Contiki Touring

September-October 2003

Sadly, I have to admit I have done a Contiki tour

Not my first time to Europe, but I wanted to see some slightly more out of the way places than Paris and London.  So I was in the UK for a year for various reasons and decided that I should see more of Europe before I came back to Australia.  A visit to a local travel agent in England resulted in the suggestion that a Contiki tour would allow me to see a widely varied number of places in Europe in a reasonably short period of time.  It sounded like a great idea at the time, since I was working and couldn’t take a great deal of time off.  Hindsight is always 20/20 isn’t it?

I booked myself on a multi-country Contiki tour, which I am struggling to recall the name of.  It went through the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic…Probably a couple of others that elude me right now.  And it did all this in about 3 weeks!

The people on the bus were a varied bunch.  It did of course have the 18 year old high school grads who were on their first overseas trip and were just there to piss it up.  Then there were the odd few in their mid-30’s who were just looking to relive a bit of their youth.  Most were somewhere in their mid-20’s.  It wasn’t a massive party group that’s for sure, but we all liked to go out for a few drinks.  The funniest of the group were a couple of London boys of Indian descent.  Imagine Harold and Kumar go to White Castle?  These two were Harold and Kumar down to a tee!  They actually missed the bus one morning as we were leaving Munich (by sheer luck we happened to be there for Oktoberfest!).  They managed to catch us up in the next city IIRC.  But fuck they were funny.

Moving on, the hotels?  Not the best by any means, but Contiki generally sticks you in to share a room with a member of your own sex if you’re travelling on your own.  Means you don’t have to pay a single supplement which keeps the costs down.  But the rooms were ok, you got your own bathroom and there were twin beds.  Some of the hotels don’t have lifts though, so having to carry your backpack/suitcase up lots of stairs can be a bit of a pain in the ass.

The costs?  Be aware that very few meals are provided on these trips.  You’ll generally get some kind of continental breakfast when you’re staying at the hotels.  Very basic though.  Aside from that, you’re largely on your own for lunches and dinners.  So be aware that the cost of eating out twice a day can add up very very quickly.  Especially since you’re always in tourist towns that are notoriously expensive by default.  Also, be aware that your tour director for the trip and the bus driver expect about £3-4 /day each as a tip at the end of the tour.  So for a 3 week tour, be prepared to be asked for at least £80 from each of them.  It’s fucked, but it’s kind of just sprung on you.  You also need to budget for all of the optional extra bits.  Like for example, they’ll drop you in Paris and you’re left entirely to your own devices.  So you’ll need to go buy your own Metro passes and buy your own ticket to go up the Eiffel Tower and buy your own museum entry tickets to Musée de Louvre or Musée d’Orsay.  Contiki offers all that stuff at an extra cost, so don’t expect anything like that to be included in your original tour price.  Whatever the base price is for your particular tour, you can basically expect to spend almost that much again to cover the costs of food, tips/local payments and the optional extras.  Souveneirs on top of that.

What I liked about it?  I did get to see a lot of Europe that I may not have otherwise visited.  I was travelling with a good group of people who weren’t all about the legendary party reputation that Contiki seems to have.  I went at a good time of year, the summer rush was over and it was starting to cool down and the crowds weren’t quite as chaotic.

What I didn’t like?  We were never in one place for long enough.  I know that this is sort of the point so that you can get to see as much of Europe as possible, but it really annoyed me in the end.  I have since been back to Europe several times and gone back to places that I visited on the Contiki tour that I wanted to spend more time in.  I didn’t like the fact that they sprang extra costs on you that were never outlined in the original tour brochure.  Perhaps things have changed since I did my tour and they actually tell you the additional costs in advance.  I didn’t like the fact that we were just regualrly dumped in the middle of a new city and left to fend for ourselves without maps or anything.  I thought the tour director was there to occasionally guide us around a new city rather than just someone who sits on the bus with us and then disappears as soon as we got off the bus somewhere.  It’s not that I’m incapable of finding my way around a new city and doing my own thing, it’s just not what I thought I’d paid for.

Would I recommend Contiki?  It depends really.  If you’re interested in certain cities in depth, then no.  You never spend long enough anywhere to actually get any real appreciation for a place.  If you’re just looking to see a lot of Europe and taking lots of photos and don’t really care about spending any time getting to know a place, then sure.  If you’re looking for a party and to piss it up in as many places as you can rack up and don’t care as much about the sightseeing, then absolutely!

I can’t say I made any lasting friends on that trip.  I wouldn’t do another Contiki tour, but that’s just me.  Contiki really isn’t for eveyrone.  I imagine it’s probably good if it’s your first overseas trip, but for people who’ve done a bit of travelling before, you’ll find it pretty restrictive.

I’m not averse to doing other group tours in the future, in fact I’m doing one over the summer, but that’s more of a grassroots type tour in a country that I would never ever consider travelling around on my own.  I’ll post the details of that trip when I get back in the new year!

Bali

August 2004?  We’re going back a while here!

So everyone was always raving about how awesome Bali was…I figured that flights and hotels were cheap, and the exchange rate was pretty good, so I booked myself a trip!  Organised it through my travel agent in Australia.  So got return airfares, 8 nights hotel accommodation, a day trip, and return airport transfers.

A few things to remember…Get malaria tablets from your Dr before you leave.  Only drink bottled water.  Ask for your drinks without ice (because you don’t know if it was made from the tap water or not, and they will lie).  Do bargain hard if you’re buying stuff outside of actual shops from street stall vendors or people who come up to you on the street/beach trying to sell you something.

Also remember that while Bali is not dominantly Muslim like the rest of Indonesia (though there are obviously Muslims there), you do still need to respect the local religions and dress more conservatively if you’re going day tripping to see the temples and stuff.  So you’ll need knee-length or longer shorts and a top that covers your shoulders (no tank tops).  Some temples will let you hire appropriate clothing like t-shirts and sarongs.  You generally won’t be allowed inside the actual temples though, because they’re actually being used.  You’ll just be allowed inside the general grounds.

On that note, at the time, I wasn’t concerned about terrorism, despite the fact that the Bali bombings had been less than 2 years earlier.  Be aware of it, but don’t let it rule your trip.  If you listened to every government travel warning, you’d never leave the bloody country.

Visa’s for Aussies are easy.  I think US$25-$30 on arrival at Denpasar airport.  Probably gone up since 2004 though.

The hotel?  Was just outside of Kuta near Legian.  Was alright I suppose.  No airconditioning.  But it had a nice pool and a poolside bar and a half decent restaurant.  Was about a 10-15 minute walk in to the main street of Kuta and a 2 minute walk to Kuta Beach.

The touristy stuff?  Probably the reason I don’t want to go back to Bali.  It’s way too in your face.  For example, you go and do a day trip around the island, and you spend 70% of your time being forced in to shops, despite saying to your guide that you want to do sightseeing and not go shopping.  You go for a walk in to Kuta and come back covered in bruises because people are grabbing you and trying to drag you into their store to buy stuff.  You go down to Kuta beach to lay in the sun or go for a surf and you’re constantly being pestered by people to buy sarongs and fake Rolexes and fake Oakleys etc.

At one time I was out having a surf as the sun was going down and I had one guy come up to me out beyond the break with a waterproof bag on his surfboard and try to sell me stuff!  In the surf!  You seriously can’t avoid it.  Or you pay to sit on one of those banana lounges down on the beach, and the person you’re hiring it off brings their family down to try and sell you stuff.  And they remember you!  If you give in and buy stuff off one person, you get 10-20 other people approach you and say “well you bought something off of them, so you have to buy something off of me too, otherwise it’s unfair“.  And don’t believe them if they try to say they don’t understand English.  They understand it perfectly well.  Selective hearing

Also, I flew over on Garuda.  Don’t recommend it.  The flight home was delayed for hours and hours because of mechanical problems.  But even after the plane finally took off back to Australia, you could hear a rattling noise the entire time.  Even with the recent problems Qantas has had, I’d still fly Qantas over Garuda any day of the week.

That being said, I did have a good time in Bali and I’m glad I went.  I just don’t want to go back very much.  I went for a relaxing beach break, but in the end, I was unable to relax the entire time because the people are too in your face.

The surfing is awesome.  The shopping can be great (I bought back some wood carvings and stuff that I absolutely love).  And if you’re not in or near Kuta, it’s less busy and slightly less in your face.