JourneyJim

Having flown economy to Asia several times in my youth, I've developed some strategies for long journeys. I typically opt for a window seat to minimize disturbances compared to the aisle. My in-flight comfort kit includes a neck pillow which helps me get some sleep on flights.  Before boarding, I make sure to walk around the airport extensively to tire myself out. Occasionally, a small amount of beer helps me relax and sleep better. I also make a point to stretch periodically, especially when I visit the restroom. I always bring and use airplane pressure relief earplugs when boarding airplanes. I prefer to use these rather than headphones. On long flights, I also watch two movies: an action flick to stay awake and the snoozer that helps me drift off.

@kashmira I'm afraid I cannot provide answers to some items as I do not have experience using a wheelchair and have not traveled to Taipei. For hotels, I too have some not so good experiences with hotels in Manila, maybe some other members can help you with that. I also noticed that buildings and establishments in Manila are not very wheelchair friendly, except maybe the big shopping malls. For sim cards, there are several you can choose from: Smart, Globe, Talk N Text, Touch Mobile, Dito, and GOMO. Smart and Globe are the two biggest providers, Talk N Text is cheaper and is also using Smart network, Touch Mobile is also cheap and is using Globe network. Dito is the cheapest, but requires your handset to be compatible with the network to enjoy it fully, also has the weakest signal. My choice of sim card is with GOMO for its non-expiry calls and SMS. Lastly, you can get wheelchair assistance at Manila airport. I almost forgot to add about the SIM registration process for foreign nationals. SIM cards for foreign nationals should also be registered. Here’s a site that might help https://ntc.gov.ph/faqs-on-the-subscriber-identity-module-sim-registration-act/ 

May your journey be as comfortable as it is memorable.

On 3/8/2024 at 8:52 AM, SusieKIslandGirl said:

Thanks for your reply. We do have a group organized and I think it’s a go but still waiting for an answer from the tour operator. At least we have a few months to be organized.

It sounds like you’re on the right track with your planning. Having a few months’ lead time is definitely beneficial. It’s great that you’ve already formed a group; that should give you some leverage with the tour operators. Best of luck, and I hope you have an amazing trip to the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, @SusieKIslandGirl!

Japanese Tea Ceremony (Sado): Immerse yourself in the cherished, serene, and intricate tea ceremonies that epitomize Japanese culture. From the meticulous yet soothing pouring rituals to the delectable wagashi treats and tranquil ambiance, it offers the ultimate relaxation experience. For an enhanced experience, consider donning a traditional Japanese kimono while enjoying a cup of green tea. Locations to Explore: Shinjuku (Maikoya), Ginza (Chazen Tea Ceremony). Important Reminder: Prior to the ceremony, familiarize yourself with the etiquette associated with Japanese tea ceremonies.
Shrines and Temples: Tokyo boasts a wealth of historical shrines that narrate the nation's spiritual journey. From ornate shrines steeped in Shinto traditions to Buddhist temples welcoming visitors worldwide, delving into this delicate yet enlightening aspect of Japanese culture sets the perfect tone for your Tokyo exploration. Locations to Explore: Sensoji Temple, Meiji Jingu Shrine, Tennoji Temple, Toshogu Shrine, Tomioka Hachiman Shrine. Important Reminder: Each temple and shrine upholds specific etiquette not only to honor their spiritual essence but also to preserve their physical integrity. Consult a local guide for guidance on observing these customs during your visit.

On 12/8/2023 at 6:13 PM, Mar1987 said:

Forgot to tell you, from Koh Lantha you can reach another amazing island called Koh Lipe and you are in "Heaven"!

Wow! Koh Lipe looks wonderful in photos, also known as “Maldives in Thailand”. I would love to visit this island, even if it’s rainy season. Thanks for the tip, @Mar1987!  

On 12/12/2023 at 12:24 AM, Mar1987 said:

I suggest you to have a look at the following blog link regarding Coron:

 

https://www.dreambigtravelfarblog.com/things-to-do/coron-philippines

Thanks for the link to the blog. Here's another site I used for planning my trip to Coron https://www.journeyera.com/things-to-do-coron/

Thank you for sharing another snorkeling destination in Malaysia, @CRUISERTN. It sounds like you had a blast snorkeling in Menjangan island, despite the long journey.

How’s your trip to Penang, @artman10? Were you able to have lunch downtown or at food courts nearby?

Pardon the incomplete response earlier. The confusion arose from differing terminology used for entry requirements - "Visa-free", "Visa on arrival”, and "Visa Required". To clarify:
    • "Visa-free" indicates one can enter with just a valid passport, without obtaining a travel visa first.
    • "Visa on arrival" means a visa must be obtained, but can be secured upon landing rather than applying beforehand.
    • "Visa required” denotes a visa application must be submitted prior to traveling to the destination country.
For US citizens, securing a Visa before traveling is not required, but they must obtain one upon arrival to Bali. 

No Visa is required for US citizens who travel to Indonesia for up to 30 days.

This option was not for me. The Hop On Hop Off buses are very crowded; some even had to stand. I wanted a relaxing vacation, but I was terribly annoyed by the long lines to get on the buses.

I don’t have personal experience with Penang and Langkawi. According to our research, Langkawi’s beaches are nicer, but Penang’s food is tastier. Penang’s water is usually cloudy and jellyfish can show up unexpectedly. You can snorkel at some of Langkawi’s beaches, but the water is not very clear either. We chose Redang Island for snorkeling in Malaysia.

Yes, unfortunately you will need to apply for a visa. But this can easily be done online.

That is nice to know, thank you, @agape01! We have an active and helpful community here.

On 11/14/2023 at 7:42 AM, fstuff1 said:

 

This chain has cheaper beer than 7-11.

7-11 had 6 pack of Tiger on special for $20. ($3.33/each)

 

Everyday mart has it for $3 each regular price and a special this month of 3 for $8.50

Thank you for the tip on Everyday Mart. Will check if other items other than beer has better prices than 7-Eleven.

Yes, Grab is a common app in Southeast Asia. A local phone number is preferred but not required in your smartphone to use Grab. If you don't have a local number, you just need Wi-Fi or mobile data using your roaming sim card to access Grab. You can find Wi-Fi at the airport or hotel.

On 12/23/2023 at 1:12 PM, jlawrence01 said:

I try everything on a cruise ship over the course of a cruise and rarely gain a lot of weight as we try to walk 10-15 MILES every day and climb a lot of steps.

 

I am NOT real concerned about HEALTHY as most foods are healthy as part of a balanced diet.  I just don't eat a lot of the things I do taste.  That is one thing I do NOT like about HAL where you are served most of your food at their buffet.  My general plate at a buffet looks like an artist's palette - a dab of this and a dab of that, NOT FULL PORTIONS.

I think you’re right that walking and eating small bites of various foods are smart ways to stay fit on a cruise. I also like walking every day, but I doubt I can reach your amazing distance of 10–15 miles. I need to watch what I eat because I have high blood sugar, so eating small amounts is a good way to savor food while also reducing my carbs and sugar intake, and increasing my fiber and protein intake.

On 11/13/2023 at 5:52 PM, Steerpike58 said:

Cruise date - Oct 2023, Bucharest to Vienna plus pre- and post-extensions. Ship - Viking Rinda. 

 

Summary - Not the experience we expected.

 

This was our first river cruise, chosen with Viking after a near-perfect experience on a Viking Ocean cruise last year. 

 

For us, the ship was clean and functional, and carried the same ‘signature’ look and feel of the ocean ship, which we liked – the Scandinavian ‘minimalist’ design, bright and cheery spaces.  We had a Veranda Stateroom on the 3^rd floor, which was adequate (though there were always insects on the balcony which discouraged us from ever using it or leaving the window open – the bugs easily found their way into the rooms – something we never experienced on the ocean). We are both skinny, and found the shower ‘tight’; I can’t imagine how some of the heavier-set people on the cruise could cope with the tiny shower!  The food was excellent every day – lovely selection of items at breakfast (lots of pastries, fresh fruit, hot items, great toast, and an adequate espresso machine, plus someone to prepare fresh eggs / omelets to order) and the lunches and dinners were perfect. We had fish most nights, and it was always perfectly prepared.  Portion sizes were ideal (not too big).  We did, however, miss the ‘self serve’ / buffet aspect of the Ocean ships; it was quite difficult, when presented with an enticing menu offering first course, main course, and dessert at both lunch and dinner, to limit one’s intake compared to visiting the ‘World Café’ on the Ocean ship and just grabbing a soup / salad or other snack. The desserts in the ‘world café’ were also perfectly sized (small) compared to a full-blown dessert serving from the menu.

 

There were a tremendous number of people coughing and sneezing from day 1 (getting progressively worse towards mid-cruise), and it was almost impossible to avoid them. People seemed quite content to sit in the crowded pre-dinner ‘port talks’ and at dinner coughing away, making no attempt to cover their mouths, nor leave the crowded spaces until their coughing fit passed. This was quite a shock, with Coronavirus being such a recent memory. We tried to sit away from others at meals, but that’s almost impossible on the Rinda – only two ‘tables for two’ exist on the entire ship (this was the biggest contrast with the Viking Ocean ships). I quickly succumbed to the bug, and tried very hard to not talk to others, but people seem determined to talk. We resorted to ‘reserving’ one of the two ‘tables for two’ in the Aquavit terrace most nights by leaving a coat on the chairs, but we were occasionally beaten to it by others with the same goal.

 

The tour director Leonard was an amazing character and certainly made the trip memorable. His personal experience in Romania was extremely educational.

 

Where the trip fell short for us was in the destinations and the excursions. Now, you can’t get blood out of a stone, and you can’t manufacture fairytale picturesque villages out of bombed-out, communist-era cities and towns, but some of the destinations along the way were completely uninspiring and positively grim (imagine a cruise that has Detroit on the itinerary, perhaps).  I grew up learning about the post-war period in eastern Europe, and had some understanding of the post-1989 ‘fall of communism’ situation, and the collapse of Yugoslavia, but this trip was certainly an eye-opener from that perspective, and one that I did thoroughly appreciate (but not the vacation I expected).  Seeing first hand those endless blocks of drab gray concrete apartment blocks everywhere (eg, Bucharest) was educational, and hearing about how things didn’t necessarily get better for people after the fall of communism (eg, Serbia) was also educational. But after two or three such towns/cities, it became quite repetitive and the few traditional ‘sights’ (an old fortress here, a church there) were not exactly dramatic.  I was quite shocked to see the after-effects of the 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade and Novi Sad (Serbia), and the things we saw in Vukovar (Croatia) – 80% of the city was destroyed by Serbia in 1991 – were dramatic reminders of the horrors of war, and all too recent.  So this was more of a social history lesson than a traditional vacation. Not until we visited Pecs in Hungary (port of Mohacs) did we see what I’d call a classic European town with beautiful buildings and interesting streets to walk around.

 

I would note that the Danube is not like the Rhine. The Rhine is dotted with hillsides, castles, mansions, vinyards, etc for a good part of its length. The Danube, by contrast, is largely flat and featureless, with simple trees lining both sides for much of its length (the obvious exception was the ‘Iron Gate’, which is a gorgeous mountainous stretch, but that was just for one day). Also, the port-towns we called at were in many cases positively grim, and just served as boarding locations for the excursion busses; not really anywhere to walk around in your free time.  And when you do find yourself docked in a half-decent looking place, chances are your ship it double- or triple-docked with other ships, meaning you open your curtains and look into another ship’s cabins.

 

Due to low water levels on the Danube, we were unable to join the ship at the Black Sea (Constanta), resulting in an extra day in Bucharest. Bucharest is not a city you want to spend an extra day in (we’d already spent a few nights there as part of our ‘pre-cruise’ excursion to Transylvania).  We were given the option of a coach trip to Constanta, but that was a long coach ride and a short visit so we declined and took the rather mediocre excursion to see a ‘Romanian Villages’ exhibit in Bucharest. We joined the ship after a 3 hour coach ride at some obscure industrial docking point on the Danube (Turnu Magurele), crossed over to Nikopol (Bulgaria) and spent the first night on the ship there, at which point we were back on schedule for the itinerary.

 

The low water levels hit us again as we approached Budapest. At the port-talk the night before Budapest, we learned that we would not be able to dock in Budapest. The plans changed a few times over the next 24 hours or so, and ultimately we stopped short of Budapest in a port named ‘Kalocsa’. This was a complete non-entity of a port, just a place to dock the ship and load up coaches; nowhere to explore on land. There was talk of the rest of the journey to Vienna being by coach/hotels, as the ship could not pass Budapest. We were given an unplanned ‘included’ excursion to see some horses perform in a field.  This was moderately entertaining, though the food and drinks were pretty pathetic and watching horses perform circus tricks is not a good substitute for Budapest in my opinion. By lunch time we were back at the ship and there was nothing planned for the afternoon, and we spent another boring night in Kalocsa instead of Budapest. After first being told we would get two nights in a hotel in Budapest, we learned at the last minute that we would get only one night at a hotel in Budapest, then we would re-join the ship at Komarom (so the ship was ultimately allowed to sail THROUGH Budapest, empty, but was not allowed to dock).  So we had a long coach ride into Budapest, but instead of dropping us at the hotel immediately (where we were to have our one and only night in Budapest) they insisted on feeding us – all 180 guests – at some random location in Budapest. Getting 180 people (4 coaches) into and out of a restaurant, and feeding them a 3-course meal, takes quite a bit of time and includes a lot of waiting around. The meal was only ‘average’ and I would have much rather been let loose in Budapest to find a cosy lunch spot on our own.

 

We finally got to the hotel and then had the anticipated ‘panorama’ tour of Budapest, which was fine, and then a mediocre buffet style dinner at the hotel (not up to Viking standards, and again, I would have preferred to head out into the city and find a good restaurant on my own).  The next morning, our luggage had to be ready for pickup by 8am, and the coach departed at 2pm, so we had basically 6 hours to explore Budapest on our own, which is nowhere near long enough to explore what was clearly the best destination so far on our itinerary. We got a taxi to the ‘Fisherman’s Bastion’, which was stunning, then walked around that area, taking the Funicular down to the chain bridge, another taxi to the Grand Market where we had a fantastic lunch, and a taxi back to the hotel – absolutely the highlight of the ‘cruise’ so far, and terribly disappointing to not have had more time there. After rejoining the ship in Komarom (where we had our 4^th pack/unpack event, not what you expect on a cruise) we sailed straight into Vienna – missing the scheduled visit to Bratislava due to the day lost doing nothing in Kalocsa. They did offer a coach trip to Bratislava to make up for it, but that would have eaten into the 2 days in Vienna so we declined.  The Viking excursion to the Schonbrunn palace was OK, but nowhere near as delightful as our own visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Our guide to the Schonbrunn palace was perhaps the worst of the entire trip (overall, the guides were decent with a few outstanding guides).

 

The highlights of the ‘cruise’ for us were the pre-and post-cruise extensions – Transylvania at the start, and Prague at the end. Transylvania is really a hidden gem, reminiscent of the Alps, with castles and pretty villages all over (though with the ubiquitous communist era apartment blocks and disused factories here and there to remind you where you were). Great food, as long as you like pork!  Prague is by far the most wonderful city I’ve ever seen in Europe, and we spent most of the time on our own exploring.  Annoyingly, we left Vienna at around 10am but instead of going straight to Prague, we spent 2.5 hours in some little village along the way (Mikulov) and were given 90 minutes of free time (it was Sunday and most shops were closed, so we saw all there was to see in about 15 minutes, and killed time having a snack).  I really felt like they were running down the clock, avoiding taking us into Prague directly, perhaps due to hotel check-in requirements. The problem is, we hit Prague at rush hour, and spent forever inching our way through traffic. In Prague, we first got dropped off at the Hilton, where most people were staying, then we got a second coach to our hotel – the Augustine in Mala Strana (which was lovely, and in a fabulous location), and didn’t manage to get out and hit the streets of Prague until almost 6pm, which meant we lost precious time in this most beautiful city (we could have been there at 2pm if they had taken us directly). We took an optional Viking excursion in Prague called the  ‘Prague folklore dinner’. This involved a long coach ride (45 mins) out of Prague to some remote barn, where we ate mediocre food, drank almost undrinkable wine, and watched a small group of performers sing and dance for a while.  The singers were truly second-rate, and the instruments seemed out of tune.  For this, we paid $109 each.  On our own, we found first rate restaurants in Prague that served fantastic food for under $100 for two. Overall, Viking’s excursions that include food are definitely questionable. Viking themselves know how to serve 180 people with a great varied menu but the typical ‘excursion destination’ serves food that is entirely forgettable. 

 

I should probably note the average age and mobility level of the guests. We are 65/70 and felt like the youngest, most mobile people on the ship. There were several people who for various reasons could barely walk half a mile (some had walking sticks, some were overweight), but they all joined the included excursions every day.  Viking anticipated this and created an ‘L’ version of each excursion, with ‘L’ being for ‘Leisurely’.  The problem is, they initially assigned everyone to groups A, B, C, D on their ‘excursion ticket’, and only casually announced the existence of the ‘L’ option at the last minute, which people had to go out of their way to request/join. So every single day, our ‘A’ group had half a dozen people who really struggled to keep up (with the tour guide having to go back and ‘rescue’ them), while the ‘L’ group was basically empty.  I mentioned this to the tour director, and he said they have to be careful not to insult people by offering them the ‘L’ option …  but my observation was that people just weren’t aware of the option. They need to do a better job of communicating this option and encouraging it’s use. Don’t get me wrong - it’s wonderful to see older people getting out and seeing the world, and we know we’ll be in that state soon enough … but simply make more effort to announce the ‘Leisurely’ option.

 

So we had some great experiences, but I feel like a lot of the time (and money) was wasted on second-rate destinations and second rate entertainments.  The uncertainties with the water levels adds another challenge – a huge attraction of a cruise is that you don’t have to pack/unpack, so having to get on coaches and stay at hotels really puts a dent into the experience. We didn’t see the Black Sea (Constanta), we only had a half-day in Budapest, and we missed Slovenia altogether, and had to pack / unpack two days in a row. We know Viking aren’t in control of river levels, but the way they handled Budapest in particular was bad; we’d have preferred to stay on the ship but given that we had to get off, staying in a hotel for two nights rather than just one would have been much better. Budapest is just too fine a city to explore in 6 hours. 

 

For us, it’s back to Ocean cruising. 

Thanks, @Steerpike58, for this detailed report! I'm thinking of going on this river cruise, but I'm also considering going on a trip to the Czech Republic only. You seem to really like Prague, and it seems there wasn't enough time to enjoy Prague during the river cruise. I was also reading up on Prague, and it seems like there is so much to see https://gowithguide.com/blog/tourism-in-czech-republic-statistics-2023-the-ultimate-guide-5565 😮 however, seeing a ton doesn’t always mean it’s a good thing. 😅 I wish to see Prague’s highlights at a relaxed pace, not just ticking off what’s already included on the tour. I know you already mentioned you’ll go back to ocean cruising, but if given the chance, would you go on a trip to Prague only?

I used to love shrimps when I was a kid, but now that I’m older, my new favorite seafood is salmon. 😋

For me, maple syrup is definitely the #1 topping for my pancakes, but honey makes a good substitute when I'm all out of syrup. 🥞 But I would never put ketchup on my pancakes!