of our Sarajevo, Bosnia 2015

Its been really a while since I last see myself staying awake after 12 while having nothing much to attend to ( like revisions and whatnot ) , I think it goes back to the biological clock of the ageing body HA-HA . Anyway it feels surreal that its already September !

I was scheming through my old blog posts , especially the ones I wrote when I was in the UK. Its kinda like weird to be reading something that someone wrote , and that someone is myself - and I hardly recognize the person. Like I lost myself kind of thing? 

I came across this one post which appears to be hanging, but it was one of the thing me and my friends reminisce about last three weeks when sleeping over a friend's place. 

It was a very reflective and fresh memory to me ; about what happened in Bosnia back in Winter 2015. You can read it here which I happened to post after a year its been sitting in the draft. You better read it first before continuing to the next line 😅

I am taking you back to my memory of Sarajevo, Bosnia 2015

After we got back home, thanks to sushi being a minority kind of thing in Sarajevo, we arrived home safely. Bought some sushis for the girls, because yeah at some points the sushi place kinda saved us. It was not long after that the second taxi arrived home, and I can specifically remembered how worried Ajlaa was thinking about our whereabouts - can't be contacted at all.

Meanwhile we still joke around on how us ( the lost taxi group ) were actually enjoying sips of peach teas ( because we thought its like a courtesy to buy something from the cafe to use their internet / and seek for their help with getting the taxi as well ) , I don't think Ajlaa ate any of the sushi that night. 

Okay you guys should have known Ajlaa by now, she's everywhere inside my blog posts ever since I could even remember. For those who're a first timer , she's my housemate - one of the best person I treasured in life and so thankful for >.< we don't do cheesy things togetha 

That same night, there's eight of us in a house, four sleeps in the room, and another four sleeps on the big sofa beds. Since I was the so called leader for the trip , I sleep outside just because we kinda need the lights and to do some checking before the next day. 

It was then we discovered that Amirah's ( our junior ) lost her passport. At first we thought it could somewhere in the bag . But after a very long search, its nowhere to be found. At many points , I am glad that we figured things out that night ( because she's in charge for the next place we're heading to ) 

So we said to each other, lets be calm now and sleep, we'll figure it out tomorrow. We planned to tracked down all the places we went to at the town centre, coupled with Amirah's last memory of seeing her pouch ( that contains the passport and a big amount of Bosnian money )  

And we did , and it happens that, now we got to accept that she lost the passport. 

Being among the eldest one in the group, thanks to all Remy Ishak's dramas I saw haha, the first thing that popped up inside my mind is to contact the embassy. Malaysian embassy in Sarajevo . I don't exactly remember the sequence, but I guess we made a call first using the local telephone at a hostel near the town. We tolerated the heavy smoke smell to get the free access to the telephone HA-HA , the people there recognized us already since that's one of our first pit stop when we arrived. 

We made a call and half of the group toured around Sarajevo as planned, and we four ( there's me , Ajlaa, Nasuha , Amirah ) went to settle about the passport. Upon the guidance by the helpful friendly embassy people , we need to do the police report first. 

just because my writing sounds so hyped and happy , very reflective one , but trust me, its hard to make yourself poise in a land far away from home dealing with a rare thing I could say. I cried a lot. HAHA

One of the good thing about being in Malaysia as a Malaysian , a police report is never a hassle. You can do the report like 24/7 , there got to be someone in the station. That's apparently not the case in Sarajevo, well at least we're among the unlucky ones. 

We waited like quite sometime to meet the officer , long story cut short, we brought along our tour guide on the first day with us to help with the translation. 

Like for once, I tried to figure why I am going through a lot to learn English to be able to communicate with people around the world when somebody at the other side of the world hardly understands us HA-HA 

To extract the report alone take hours T.T then we make our way to the Embassy Malaysia in Sarajevo by the taxi. That time all these Uber things is not even a thing yet. 

Like always, having Malaysians even non Malaysian working in your country embassy, makes us feel like being at home. Not that they offered any Nasi Lemak or anything, its just, feeling belonged? 

In our plan, we plan to go to Mostar the next day which is still a part of Bosnia - and the next day we will go straight to Dubrovnik , Croatia ( then flew back to the UK from Dubrovnik ). 

However, when you lost your passport , I don't exactly remember the rule, but it basically says that you can't be travelling to different countries with the temporary passport - you need to get back straight to the place you belong at.

I think it was a bit hassle on deciding where should my junior go to, that one of the question is to fly back to Malaysia or the UK. But considering she's on her student visa, the next country she can travel straight to is the UK. 

Sometimes looking back, thankfully it happened to her instead of us the seniors.Not that we wanted it to happen, because it happened already haha. 

Reasons being, our visas are in paper and glued in one of the sheet on the passport. That loosing a passport in that 3 years means, we loose our visas as well. Its a different stories for the junior since they have a card instead. Less hassle alhamdulillah. 

The plan we had initially was to make Amirah fly from Sarajevo straight to the UK , however the embassy people advised us to continue our journey to Mostar , because one its still a part of Bosnia and two , its a waste of coming to Bosnia , without a visit to the majestic Mostar. 

indeed, Mostar was magical with these beautiful people

I was into the hype of having a wide lens camera HA-HA

And we did , and after the Mostar trip , 6 of us head to Dubrovnik and Amirah & Ajlaa went back to Sarajevo International Airport - transit at Turkey - back to the UK. 

I bet Allah had wonderfully crafted the journey for everyone. Ajlaa is never good with heights and at Dubrovnik, we had to finish the under construction fort tour which I know it won't be Ajlaa's cup of tea. 

Too many Ajlaa here when the centre of the story is definitely Amirah, but nevermind, they come in combo HA-HA 

We had a set of drama as well in Dubrovnik, from being left in centre of dark alleys - non existence of airport shuttle taxi that we scheduled in the UK and obviously language barriers. But seeing two years have passed and here I am missing all these travelling stories, we made it ! 

Along the journey, I kept all the stories by myself and not sharing it with my mom because if she knew it beforehand, she'll freaked out that's for sure. Only when we arrived back in the UK, I told her everything on what happened. Safe and sound. HAHA. 

Turning back the time 

I went through different kind of travelling methods for the past three years . General reflection on all the trips I went to can be found here.  I would link all the stories here if you wish to read :D

From travelling alone ( that surprising familiar companies on a ferry? heading to Paris from London , December 2016 its weekend and guess what, wild party on the ferry ) 

to two humbling travelling episode to Poland , January 2017 ( I wrote down the reflection already, you can read it here

to a three person memorable Ireland tour, January 2016  , I loved this above all other trips I've been to. 

a four person trip to Italy, December 2016 ( this is actually a good one , Milan and Venice , but I think there's more ey  can't remember blame the ageing brain cells HAHA ) 

to a six or seven people trip to Edinburgh , December 2014  

to a very large backpacking trip by car with 10 girls across Spain, April 2015 

to luxurious tested tour, by a travel agency of 25 people in Turkey, April 2016

And pleasingly each travel episode taught me on how good Allah is to me.

 I reflected upon one verse from Chapter Al-Mulk ( 67:15) that speaks about Allah make this world manageable for you to see and walk to signify His creation. 

He certainly makes it easy , well of course you hardly see it at that very time, but after a while , thinking back , He certainly did. 

With all the ideas that were never there in our brain cells , to the helpful people easing the plan for us. At a place where you're a stranger next to stranger , but its just magical how people are willing to help each other , without expecting anything in return. 

while travelling, with people , I learned on how to tolerate and to have a bigger heart , making yourself ready to accept whatever things that comes to you with an open heart. It took quite a while to reach that point, but after few episodes, I'm enjoying the learning process. 

Soon enough I'll be having my random travelling episode ( lol this one is a random one ) , still in Malaysia anyway. You can only do these random things/plan and randomly cheap buses , in Malaysia. Its something I really treasure being home HA-HA or else being in the Europe , you need to be extra vigilant moreover when it comes to a sceptic person like myself. 

Okay, I'm done ! and I love to see myself writing this down.  Night night its 3.04 am now. 

Love, the'ann