Since we have done very little in the last two days of our trip to Moldova (what with the first two being eventful enough) this posting will probably be more observational about Moldova.... Anyway, picking up where we left off: After a team doctor (Vicky) and nurse (Fiona) effort on the dutch boys - due to the shoddy quality of Chisinau hospital care - we dropped them off at the station late in the day. This was good for us because it meant we had a free taxi ride to get our train tickets for the following day and also we [View Full Entry]

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As I pulled up to Moldovan passport control, my fellow passengers (a 75/25 mix of Moldovans and Romanians) were in hour 7 of having the giggles. I am sure I have never been on a bus that laughed that hard. The girl behind me spoke very good English, and gave very honest opinions on my travels. "We have been talking: we have decided that it would have been better if you had traveled with a tour group." They deemed a trip to Moldova far too exotic for a solo traveler. I shared a little about my solo trip to Asia, and [View Full Entry]

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Moldova was a destination we had decided on more out of curiosity than a desire to see anything specific. It's skipped over by most visitors to the region because the small nation of about 4.5million people has little to boast about historically or culturally compared with neighbouring Romania or Ukraine. We'd heard and read a few things about its celebrated wine industry as well as corruption and poverty, which are both supposedly rife. Continuing our tradition of arriving at rush hour, the three of us waded through the hordes of incessant taxi drivers hawking for business, changed up s [View Full Entry]

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We slept in pretty late on the first day in Romania. Then again, so did everyone else in our dorm; they ended up getting in at 6 am or something. Steve and I walked around for a bit but we happened to be in Bucharest during a rare September heat wave (95 Fahrenheit!) so we didn't do much sightseeing. However, we were both tired of sightseeing anyway. We did eat at this really nice Romanian place for lunch. It looked a lot like a German beer hall. They even had 1 liter beer steins and I had the house beer, which [View Full Entry]

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After much delay, the driver having to go to the police station for some traffic misdemeanor, we finally got to the border around 1 am, straight forward procedure and we bought some Moldovan lei so we have money for taxi when we get to Chisinau. 6am we are in Chisinau, and we negotiated taxi fare to the homestay we booked, Jarmo and Tuuka our Finnish friends we met on the bus wanted to come with us and check if there is room at the homestay, unfortunately it is full and they took a taxi to Larissas mom where it is also [View Full Entry]

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Groeten uit Chisinau in Moldavië! OK, wie had er al van dit land gehoord? Geef maar toe ;-) Het land ligt ingeklemd tussen Oekraïne en Roemenië, en is een van de armste (en corruptste) landen van Europa... Omdat ik weer eens geen bereik heb met mijn mobiel nu alweer een berichtje om te laten weten dat ik nog leef :) Eerst even terug naar Oekraïne. Ik had nog niet gemeld dat ik in het restaurant van mijn hotel in Kamyanets-Podilsky erg luxe gegeten had; de menukaart bevatte enerzijds Japanse en anderzijds Thaise gerechten. Dus ik bes [View Full Entry]

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MORNING GLORY Friday 3:45 in the AM and my Mobile plays the tune “the Entertainer” it’s my wake up call for our (epic) Journey to Moldova. I wake up Marina and Lisa (our little 15 month old bundle of joy) and we start to get dress and wait for our Taxi. So it begins…… The Plan, like all good plans are worked out well in advance and are flexible if anything goes wrong, well the plan was to fly with Czech airlines to Bucharest (via) Prague. And then take a flight to Moldova (Chisinau) with Tarom Airlines. We arrived at [View Full Entry]

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Our bus to Brasov was due to leave at eight in the evening so we decided to spend one last day enjoying the sights of Chisinau. We said out goodbyes to Marco as he was leaving on a different bus later on in the day. Despite having seen most of the sights in Chisinau, we still had some museums and points of interest to see. First stop was the local supermarket for breakfast which we ate sitting on the steps of the cathedral as we had done previously. The first point of interest on our agenda was the History of Chisinau [View Full Entry]

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We had decided to go to the cave monasteries today rather than risk being shot in transdnistr. We got up early with Chris and set off towards the central bus station. Lonely Planet suggested that getting to Orhei cave monasteries would be rather easy, so we left Chisinau with minimal research. It took us a while to find the right minibus to Orhei and when we did, the only three seats were right at the back of the bus. I got stuck next to some sleazy guy who kept on moving over till his hands were all over my legs. During [View Full Entry]

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Half eight in the morning we dragged ourselves out of bed and got ready as best as possible in that tiny room. A Scottish guy called Chris had arrived in the middle of the night and this morning we found out that he had no money because his cards had been rejected like ours. He had tried so many ATM's that his card had been cancelled. We didn't have much time to chat but we gave him the equivalent of £5 to keep him on his feet. At quarter past nine our guide Val arrived to take us to Milesti Mici. [View Full Entry]

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