Travelog: YWCA Hostel, Montreal

For my short trip to Montreal, I stayed at YWCA. It is a budget hotel and thus, it was just a nice place to sleep in at night. It is clean and all but knowing me, I didn't take any picture of the room...

I took one of the lobby though!

The room I stayed in has two single beds, two closets, two sets of towels and a sink. The floor itself has a internet room and a kitchen for people who wants to cook during their stay. They have microwaves too (I think) but I never went in the kitchen to see what else are in there anyway.

Since I booked a room with shared bathroom, there's none in the room. However, they have separate bathrooms for men and women, which is good enough for me. I live on the opposite end of the floor so I have to walk all the way to the other side to use the women's toilet and shower room. Luckily, I've never really bumped into anyone using the toilet nor the bathroom. I don't really see anyone in the hallways either.

I'm pretty glad that I did not have to have unnecessary and awkward human interaction in that hotel...

Travelog: Montreal Incident II

We arrived in Montreal around 9:30 and off we went to search for the place I booked.

In that moment, I managed to turn at the wrong direction and made the journey longer than it was supposed to be. However, we managed to find the place and dun dun dunnn, the place was closed.

We waited, and waited, and waited.

A woman was also waiting for the management to come. She was looking for a place to stay before settling down at a proper place as she just came to Montreal to continue her Masters program. We tried conversing and I failed miserably because a) I don't really understand verbal French, b) I can't speak French. She tried to speak in English but when she couldn't find the right word, she just blurted out the word in French instead. Oh well...

While waiting, I managed to get hold of the person hosting the place I booked and found out that we were moved to another place to stay. Uh, so yeah. That didn't go well. Somehow, the management came and boo, we got scolded because Aadila was mad and apparently, the guy was annoyed that this happened way too often (angry customers) and he was not the one to be blamed. I guess I don't entirely blame him for throwing a fit and attitude but he could've been nicer though...

So, Aadila was furious that the host did that and (we) decided not to stay at the other place he provided after all. I had to go through the painstaking process of cancelling the booking and thankfully, I got full refund!

If it were up to me, I would have gone to the place and check it out but yeah, that's not quite the right way to handle things so I went with the flow. As we cancelled the booking, we were left with no place to stay and so, I tried google-ing for cheap hotels by 'borrowing' a restaurant's free wifi. I sat on the sidewalk and surfed the net like nobody's business.

Luckily, Aadila has searched for a place before too and I, (unwillingly, because of the long distance charge) let her use my phone to call the place to see if there's any availability. Alhamdulillah, there's one but we booked a room with shared bathroom (because it's cheaper and I wanted to stay in my budget).

The hotel is YWCA which stands for Young Women's Christian Association, I think. Since it has women in it's name, I thought it would be a place for just women to stay but boy, was I wrong...

*insert dramatic drum roll*

To be continued...

Travelog: Montreal Incident I

Once upon a time, I had a temporary housemate named Aadila. She is from Mauritius and sublet Ezzah's room at our apartment for a month. On a very random day, I came home and managed to bring up the subject Montreal to her. Somehow, we came to an agreement that we should visit Montreal together in the nearest time and we did!

I booked the bus tickets with Pajadin's credit card (to his knowledge and not too at the same time) and searched for a place to stay. I managed to find a site that is quite interesting to me because of the services it offers (the site has people advertising their places for people to stay for short period of time and seemed reliable to me). Since the plan was in such a short notice, most places were booked and I was left with a place that looks tiny but fine to just sleep and shower in at night. I was happy that the total traveling cost came up to around $60 for two nights stay.

Oh, my happy thoughts...

Our travel date was two days after my finals for late summer classes. On the day, I woke up at 6 to catch the bus at 7:30 am. On our way to the bus station, I realized that I left my phone on the bed... (Go me!) Luckily, the bus station is just 5 minutes walk from my house, so I ran home to fetch my precious but useless BB phone.

To be continued...

Burnt

I have a really bad sunburnt. I think it has been a while since I have been this 'tanned'.

It's annoying that it is a tad too obvious for me. I can practically see lines all over me, and I referred and described myself like a zebra to my mom and dad.

My parents pointed out that my nose is the worst in which I replied to:

'Hidong mancong lak bah, ya idong jak sunburn lebeh'.

In reality, I wore my glasses when I walked under the sun, and hence, the outlines and highlights on my nose... T_T

Uhh. When you can't do anything about yourself, make fun of it.