I got to Mostar via a bus from Split. I got up early the day I was leaving and went to the bus station to get a bus ticket to Mostar. It was a difficult decision, as Split was the first place I had had to rest since leaving London and I could have easily stayed another day, but if I did it was going to be because I was lazy, as I had already done everything that I wanted to do in Split. The next bus was in about 2 hours, so I bought breakfast and went via the main hostel reception to pick up my laundry.

I got to the bus station and the bus conductor asked me to pay for an extra ticket for luggage, which I wasn’t totally sure about so asked the bus driver to confirm if this was correct before doing it. I had never seen this before and it was correct, so I paid the extra fee and left my bag underneath the bus. The trip to Mostar was long and not particularly eventful, although there were good views as we travelled along the coast towards the border crossing. This was slow and we had to wait about 20 minutes to cross into Bosnia and Herzegovina, but one we were in we changed shortly after for another bus to Mostar. Bosnia and Herzegovina was noticeably poorer than Croatia and the theme park rides at the bus stop exemplified this.

I got to Mostar and walked to the hostel, which I found by wandering around. Shortly after arriving and whilst I was having Turkish/Bosnian coffee, Grace/Geomseo, who I had seen on the bus turned up. She was from Korea and we went for a walk around Mostar shortly after arriving.

The next few days were spent going to Blagaj with Geomseo and two other people she met on the bus, which was a cave, river and hill-top fort which we didn’t actually get up to, despite setting off. On the way down from the fort, we met a Vietnamese girl and another Korean woman, who also turned-round and we went for lunch together. The next day was spent walking around Mostar and going up the ex-bank building that was used as a sniper’s nest during the civil war in Herzegovina. This I did with Geomseo and Kali, a New York-based American-born Chinese girl who was staying in the same hostel. We actually set out to do different things that day, but I was wandering around Mostar with the intention of going up the tower and bumped into both of them outside as they were about to go in!