Travel

Honeymoon in the Western Balkans

Here is my journal that I kept during our honeymoon trip to the Western Balkans.  I actually just kept a cheatsheet of events that happened and filled it all out when we got back.  Warning, it’s pretty long, but it’s full of useful information and great stories from our adventures in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania.  Yes, I said that correctly, we went to Albania!  That is actually how this whole trip started; I had read a book called Bad Lands about places that no one visits and Albania stuck with me as a place I wanted to go to.  Jaime was easily convinced and I went to work on our itinerary from there.  I’d definitely recommend the Western Balkans to all travelers!

Day 1

Our flight plan was to take United to London overnight, have a couple hour layover, then take Croatia Airlines to Zagreb, Croatia, and then onto Split, Croatia.  The trip had an interesting start.  When boarding on the United flight, a nice Indian businessman offered to trade seats with a young man in the middle seat so the young man could sit with his significant other.  Apparently the Indian man had already been requested to move from his original seat in the back and because of this the flight attendant literally flipped out that he moved again.  While all parties were trying to explain that this move was voluntary, she kept saying that everyone should move back to their original seats.  When no one moved, she went and got the head of the flight attendants.  This is where it got interesting.  She came back and started yelling at the poor young man about his “refusal to obey orders” from the first flight attendant, even though she never actually told them to move.  Me and the British guy next to me, as well as some others around us, started talking about how rude she was being.  Suddenly the guy next to me got the woman’s attention and said she was being rude and that she should apologize.  She refused and said to mind his own business, so of course he demanded her name and said he’d be filing a complaint.  Needless to say, she did not take this well and said she going to talk to the captain and stormed off without giving her name.  Jaime commented that at least this was British on British fighting and gave me the stay-out-of-it look.  Ten minutes later the head attendant came back with some kind of captain’s assistant.  She pointed at the guy next to me and one in front of him and said “these are the two that were telling me how to do my job!”.  This lady clearly wanted to just calm everyone down.  She listened to everyone’s side, let the young man stay where he was, upgraded the Indian man to business class, and then we were off to London.

In Zagreb, we got off the plane, bused to the airport, went through security again (where I left my liquids bag, oops!), waited ninety minutes, and then got back on the exact same plane to Split.  Upon arrival in Split we took the Croatia Airlines bus to the old city.  This bus is strangely not mentioned anywhere on the plane or at the airport, but I read about it in my Western Balkans guidebook and asked around when we landed.  We get into the old city around 12:30am, just in time to make the last ferry to Brac Island at 1:00am where our timeshare resort is located.  We walked to the first ferry terminal and there are about ten people all stumbling around drunk joking with their friend in the terminal booth.  This is when I knew I’d like Croatia.  We break through the crowd and ask the woman for directions to which ended up being the next ferry terminal down the coast.  After a nice relaxing fifty minute ferry ride to Supertar, Brac Island, we get hounded by taxis.  It’s almost 2:00am so we opted to take the cab even though we knew he inflated his prices for the obvious tourists on a seemingly locals-only ferry.  We checked into the Kactus Hotel, a sister hotel for our Waterman Resort, and they took us by golf cart to our apartment.  We collapse almost immediately.

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By Ron, ago

Vietnam Journal — Finally!

It’s been over a year since we took this trip and we’re hoping to keep up the trend of a relatively big trip once a year.  Hopefully the journal postings won’t take as long each time.  Coming in the next week or two, you should see my journal from our recent honeymoon trip to the Western Balkans!

Saturday

11:10am – SFO

We just finished our first flight leg and are waiting to head to Seoul, the longest flight on the way there (14-15 hours).  The first flight was an interesting experience.  Since we had to leave my house by 3:30am, we only had about 90 minutes for a power nap.  We were, and are, completely exhausted.  The plane ride itself was uneventful, but I had a strange thought while en route.  As I lean back trying to sleep and staring at a large projected screen without headphones, I hear people opening bags, sipping drinks, and the occasional cough.  This is when I realized this is what it must have been like when silent movies first began playing in theaters.  I ran with that thought and looked over the audience for that sense of wonderment as the pictures came to life in front of their eyes.  The pilot interuppted my fantasy with an announcement and I snapped back to reality.  It was 5am.  I didn’t have any sleep.  I closed my eyes.

We arrived in Hanoi at around 11pm Saturday.  The driver was waiting for us and had a sign with my name on it and the hotel name.  I pointed at him and he gestured for us to wait while he literally ran to get his car.  During the drive, everything was pitch black most of the way so we had no idea what was in store for us.  The occasional building came and went out of the shadows.  The drive was about 45 minutes, including a stop for gas.  We check in and Jaime’s parents welcomed us.  We were exhausted from all of the travel time so we promptly went to bed, after walking up four flights of stairs.

Sunday

Jaime’s parents had booked a city tour that was privately guided by Son.  This was our first experience with Hanoi city traffic.  It was organized chaos.  There were no lights, no traffic signals of any type.  There was an abundance of motorbikes that went anywhere and everywhere they could fit, at any speed.  Cars were no different and even oncoming “lanes” were fair game.  The one prevailing rule was to just avoid hitting others.  Someone cut you off?  It’s your job to adjust to not hit them, and following distance is nonexistent.  We made several u-turns on our trip and there was no waiting and no hesitation; just do it and people have a responsibility to not hit you in the process.  This all made for one hell of an experience, and I haven’t even mentioned walking in this traffic.  One FAQ I found online had the best advice: walk with a purpose.  If you walk/cross with confidence and determination, the traffic can predict your movements and swerve around you.  This doesn’t just apply to crossing the street.  A vast majority of sidewalk space is filled with motorbikes and/or shops with the occasional impromtu food stand.  The sidewalks that did exist would be full of people trying to sell you their wares.  Because of all this, you end up walking in the street, with those motorbikes and cars whizzing all around you.  After one day of getting used to the chaos, I came to appreciate the simple beauty of it all.  Hanoi was a living, breathing organism.

Back to the tour.  It started with a visit to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum.  This exemplified what I thought all of Vietnam would look like.  It was a large Communist-style blocky building with two very large Vietnamese signs on both sides of it.  There were police everywhere and checkpoints to gain access to each area.  Since it was a weekend, there were thousands upon thousands of locals paying their respects.  Surrounding the mausoleum, there is a large area with several other attractions, including a botanical garden, a one-pillared pagoda, a museum, and Ho Chi Minh’s small humble home, all of which we visited.  Next, we went to a very large school complex that is no longer used but is well preserved.  We ate lunch, a traditional pho ga (chicken and noodles), at Vietnam’s version of a chain restaurant.  We finished the day with a visit to the Museum of Ethnology where they presented all of the different cultures and heritages of the Vietnamese people, including a well-done outdoor exhibit displaying various house styles and the tools used in rural life.  Lastly we walked around part of the famous Hoem Kiem lake and across the red bridge into what’s left of an old prison.

We ate dinner at a place down the street from our hotel called Fives.  To finish off the night we went to a 5-6 block long street market that runs from 8pm to 11pm, three days a week.  At the cross streets, there would be three or four police officers sitting around with their shirts untucked.  This is when it really hit me that Vietnam is not the Communist police-state I was expecting.  These police were the first I’d seen since the mausoleum 12 hours earlier, and I’d continue to see very few over the next several days.

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By Ron, ago