The long awaited trip to Cuba finally happened last week! Booking the flight with Cubana airline was a total bitch. Rogie tried booking it at 1st but the transaction was over before he could even type in his credit card no to pay. The next thing we know, the price rose from US$250 to US$312. Feeling extremely disgusted, we decided to head down to the airline office to book the ticket. It turned out that the rate at the office was a flat rate of US$312 the whole year round. When we asked if she could help us to look through the internet, her reply sent us walking down the streets in search for an internet cafe - there was no bloody internet in the airline office!! When we finally settled down in the internet cafe, the Cubana website continued to irritate us further. Nyan and me wanted to try booking for a flight that comes back a day earlier than Rogie but the stupid airline only has flights that cost US$250 if we were to come back the same day as Rogie or 2 days earlier so we had no choice but to book for flights that come back on the same day as Rogie.
So off we went to Cuba - Me, Nyan, Rogie and Gustavo (from Chile). Air Cubana was an interesting plane to be on.. We could literally see the smoke of the air con just by sitting in our seat.. when it was about to take flight, there was so much smoke anyone would have thought the plane was on fire.. but no matter how bad the plane is, no plane can be as bad as Viva Aerobus. I swear thats the only plane where the pilots smacks the plane on the ground while landing. Having safely landed in Cuba, we thought everything would be fine from then on.. Never did we expect to be stopped by this black custom officer. He was just plain weird - took our passport and stared at it for what seems like hrs, refused to open his freaking mouth to tell us what´s wrong and started walking off with our passport. Thank god Gustavo came to our rescue and the black guy finally stopped harrassing us. Once we pass by the customs, it was Rogie and Gustavo´s turn to get into trouble - they were suspected of taking drugs purely based on the fact that Rogie was from Holland and Gustavo was from Chile. So they conducted a check on them before we finally got out of customs. I´ve never had so much trouble in a single day of travel before!
7 days in Cuba was all i need to have a basic idea of how a communist state is like.
1. The government knows everything - there was once when the cab driver took us to club to see if we wanna go in and when we decided not to, he had to get the guard outside the club to sign on his card. We were guessing that´s how the government keeps track of everything.. haha
2. They are not allowed to buy and sell their cars which is why they are still driving the antique cars we see during our parents´ era.
3. They are not allowed to buy and sell houses - houses are passed down from generations to generations. For people who do not have a house, here´s the way to get one: get married to someone who has a house and get him/her to give u the house and then get a divorce.
4. Tourists are only allowed to sit in tourist taxis although we ALWAYS take the illegal ones - the driver usually tells us not to snap any pictures when he drives pass the police checkpoint in case he gets stopped and checked.
5. The only thing they ever eat is pizzas and bread with ham and cheese. Their pizzas are called pizza with cheese which is weird for us cos pizza naturally should have cheese in it.. so basically we have been eating pizzas with no ingredients for a week..
6. Cubans survive on rations from the government. Medical subsidies by the government is very good cos medicines are really cheap there.
7. Any job can easily be better off than working as a professional in Cuba. Professional salaries are like shit in Cuba.
8. There is no internet access in Cuba. If there is, its 56k modem.
9. There is a song in Cuba which contains a word that sounds similar to the pronounciation of ¨Singapore¨ and the meaning of that word is to have sex. Everytime we tell people we are from Singapore, they laugh so now we know why they laugh.
10. Cubans rarely smile and stares more often than ever.
Not sure if i missed out anything.. haha.. but all i can say is that a week in Cuba is really a unique experience which i will never forget! Haha.. too unique to forget......
Yvonne
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