At the last moment: Where to break for the New Year
Every year we promise ourselves to plan our trips in advance. - including New Year's, - but no. Our guide is for those who postpone everything for the last moment or have already come to terms with the idea of somehow experiencing in Russia the impending stream of instagrams from tropical islands. It is still possible to go on vacation, although, of course, it will cost more. The lists of the most attractive online destinations are reprinted a million times, but we believe that there is nothing more convincing and visual than personal experience. So we asked the editors' friends to tell us how to meet 2014 in countries that can be compensated for by the high cost of the flight on the spot. Well, if you do not want to go too far, you can always adopt our guide to the warm countries of the former USSR.
Cyprus
Last year my wife and I went to a cheaptrip on December 26 in search of a way somewhere where it's warm: I really didn’t want to stay in Moscow. There was nothing good, of course, by this moment there was no more, and out of desperation we chose Cyprus. The hotel was chosen to have sights around, the sea and the city within walking distance; stopped at Paphos. I have no idea how it was during the high season, but on the New Year holidays it was great. Of course, the New Year itself at such a resort is a matter of your own hands. You can stay in the hotel, where by half past nine in the evening, desperately bored, you can eat everything that fills the tables in excess, or go to the pub and hang out with the locals. We just bought a bottle of champagne and drank it on the beach together, mentally imagining the battle of the chimes. And then in the room they watched a movie in a laptop, as the sea was quite cold. I think this is the best thing to do.
In general, the low season is good because there are no tourists. The weather is wonderful, there are no people, everything is open even on January 1, because the weekend is organized in accordance with the Catholic Christmas. Despite the fact that many restaurants are closed in winter, there are plenty of pleasant places to eat Greek and Mediterranean cuisine. In addition, everything is very cheap, and almost everywhere there is Wi-Fi. There are many ancient ruins in Cyprus. There are several huge national parks (included in UNESCO World Heritage) - this is a mountainous area along the sea of fields with the remains of columns, temples, catacombs, houses of wealthy Cypriots before and early Christian times. Some do not even need tickets - at least go and walk at night. You can also rent bicycles, which are brought directly to the hotel. On the main promenade of Paphos there is a small pier, along which a dozen or two boats are parked with advertising of various types of fishing with telephones. We called several, someone did not work on holidays, someone was waiting for a large group, but about a third person agreed to take us out to sea the next day. The trip was great, we caught a dozen small fish. Joy - like from syroezhek found in the near suburbs. Was cool.
Israel
Happy New Year in Tel Aviv a strange story. In theory, the Israelis on the night of the 31st to the 1st as such, do not celebrate the New Year. All this festive mess with firs, garlands, gifts and a breaking table was brought to Israel by immigrants from Russia and Ukraine. Therefore, the Christmas trees on the windows on New Year's Eve are lit here either by Russians or by Christian Arabs. The Israelis call the night from the 31st to the 1st Sylvester - after the name of Pope Sylvester I, whose name stands on December 31 in the Catholic calendar. That is, in theory, it is worthless to celebrate the Catholic holiday in Israel, but many do not associate it with Catholicism and simply mark it as a kind of "holiday." One way or another, both Russians and Israelis organize parties all over the city, just one with a Christmas tree, others without, and all the restaurants and bars are filled with gay people.
If you go to Tel Aviv for the New Year by a rather big company, then the best thing to do is to rent an apartment with a big roof and have a party on this roof. In December, the evening temperature in the city hovers around 17-18 degrees, so it's impossible to freeze there. There are a lot of apartments with open roofs in Tel Aviv: you can rent a center in the area of Hayarkon Street - there will be a view of the sea; it is possible to budget - in the merry bar area Florentin. During the day, you need to drive Carmel to the market and buy all kinds of food (Israeli avocados are especially beautiful in December), good Israeli wine or aniseed arak are sold in any supermarket (if you are lucky, you can get to share like “three for the price of two” - Israel really likes ), and in the evening pull out on the roof of the column and perfectly meet the New Year. After that, go to the bar-hopping, going to any first institution, near which crowds of people. At 6 in the morning, you can go to have breakfast with Benedict eggs and champagne at one of three Benedict cafés around the clock, and for lunch you can go to any of the restaurants of the Northern Port. The next morning would be nice to walk along the already cool sea to Jaffa and stroll through the local Bloch. At the same time to buy gifts to friends who remained in Moscow.
In addition, in fact, a variety of junk on the streets around the flea there are a lot of shops with very beautiful and strange decorations of local designers, as well as several small bars. If anything, arak with apple and cinnamon is great for a hangover. For lunch, it is good to go down to the sea from the side of the old Jaffa port and enter the restaurant The Old man and the Sea - a beautiful glass with huge portions and views of the fishing boats. In the first days of January, Tel Aviv, unlike Moscow, does not die out at all, and all the shops and other establishments, if, of course, these days do not fall on the Sabbath, work as usual. So if you stay after New Year's Eve for another week, you can visit the cool Design Museum in Holon (you just need to catch a taxi in the street) and take a train to Jerusalem. True, after the Catholic Christmas and on the eve of the Orthodox in the Old Town there are a lot of pilgrims, but if you can’t really walk around the Old Town, you can go to the Bible Zoo. It is very conveniently located: right at the terminus of the Tel Aviv train, and almost “every creature has a pair” lives there naturally.
Thailand
where to start - where at this time to get tickets. On tourdom.ru there are two main options: Russian charters and Arab airlines. The first is fast and non-stop, but the entire plane is compatriots, entertainment for money and problems with the fifth point, the second is comfortable, cozy and with walking on duty-free, but transplants can be delayed, sometimes there is a risk to stay in the hub until 9 o'clock. In any case, first we need to overcome the distance Moscow - Bangkok. If you want to celebrate New Year there, then the choice of hotels, as in every capital, is for every taste and color. Personally, we love to plunge into the thick of the events of the city and go directly from the airport to Khao San Road, next to which there is one modest but very spacious Rambuttri Village Inn hotel - a basic but very convenient option when you don’t have time to find anything and want to be guaranteed be in the thick of things. For a couple of days, you can jump into Chinatown, visit Chatuchak market, which is open on weekends, and ride a tuk-tuk in the city. Planning a further route (yes, this can be done already on the spot, and not booking everything from Moscow in a panic) is usually helped by the Israeli travel agency, which is located at a nice cafe right at the beginning of Kao San Road, on the side of the hotel. Enjoying delicious hummus, we decide which islands to move: the first time we flew Air Aisa to Koh Samui and then the Lomprayah boat to Koh Phangan, the second time we drove to Phuket: I was on a motorbike rented for a month in Bangkok in BBR (take your helmet and generally take care of your equipment, traveling long distances), and Maria - by bus.
Brazil
A trip to New Year in Rio has its advantages and, oddly enough, the cons, and the latter may be more if you really love civilization. Firstly, a huge number of people from all over the world, including from Brazil itself, are coming there. Due to the influx of tourists, housing and food prices are rising sharply, and residents are naturally coming down from the favels in order to partially clean your pockets. But crime and prices are rising worldwide, so this is not an indicator. But broken ATMs and closed stores can be a problem. Brazilians themselves are very slow, their cashiers are super irritants for a normal Russian, so don’t expect them to speed up for the New Year. Local youth celebrates the New Year, gathering private parties in restaurants and clubs, where you have to dump a lot at the entrance, but inside there will be free food and unlimited alcohol. Then they go to the beach, which is strewn with flowers especially for the holiday - an incredible sight. Most of the family members also go to the beach, where they drink cheap champagne, a bottle or a few, as they can afford. Also there are several scenes set, but the main thing for which everyone rushes to the water - from the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema offers the best view of a firework show, which lasts about five minutes. If in Russia during a chiming clock, people burn paper with desires over a glass of champagne, which they then drink, then in Rio all superstitiousness passes with a touch of hedonism: they eat three grapes, each of which falls at will. My friend eats every year 12 - for all the months of the year.
Many people think that on New Year's Day there is a famous carnival, but this is not quite the case. This year he was in February, in 2014 he will move a bit in early March - but there is always the risk of falling in love with Rio and staying there until spring. And about the rules of survival on New Year's Eve: do not drink very much. Drivers in Rio on the level of rabies coincide with Kazan, and their buses are rushing around the city with great speed, which for a drunk person can be a problem. The fact is that they are paid for the number of laps that they pass, so no one ever slows down.
Morocco
My friends and I were looking for a warm country to spend the New Year holidays, but we wanted something more radical than, for example, Bali, and not as expensive as Latin America. There were several options, but at the word of Morocco, Burroughs' Naked Breakfast, oranges, Arabian nights and hashish were immediately recalled. The joy of recognition transformed into direct tickets to Morocco for three weeks with an arrival in Casablanca on December 28. From the airport to the apartment, we traveled about two hours, and in between times we found out that the main foreign language in Morocco is French, not English, so sign language was the first non-trivial cultural experience.
The route included Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, Atlas Mountains, Essaouira and Tangier. Thanks to the French railways movement was as easy as in the Moscow metro. Apartments we ordered on Airbnb. In Casablanca, these were rooms with views of the slums with a dowry in the form of two dozen red pillows stitched with gold, and the owner delivering hashish directly to the apartment. Especially cool we settled in Marrakesh, where for quite ridiculous money they took off a riad - a two-story house from an oriental tale with a large roof terrace, the hostess who came in the morning to cook pancakes, and muezzin, whose prayers to Allah became an excellent soundtrack for everything throughout the day.
We spent the first five days, including the New Year, in Casablanca, because we read somewhere that there is a “booming night life” in the city. In the end, on the evening of the 31st, we didn’t find anything like this in the supermarket by the local Abrau-Durso, prepared a mountain of Spekeks, who only ate in Tangier, and watched a movie. Already in Marrakesh and Tangier, we realized that all the New Year's fun was here. In principle, the main entertainment in Morocco, as elsewhere - to explore the space of an unfamiliar culture. In Casablanca, these are mosques, city markets, French quarters and the beach. In Marrakesh - a huge old city with annoying trade and restaurant-squares, palaces, museums and an alien garden, Yves Saint Laurent. In the Atlas - Berber ruins and widow markets. In Rabat there are palaces and ancient ruins. In Essueyre - a pirate city with an inaccessible coast. In Tangier - a fishing port, carved into the rock cafe Huff, mosques in the alleys and the spirit of Burroughs. You could still go to the surfer spots, the desert and the blue villages, but the intense journey through the country was fascinating in itself, and you had to sacrifice something.
Prices in Morocco are average: sometimes cheap, sometimes not. In Marrakech, they like to breed inattentive guests, but almost everywhere you can bargain for 50-70% of the original price. About the food we had different impressions. Most of all I remember the wild Berber cuisine, the port breaks in Tangier and the curry in an unremarkable sushi bar, but in principle there is nothing super-interesting. The people there are great. Against the background of subconsciously flourishing prejudices against Muslims, the most interesting thing was to discover enlightened Islam and de facto legalized cannabinoids, which in symbiosis look very touching and soulful. In our company there was one girl, but she did not seem to feel any particular patriarchal oppression, except that she was not allowed into the mosque.
Turkey
New Year in Istanbul is primarily a lottery. For example, with the weather - lucky or not? If you're lucky, you have to live all the New Year's week on the Bosphorus. On the very New Year's Eve, the Turks are striving for Taksim and are jostling on Istiklal Street waiting for a salute. The salute is beautiful, but Bosphorus, which can be viewed, for example, from Ortakey, is no worse. And it would be good to continue to keep the sea: walk from Emirgan to Bebek, along the embankment of the most fashionable cafes and galleries of modern art, climb from Ortaköy to Ulus Park and from there down the pedestrian descents of Arnavutkoy and silently splashing along the coast of yachts, spend a day in the village Kuzgundzhuk, sit in the state cafe on the old pier of Cape Moda and maybe even sail to the Princes' islands deserted in winter - in general, feel the same rural slowness, which in fact has so much remained in the huge egapolise Istanbul.
But even if you are not lucky with the weather, you shouldn’t be discouraged: food and museums remain. Benefit, as a rule, they are not far from each other: from the Museum of Modern Art in Topkhan, close to run, it seems, the most bohemian in the city is the Karabatak coffee house or the divine Lokanta Maya - however, they are only waiting for you for dinner, do not even expect to spend the evening without having ordered a pre-table. On the picturesque street right behind Ayia Sofia there is a Sarnic restaurant hiding in a cistern, where it is worthwhile to be at least for the sake of the interior, and even the fact that a taper at the sound of Russian speaks begins to label Kalinka Malinka, does not spoil the general impression. And the door to the door with the Chora monastery, also known as Kahriya Jamia, without seeing the frescoes of which you did not see Byzantine Istanbul, is one of the city’s best authentic Ottoman restaurants Asitane. Personally, I am ready to give a lot for their almond soup.
And the Istanbul New Year is a lottery in the most direct sense. The Turks themselves on this day, of course, do not put any salads on the table and do not give gifts to anyone, but rather consider it a reason to have fun walking all night. But almost everyone, regardless of wealth and education, plays the state lottery Milli Piyango with a rather big grand prize of one million dollars. According to statistics, most of the winners buy tickets at the Nimet Abla kiosk on the Eminonu marina. Right before the holiday, it’s easy to recognize by the almost endless line. It embodies a very Turkish - and a completely new year - faith in a miracle, in a quantum leap from mud to riches. Live in Turkey a little, and hear a lot of stories about someone's friends and acquaintances who won the lottery and what happened to them later. But in any case, the New Year without the coveted ticket (by the way, they are sold from the Istiklal trays) will not be enough Istanbul. The results will be known already at night: first on the Internet, then in the newspaper.
Indonesia
Crucial factor in bali's favor was undoubtedly surfing. Who among us has not dreamed of a ride in a blue pipe like in a movie? Later I learned that the pipes are formed exclusively on hard reef spots, and in order to roll them qualitatively, years and years of training are needed. I finished the seasonal work, had free cash, and winter was ahead. As a result, I stayed there for two months. Any tourist arriving on the island falls to the south of the island, and 95% of them never get out. In the south, everything is very civilized, there are luxury hotels, a million services for tourists. Indonesians speak perfect English. It is quite another matter - the rest of the island. My friend and I traveled around the island on bikes. We spent the night in sleeping pawns where necessary, dived, tore fruit. And here you have driven off a little to the north - and nobody even understands the word water. Kids at the sight of white people scream and wave their hands, running for the bike. And the difference, of course, is huge.
There is certainly fun there, as elsewhere. Bali has a very good snorkeling, there is diving and stuff, but, of course, everything is overshadowed by SURFING. I have tried enough in my life, and there is nothing better than surfing. It is very difficult, but worth it. Из-за того, что это сложно и физически (первые две недели я приходил после каталки и спал мертвым сном часа четыре) и психологически (тебя месят волны десятки раз за день), многие сдаются. Дорогой перелет, но низкие цены. Я там жил тысяч на 20 рублей в месяц, но это тоже нужно уметь. Людей, приехавших на 10 или 14 дней, цены не слишком волнуют. Я имел там много знакомых, которые приехали на такой короткий срок, и они пили чашку кофе дороже, чем стоил мой завтрак и обед, вместе взятые. Потому что я ел в варунгах для местных, а они - в туристических цивилизованных кафешках.I met the New Year in a villa with a pool and a bunch of drunken Russians - basically all our compatriots celebrate it there.
Vietnam
Only expats celebrate New Year in Vietnam, for the local, it means nothing at all. They celebrate their New Year, which takes place in February and is called Tet. The second most important holiday for the locals is the Mid-Autumn Festival, all other holidays for them are trifles. Expats celebrate as best they can. The temperature is somewhere plus 15-18, cool and high humidity. Therefore, in the north, where, in fact, I live, there are no special joys. In Ba Vi and Halong Bay, all the beauty in the winter freeze. If you want warmth and beautiful beaches, then you need to go to Nha Trang, Nha Trang. However, there are a lot of Russians there, both tourists and settlers, with all the consequences. A sort of local Phuket, with stunning beaches. Only in Phuket everything is much more expensive, since the local people have long been cutting chips and taking tourists at exorbitant prices, while in Vietnam there is not. In general, if it does not burn somewhere to go and there is an opportunity to choose, then it is better to come here in spring, when it is not very hot and there is a sea of greenery around.
Malaysia
Malaysia is a great option to celebrate the New Year or winter recreation. It is very hot there all year round (the country is located near the equator): up to 35 degrees during the day, moreover, in January there is less rain and more sun. Everywhere is very cheap. A taxi from the station to the hotel, for example, costs only 100 rubles, a bottle of mineral water - 10 rubles, lunch at a local cafe - 150 rubles.
The country is very multinational. In Malaysia, Malays, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and even Armenians live side by side in peace and harmony. Quarters are layered on each other, and it is very colorful. Temples stand opposite mosques, and conflicts have not arisen over the entire period of independence. I was somehow driven up by a local guy, and he said that all this is possible because of rather strict laws that prohibit religious violence. Also for the possession of drugs in Malaysia rely the death penalty, which also applies to foreigners. For homosexual relationships - life. For sex with animals - a prison sentence, depending on whether it was a monkey or a cow.
What to do in Malaysia? The Malay Peninsula is relatively small, it can be traveled far and wide for a week, and then go to the islands or to Singapore. Kuala Lumpur - the capital and a huge hot metropolis. I accidentally met local people in the transition (all they knew about my home country was Kazantip and Dnepropetrovsk), and they showed me the city. For example, they took me to a fabulous student canteen, where for 20 ringit (200 rubles) I took a huge plate of rice and beautiful octopuses. It was very tasty and spicy, but I already ate half and did not eat. It should be noted the grand and colorful night markets with food throughout Malaysia. Everything is cheap, beautiful, fresh, people are very open and positive. By the way, I tried durian in one of the markets, and I even liked it. If you go hang out in bars and clubs, then I advise the area of Bukit Bintang, it is fun and looks very European: you can confuse it with night Albufeira or Benidorm. There, by the way, there are a lot of good and inexpensive hostels: $ 10 for a bed in a triple room.
I do not advise taking the car: the movement in Malaysia is left-sided. It is better to take a ticket for a comfortable bus (you can even have a good sleep in it: a huge distance for legs, and almost falls into a lying position) or a plane (a ticket for local AirAsia is like a bus or train) and go to colorful colonial Georgetown, Malacca, to the picturesque tea plantations Cameron, to the island in the spirit of advertising "Bounty" Langkawi or to the economic capital of the region - Singapore. By the way, entry into the city-state is visa-free for four days, the main thing is to fly from one country through Singapore to another. For example, Russia - Malaysia - Singapore - Russia.
PHOTO: cover photo, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 via Shutterstock