is the hometown of our local tour guide, Young. So he took the opportunity to visit his parents instead of staying at the hotel with us. When we picked him up at the city, his parents sent him to our bus. So sweet!
Ohrid is a quaint lakeside city. Unfortunately while we were there, it was raining quite heavily. So the sky was grey and the lake was grey too. I'm sure during spring and summer, the view would be beautiful.
A great surprise however was we found a lot of kiwi trees there. The trees were fruiting. Plenty of huge kiwi fruits hanging around! No need to go to New Zealand to see kiwi fruit trees. No kiwi birds though ;p
The next country that we went to is Albania. First stop was the capital city, Tirana. According to the guide, the new mayor wants to make the city more cheerful so he encourages the house and building owners to paint their properties with bright and bold colours. It seems that Albania is also famous for its bunkers and its citizen preference of Mercedes Benz cars.
According to the guide, there are approximately 750,000 bunkers built by a paranoid leader many years ago. One bunker for every four citizen. The irony is they were never used. It costs a lot to build back then for the poor country and it will cost a lot more to remove since it cannot be so easily destroyed. So now they have become a permanent landscape. The bunkers are everywhere!
Another interesting story about the Albanians are they believe that unwanted spirits will occupy unfinished houses. To overcome that problem they will hang teddy bears and dolls at the unfinished houses to shoo away the spirits. So you can see Felix the cat, Hello Kitty, Mr Bean Teddy Bear being hanged. I didn't see Sponge Bob, Minions or Angry Birds being hanged though ;p
On the way to Budva, Montenegro we stopped at Shkoder, Albania. In the itinerary it was mentioned that we will be visiting Rozafa Castle. I'm not really sure what happened but we were not brought to visit the castle by the tour operator. We were only shown the castle from afar and that was only because the bus driver missed a turn to go to Budva. I got the Rozafa castle image above from the internet. As you can see the view from up there is gorgeous!
My first impression of Montenegro was not so good. After being fed by images of Montenegro via James Bond's Casino Royale I was expecting it to be more glamorous. Unfortunately when we reached there, the weather was a bit grey and dull. Somehow driving by the coastal line felt as exciting as driving in Port Dickson. It was THAT bad. Picture on the right is the most expensive hotel in Montenegro and the hotel featured in Casino Royale.
We reached the hotel at 3 p.m. hungry. We still haven't had our lunch yet. The itinerary said that we should have lunch at Skhoder. Don't know why we ended up eating lunch in Budva instead. Luckily it was the best meal that we had throughout the trip. Maybe it tasted so good because we were so hungry!
The hotel we stayed in Budva was quite nice too even though it doesn't have its own beach. You need to walk around 100 meters to reach the beach. The beach was very nice. The rocks reminded you of Cabo da Roca, Portugal. I also love it that instead of sand it was a pebble beach with multi coloured smooth pebbles.
The next day we visited the old city of Budva. We had lunch at a restaurant near a marina. The restaurant was a bit ancient with dated furniture but the food was quite good. We had a black rice as a starter. Not really sure what it was but I suspected they use the squid ink to make the colour black. I was also recommended to eat the lemon skin too instead of just the juice. Surprise surprise! It does tastes good. I'm writing this down since this is the moment when I started eating lemon skin ;p
After lunch we continued our journey to Dubrovnik, Croatia. I didn't realise that we are going to board a ferry at Kotor. The funny thing was the waiting time was longer than the journey! I think we waited for half an hour for maybe a five or ten minutes crossing?
Dubrovnik, Croatia is beautiful. When we reached there the weather was great so now you know why I'm biased ;p The hotel was awesome. The view from the hotel room was beautiful. We stayed at Dubrovnik for two nights. To me the hotel stay here was the highlight of the holiday. Somehow I feel pampered. The Wi-Fi at this hotel is superfast too! The only blemish was the dinner and breakfast buffet selection were mostly non-halal. If only the Budva hotel food is served here, then it would be perfect!
We visited the ancient port city of Dubrovnik the next day. According to the local guide Natasha, thousands of ships sailed through the port during the ancient time. Because of its importance to the region, the port was spared during the many ancient wars but it was heavily damaged during the civil war in the early 90s. The old city was one of the first few that was restored to its former glory after the civil war is over though. October is actually a low-peak season but while we were there, there were so many tourists from the cruise ships. Must be a havoc during summer!
After Dubrovnik, we made our journey to Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina. If Croatia is naturally beautiful, in my humble opinion Bosnia Herzegovina is more so. They have emerald coloured rivers and waterfalls. The air smelt so fresh. They are blessed with a very fertile land too which came in handy when their country was under sieged for four years during the civil war.
En route to Mostar we stopped at Kravice Waterfalls and Buna River Spring. We had lunch beside an almost bursting river. The lower part of a restaurant on the opposite side of the river was already submerged!
Mostar is famous for their old city and the stone bridge. It is a UNESCO heritage site. The bridge was destroyed during the civil war and after it was reconstructed it was officiated by Prince Charles. While we were there, we saw four divers (three men, one woman) dived from the bridge into the cold river. It seems to be the favourite sport of the locals not unlike bungee jumping in New Zealand.
The final city that we visited during the trip is Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina. Here we visited Vrelo Bosne, the spring of River Bosnia. It was reputed to be one of the famous scenes of natural beauty in the region. It felt like you were in a fairy tales and any minute now you will see the Smurfs or the Snow White and her Dwarfs or The Swan Princess. It was that magical.
We also visited the Tunnel Museum and the old city of Bascarsija. From what I can see, Bosnia Herzegovina has recovered from the atrocity of twenty years ago. Their younger generation even though still remember the dark period seemed to be in high spirits and full of hope of a better future. They plan to join the European Union in near future and are working hard to meet all the requirements. I wish them all the best.
This tour (5 - 16 October 2013) was organised by Poto Travel and Tours and the tour price was RM8.6k per person on twin sharing basis. It was a leisure holiday with a lot of free time for shopping and exploring the cities on your own.
The hotels offered were quite good, ranging from 3 to 5 stars. We took most of our meals at the hotel. So it was quite acceptable. In Sarajevo however nine of our tour members were struck with food poisoning. We are not sure of the cause though. Some thought that it was the lamb that we had en route to Sarajevo. Some thought that it was the buffet dinner or breakfast at the hotel in Sarajevo. Luckily my mom and I were spared the agony. Our Malaysian tour manager suffered the most I think. Poor guy!
The bus that took us from country to country was too small with hardly any legroom in between the seats. Worse than the plane economy seats. So if I were to suggest an improvement I would recommend them to use a bigger bus. All in all it was a nice holiday. Frankly the Balkan countries were not in my travel list. I would have thought that I would visit Greece, South Africa, Jordan, New Zealand first but I am glad that I did.
I have uploaded 640 pictures 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!!
