A holiday in Cambodia, no, the other one, Bosnia (part 1) [travel blog post]

I've been living in Central Europe for nearly a year and a half now. It was time I explored a little more of it than my immediately-neighbouring cities. So, with mild trepidation, I laid down just under 10,000 Czech crowns for a week and a half's trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the spring.

It was with a local firm, Kudrna. (That's a lot more pronounceable to Czechs.) They apparently do mainly outdoors, activity-type holidays, not something I've done a lot of myself. They are also mainly used to coping with Czech customers -- little of their website, literature or materials is in English. I and my three friends -- one American, one Pole and one Lithuanian -- are apparently the largest group of foreigners they've ever had on one trip.

The price worked out at about £250 -- pretty good for an all-in ten-day trip including travel and hotels. For some of the locals along for the ride, though, this was a big expense, and the company knew it. There was a lot of packed food and little notes in the guides saying things akin to "yes, it's OK to bring your own food into the hotel restaurant, you don't have to buy anything."

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