I’ve made three trips total to Munich, Germany to arrange and pick up my short and long term visa for the Czech Republic. The first trip was highly anticipating as I had never been in a car driving across borders in Europe. However, after 8 hours commuting under the hot temperature of the summer, car-ride to Germany ceased to amaze; instead it became a dread.

There was absolutely nothing to see along the road except for speeding cars without any restraint zooming on the freeways.

4 hours there, 1 hour waiting at the Czech Consulate and 4 hours back. That is it, Germany!

In November, I arrived in Sarajevo, Bosnia to start my AIESEC traineeship, teaching Information Technology in Sarajevo. I came right after the end of the Ramadan fasting month and the beginning of the four-day Bajram celebration. Quite a cultue shock and experience. I spent the next eight months there teaching high school kids (I never taught before). Had one of the best time in the world surrounding by people I really liked and doing something so enjoyable.

I won’t write so much here as you can read everything about Sarajevo and Bosnia on another blog I created: Sarajevo Travel and Culture Guide.

I found one by accident after I exited Ecole Military metro station, walking pass Eiffel tower toward Rue Cler’s open market.  There is no paper towel so be prepared. Be careful with the door as it is automatic. It closes once you inside, but if you hold the handle, trying to check whether it’s closed or not as I did, the door will slide open.  Pay attention to this as you might not want Parisians catch you red-handed with your pants down in at a tiny little box in the lovely, romantic Paris.

At first I thought that public toilets in Paris were free given it was a high-profile Western European city. Later, my friends told me about their searching for a public toilet at Seine River, near Notre Dame. It cost them some cents or an euro and was dirty as hell.

If you know any other free public toilets, let me know as a friend of mine needs this sort of information.

I found one by accident after I exited Ecole Military metro station, walking pass Eiffel tower toward Rue Cler’s open market.  There is no paper towel so be prepared. Be careful with the door as it is automatic. It closes once you inside, but if you hold the handle, trying to check whether it’s closed or not as I did, the door will slide open.  Pay attention to this as you might not want Parisians catch you red-handed with your pants down in at a tiny little box in the lovely, romantic Paris.

At first I thought that public toilets in Paris were free given it was a high-profile Western European city. Later, my friends told me about their searching for a public toilet at Seine River, near Notre Dame. It cost them some cents or an euro and was dirty as hell.

If you know any other free public toilets, let me know as a friend of mine needs this sort of information.

Added: Good news! Soon Paris will be public toilet free. It’s time they make a change as they rack up so much money from tourists anyway. Apparently, the city spends 6 million euros a year just to clean public toilets. Gosh! Does this mean Paris’ annual tourists leak this much?  [Link to article]

I bought a one-way ticket for 36 EUR (7 EURO for the ticket + 29 EUR for airport tax) from Paris to Prague through one of Skyeurope’s promotions. I thought I snatched a good deal until just a week later, Skyeurope had an even better deal: one-way ticket from Paris to Prague cost only 1 EUR including tax.

Try to book your flight through one of these promotions as you might have to pay much more for regular tickets. If you book a ticket for the same flight I have only few days before, you would have to pay more than 100 EUR.

I was in Slovakia, SkyEurope’s head quarter, in 2004 and wanted to fly to London. I didn’t plan ahead and booked a flight from Bratislava to London for almost 200 pounds as I couldn’t find any other alternative. Ouch! And it was late September, not even during peak season.

How to get to the airport

·        SkyEurope departs from Paris Orly South airport, south of Paris. Charles De Gaulle (CDG) is north of Paris. Orly has two terminals: Orly West (Ouest) for domestic flights and Orly South (Orly Sud) for international flights.

·        Take the metro(s) and exit at Chatelet.

·        Look for the yellow Orly airport sign.  You’ll probably see a large sign saying something like “To airport at the end of the platform.”

·        Buy a ticket for RER B (line B train) for 6.30 EUR.

·        Go to the Orly Airport direction. Remember not to be mistaken by the same yellow airport sign for CDG.

·        Take the RER B train going Antony station where you must get off.

·        Avoid: Don’t take the train B2 as it will take you a different place

·        Get on the shuttle metro.

·        Orly South is one-minute stop after Orly West.

SkyeEurope highlight

·        Flight arrived 20 minutes earlier than expected.

·        Checked-in went smoothly. My checked-in bag was 3 kg over and my carry-on was a lot more than the allowed 5 kg, but they let me through. However, I read the new edition of SkyEurope and found out that there was NO weight limit for carry on. 

·        No drink served on the flight. You have to pay for the drink.

·        Over all, good. 

Flight date:  November 28, 2006

Is there a cheaper one-way ticket?

I bought a one-way flight pass from Airtech for $399 including tax. Not sure if this is the cheapest fare I can get, but I tried Kayak and the lowest fare stayed in the high 400s. I never flew standby before so I got a little bit nervous, afraid that I might not get on the plan. But Airtech reassured that the chance customers wouldn’t get on was almost none.

How it works
• Airtech sent me a flight pass with a confirmation number.
• I visited Airtech’s web site and looked up available flight.
• I called the airline (Air Tahiti Nui) to add my self to the standby list and checked the seat availability every week.
• Went to the airport early and checked in. I think they issued me a regular boarding pass as I didn’t see any sign of a stand-by.
• I thought that I had to wait for everybody with a regular pass to get in first, but I was the first one (in the economy class) to board. It helps that the flight was empty.

Airtech highlight
Pros: The ticket was cheap. Airtech was reliable as everything went smoothly. Airtech promptly answered some of my emails. To be honest, I sent a lot of emails asking unimportant things.

Cons: I couldn’t get a hold of Airtech. I called many times and left a bunch of messages but nobody ever called me back; so I had to emails them. Having a flight pass for stand-by ticket made me a bit nervous. If this trip was important, I probably would have bought a regular ticket. One-way from USA to Europe only departs from Los Angeles (LAX.)

Contact:
1 212-219 7000 – fl@airtech.com – www.airtech.com

Air Tahiti Nui highlight
• Seating: 2-4-2
• Served two meals
• Provided more extras than other airlines I flew with: eye shield for sleeping + socks + ear plugs + blanket + headphone.
• Baggage arrived on time. I didn’t have to wait at more than three minutes.
• Allowed 2 pieces of check-in luggage, weighting 23 kg each.
• Charge $25 for each kg over. This depends on the person at the counter. I was lucky that my counter person let me through (I was terribly over packed) unlike a woman just right next to me was asked to pay $250 for her extra luggage or repack. Phew!
• Tips: If you’re a female, then go for the male desk. It’s more likely he will let you through without much hassle. If there is no male desk, read about my check-in experience for my Paris – Prague flight. [link ]

Flight date: November, 2006

Resources

Air Tahiti update

I went to a party last night and was told of a web site which showed you how to get free stuffs in France: eat for free, drive for free, etc.

radins.com

Thinking that I will either hang around with my local Parisian friends or take off to other cities beside Paris, I bought a France travel guide “Fodor’s Exploring France” for 11 cents from Amazon.com which I find not very useful. I like this guide mostly for its fine prints and colorful photos. This books simply lists a bunch of places worth to see and brief summaries. But I couldn’t find the direction to get to these places just by using this book alone.

So I’ve used mostly the information from Rick Steves’s web site, Paris section. Today, I went to a small market neighborhood at Rue Cler, near Eiffel towel.

[will upload pictures]

It rained heavily, and I lost all interests to walk around the city. I wanted to find a coffee shop with free wireless internet access so I could write or worked a little. A search on jwire.com resulted in 207 free wifi spots in Paris, many of them were cafe bars. Also, I found another web site: free-hotspot.com which provided a list free wifi spots.


The thing is although I had the laptop with me, I found it impossible to sit down and do anything as I was in Paris for godsake.

If you don’t mind riding on a bus packed with Vietnamese, then consider Xe Do Hoang, a small Vietnamese run bus business. One-way ticket from SF to Santa Ana costs 35 (Greyhound cost $45.30) dollars, but you can hop on in Oakland or San Jose. Plus, you’ll get one free Vietnamese sandwich and a bottle of water. I took it today, and liked it alot. The ride was smooth and it was perfectly on schedule.

Cons: Cash only. You pay on the bus. No reservation. First come first serve. There is only one two buses in the moring at 7:45 and 8:45. Only on the weekend, they have buses leaving at 4 p.m. If you don’t speak Vietnamese then you might be annoyed as they will play Vietnamese music and videos the entire trip. (They do speak English, so don’t worry.)

1. From San Francisco: 6:30 AM
Address: Mc Donald - 600 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco - CA 94102

2. From Oakland: 6:45 AM
Address: Ba Lẹ Sandwich- 1500 International Ave, Oakland - CA 94606

3. From San Jose: 8:30 AM
Address: Lee Sandwich - 2525 King Rd, San Jose - CA 95112

To China Town: 2:00 PM
Address: Gas Station 76 - 2001 N. Broadway, Los Angeles - CA 90031

To El Monte: 2:15 PM
Address: Viễn Đông Supermarket - 2650 N RoseMead Blvd, El Monte - CA 91733

To Westminster: 3:00 PM
Address: ABC Supermarket - 8970 Bolsa Ave, Westminster - CA 92683

Xe do Hoang’s web site

Day 3

I was worried that my car does not have snow tires or chain and we had to drive through some snow area. Fortunate for us, there were only a few part snowed in and the snow was flurry. We drove on I90, thus there was nothing impressive along the road. On the way to Yellowstone, we passed a city called Belgrade. The reason for name is that wealthy Serbians financially supported a group of explorers who discovered the city. This information might not be of interest to you, but it caught my attention as I have just returned from the Balkans.

We arrived at Yellowstone River Motel around 1 p.m. This was the cheapest motel we could fine: $46/night including tax for a double-bed room with free wireless Internet access. The owner, Betty, was an exceptional host. She voluntarily provided us with useful information, things we needs: microwave, sweater for DL as he forget to bring warm clothes. The motel is closing next Thursday for the season. But next time if you decide to go to Yellowstone and plan to go through North Gate entrance, check out this motel.

- Gardiner city -

See the park

We left the motel at 2:45 for the Park. Knowing we don’t have enough time to see everything before it turned dark, we decided to drive all the way to Yellowstone Lake through Mammoth Hot Spring, Norris and Canyon without stopping at Mammoth and Norris.

- Grand Canyon of Yellowstone -

Chitchat

My traveling companion, DL, is one heck of a smart kid. While he was in Vietnam, he racked up a bunch of national titles in Computer Science and Math. Not only that, he possesses tremendous knowledge of Vietnamese literature and music.

Day 4

Drove to Mammoth Hot Spring, Norris and Old Faithful and get out at the south entrance because I wanted to pass Grand Teton National Park and Snake River after seeing Ansel Adams’ famous black-and-white photos of Grand Teton range and the river.

I tried but failed miserably in my attempt to find a spot which able me to have the same view as in the picture on the left. So DL assured me. “I think they took such pictures from another mountain. You can’t see the river standing low right here.”

- Grand Teton pass and Snake River, Ansel Adams -

However, I managed to snap photo (right) with the same concept: a trail leading toward infinity.

I was utterly impressed by Wyoming’s open space. I’d never witnessed a sky so clear with clouds flowing so closed to my head as if I could reach them with my bare hand. I’d never traveled amid so much empty space around me.

Arrived in Salt Lake city at 9:30 p.m. Met DL’s friends at a restaurant before heading to Provo to stay the night.

See more photos

RESOURCES

Yellowstone River Motel

14 Park St., Gardiner, MO - 406 848 7303 - yellowstonerivermotel.com - Yellowstone North Entrance