When you mention casually to a friend that you're thinking of dropping in on Bosnia and Herzegovina while you're in Eastern Europe, a very odd thing happens. First, they start to develop that curious faraway look which tells you that they're not altogether sure whether or not this is something they should be worried about, and then, having failed to receive a satisfactory reply back from the depths of their brain after a minute or so, they resort to asking if your travel insurance will cover this sort of thing. Now, leaving aside for a moment the fact that the war ended nearly twenty years ago and that the only blemish on the country's reputation since has been a sudden urge to sell everyone a fridge magnet with "Greetings from Bosnia" written on it in Cyrillic script, this attitude does rather seem to contradict the way people think about Bosnia at times when none of their friends are going there. When's the last time you tuned into the Eurovision Song Contest and genuinely expected to see the glamorous Bosnian television presenter dodging mortar shells while passing on the scores from the Bosnia and Herzegovina jury? I have come to the conclusion, in my infinite wisdom, that people are weird.

Twenty years ago, I grant you, Mostar was somewhere you would've only wanted to go if you worked as a war correspondent for the BBC - and even then, you might have demanded to be accompanied by at least three men armed to the teeth with heavy artillery. These days, of course, I would like to suggest that things have moved on slightly and that Bosnia is just as safe as anywhere else in the former Yugoslavia. All we need to do now is convince everybody to stop picturing news footage from 1992 whenever they think of the place, and the tourism industry might actually take off in a big way. If you really want a prime example of just how long it takes for things to calm down and for people to stop panicking after any sort of crisis, I can strongly recommend taking a look at the official UK website of the Foreign and Commonwealth office. The official position of the UK government, it would seem, is that walking off road in Bosnia is not currently a good idea because nobody can quite remember where they buried all the land mines. Well hell, you could say that about almost anywhere. Are you aware, for example - and you probably want to be sitting down for this one - that four hundred million land mines have been deployed around the world since the second world war? I'll just say that number again for effect - four hundred million. That's quite a few. If you honestly think that there's anyone out there who could produce a piece of paper on demand listing the positions of every one, I'm afraid you are very much deluded. Besides, if there was, he'd probably be hiding under the bed and refusing to come out. Not that I want to give you nightmares, you understand - the UK government also wants you to know that there is an underlying threat of terrorism in Bosnia, whatever "underlying" means, and that doesn't really mean much either. Surely there's an underlying threat of terrorism everywhere these days - if you're a Daily Mail reader, you probably don't even leave the house any more.

The point I'm trying to make, of course, is that you should always let common sense take centre stage in these matters. If you're going to base all your travel decisions on the small print in official publications rather than using that big grey spongy thing inside your head, you might as well order a couple of home delivery menus and stay indoors for the rest of your life. Be honest - how many reports have you seen on the news recently about people spontaneously exploding while on holiday in Eastern Europe? Also, on the whole, this sort of scaremongering isn't really terribly relevant at all as long as you're doing what most people do and staying in Mostar or Sarajevo or any other bastion of civilisation, and have no immediate plans to go skipping merrily through the surrounding fields for no reason. Even in times of war, it would have to be a truly paranoid army that mined its own cities. Naturally - and I really do feel the need to put a disclaimer in at this point to cover myself against the truly stupid - if you do ever happen to be out wandering the streets of downtown Sarajevo when you step on something that goes click in an ominous fashion, you didn't hear any of this from me.

Driving into Bosnia from Croatia this morning was every bit as scenic as I had come to expect from the former Yugoslavian republic - if there's one thing you can certainly depend on in this part of the world, it's that you won't be disappointed by any lack of mountains or lakes. The people of Bosnia, only too happy to take advantage of everything nature has given them, seem to have developed something of a penchant for building their houses just close enough to the water that they're in danger of being washed away by the next wave, so it is perhaps a shame that their country is almost entirely landlocked and that they generally have to make do with lazing about on the edges of any lake they can find rather than the sea itself. Not, of course, that this is in any way something to complain about - you could pretty much pick any lake in this part of the world and it would be a hundred times more beautiful than all of ours combined - but you can easily see why the Bosnian people chose to make such a fuss about the twelve miles of coastline they own on the Adriatic, which they like to guard with their lives. This small stretch of the Adriatic highway at Neum actually splits Croatia in half such that any journey from Dubrovnik to Split involves showing your passports twice as you pass through Bosnian territory - but ask them to give it up and they would probably hang, draw and quarter you. Bosnians love their seaside holidays, and since Neum is the only place they can actually enjoy such a luxury, you'll find it packed with them at every opportunity - although personally, I'd much rather have a home on a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains than a chalet on the beach any day, but to each their own. I suppose that, when you live in a country where you can't turn around without bumping into a mountain or falling in a lake, a trip to the seaside must be a welcome diversion. To me, having driven through Neum and found it not dissimilar to an 18-30 Greek Island resort complete with all the warmth and charm, it would be like abandoning the shores of Loch Ness or a delightful little country cottage in the Lake District for two weeks in Blackpool.

If you're looking for a holiday destination in which your money will pretty much last forever, you couldn't do much better than Bosnia - although, naturally, this is partly because the shops are not exactly filled with the sort of expensive goodies on which you can waste your wages back home. One of the biggest problems Bosnia has faced since the war is that of how to get back on its feet - if people saw it as an exotic destination before, they certainly didn't feel quite the same after it had been bombed into the ground and featured on the evening news for three years. Up until the mid-90s, Bosnia also had something of a fixation with the military, pouring money into anything remotely defence related rather than taking a single moment to think about its economy. As a result, by the end of the war, what they basically had was a bankrupt country with no knowledge of how to do anything other than fight people, under the control of a NATO peacekeeping force. They didn't even know how to grow their own crops, having imported most of what they ate from other countries. This is why, today, the country has chosen to embrace tourism on a large scale and everywhere you go you will find people desperate to sell you anything you are willing to buy. This, unfortunately, is a double-edged sword, as it not only means that Bosnia is more than happy to see you, but that you can expect to find many of its quaint narrow side streets filled with souvenir shops rather than the sort of ethnic distractions you probably came to see.

I've never really understood why it is that souvenir shops always seem to concentrate on selling the same things. Sometimes, you have to sort through quite a few tacky gift shops full of the aforementioned fridge magnets and tee-shirts before you find anything you wouldn't be completely embarrassed to give to anyone as a present. Seriously, who flies half way around the world to go home with a tee-shirt with "I've been to Bosnia" scrawled across it in a font usually reserved for US high school cheerleader uniforms? Luckily, Mostar has not quite passed over to the dark side yet - although it's getting there - and still manages to remain a city of narrow streets and ethnic traders - at least in the old town. In fact, when your tour guide leads you through the hot and sticky streets of the new city, with it's high rise hotels and pollution choked streets, and you finally arrive at the entrance to a wonderful labyrinthine mess of cobbled streets filled with vendors selling colourful clothing and exotic local artefacts the use of which you can only guess at, it really does bring a smile to your face. I had been in the old town for all of about five minutes before I felt compelled to duck into an alcove filled with authentic local stained glass lamps in an attempt to acquire something I would probably never see anywhere else again. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until sometime later as we were reboarding the bus, that the beautiful colourful ethnic lamp I had finally selected after some time umming and ahhing at all the wonderful things on display didn't actually have a plug. Somehow, when I get home, I am expected to work out how to physically wire this thing into the middle of my living room ceiling without electrocuting myself. Ah well, it's all part of the adventure of life.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.