Summer Trip Travelog: Day 1 - London, Part I

As soon as we arrived at the airport, we went straight to the washroom to freshen up ourselves. I just could not bring myself to face the world right away after an 18-hour journey. I needed time to set my head straight after curling up uncomfortably in my seat as I attempted to sleep on the way to London.

Anyway, the immigration and border control process went smoothly for both of us. We were greeted by the officer in charge with a friendly 'apa khabar?' and he showed us an impressive pronunciation skill as he managed to say my name correctly!

The drama started soon after that.

Two of our traveling buddies arrived five hours earlier than us as they were given a direct flight at the very last minute. We were supposed to arrive at the same time and went to our lodging site together. However, as things changed, we could not stick with our initial plan anymore. To make things worse, we had limited means to communicate with each other as we relied heavily on social networks to stay in touch (roaming charges by Canada's telco companies are ridiculous).

London Heathrow Airport only provided 45 minutes of free wifi...

After relaying the message that we have arrived at the airport through Facebook, we went out of the departure gate and started to search around for familiar faces. We went up and down the airport halls but to no avail. Little that we know, we were at different terminals...

My housemate and I gave up searching after two hours of waiting and running around. We decided that maybe our friends have gone to the lodging site by themselves.

Then, we had to choose our means of transportation to go to Bayswater from the airport. Considering our huge luggage, I went to get a quote of price for the trip and it was around £60 (RM324). We thought that it was too much to be spent on on our first day and decided to try our luck with the tubes. We bought a new Oyster card for £5 deposit (RM27) and included £15 (RM81) worth of travel money.

 Two girls dragging two suitcases each was a bit too much to handle...

 

The Underground was built in the 19th century and only a few stations cater to the disabled passengers. Therefore, the presence of lift was not abundant. My friend and I had to drag our luggage up and down the steps by ourselves and let me remind you, my suitcase was over the weight limit of 23 kilograms. T_T

Lucky us, a few Londoners offered a helping hand. We were pretty skeptical to receive help at first because we were new to the city and had no idea how the people were. We decided to take the risk and accept their offer to help us while still keeping ourselves alert on our stuff.

The last man that helped us out mentioned a payment of £10 (RM54) for his manpower but until now, we could not figure out if he was only joking or being serious... Well, I thought it was a joke and no money was loss or given to him at the end of the day (heh).

All thanks to these people, we managed to arrive at Bayswater station and also all praise to God for keeping us safe!

Summer Trip Travelog: Departure

If you're a procrastinator, you would know how much things could pile up until the very last minute. Well, that happened on the day that I had to fly out of Ottawa. The night before, I had yet to clean up my room and house, fill in the tax forms and pack up my stuff!

I was in a super rush that night, I barely managed to get a wink of sleep. T_T

We managed to arrive at the airport two hours before our flight and of course, nothing went smoothly for the last minute packer (read: me). My luggage was over the weight limit by 5 kilos and obviously, I had to take out some of my stuff and put them somewhere else (leaving them was not an option at that time). Lucky for me, my travel buddies did not carry as much junk and therefore, I managed to sneak in some of my stuff into their luggage. :P

After that, we were scolded by the officer in charged because we had not check in even though our flight was leaving in an hour time. In our defense, we were waiting for some of our friends to arrive but the officer could not care any less about that. (Our friends did make it just in time and we hugged them goodbye for the very last time.)

We then ran towards the departure gate only to find out that our flight was delayed.

*** 

In our flight, we were given a choice of cookies, peanuts or pretzels because it was a short-haul flight, only two hours long.

By the time we arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the first thing we looked for was a restaurant. Obviously, finding a Halal restaurant was pretty much impossible and the only option we had was seafood or vegetarian meal. In the end, we decided to have our lunch at Chili's because my friend wanted to eat rice (the decisive point).

After halving our orders, the amount of rice I got was pretty generous I would say! Hmm...

 

Being cheapskates, we shared a bottomless drink and shamelessly asked for multiple refills after that. :P

For dinner, we indulged in fried goods: Popeyes. Sadly, this franchise did not have Halal chicken and so we had shrimp popcorn. Much to our surprise (ehem), it was nice and much more filling compared to the salmon meal we had for lunch.

The airport was huge and despite having long transit hours, I found it to be pretty bearable. There were plenty of things to do and look at and therefore, we managed to kill our time wisely (read: utilising free wifi provided by the airport).

Underground Light Tunnel in the airport. Do notice that my backpack is bigger than myself. Heh.

At around 9:30 pm, we boarded the plane heading to London. :)

Photo credits: my camera and @ezzaahhh

Mini-reunion

I left school five years ago and obviously I had not been able to keep in touch with many of my schoolmates after that. Recently, a friend of mine, Ernie, held an open house for Gawai. I was invited and decided to join a few of my ex-schoolmates to visit her house for a 'ngabang' (or a mini-reunion) session.

A lot has changed and some stayed the same since then.

It was kind of fun to meet up with familiar faces that you had seen for almost everyday in the span of five years sometime ago. It was a bit awkward too since I was not really buddy buddy with some of them. However, we have the same circle of friends and we used that to make small talks among ourselves.

Catching up with each others' studies and work seemed to be a normal conversational topic after five years of not meeting with each other. In another five years, more things would have changed and perhaps, our conversation would revolve around real jobs and families...

Time flies. I still feel like it was not that long ago that I wore those school uniforms and played around in class. The idea of finishing my degree in less than a year seems surreal. The real life waits for me next year (insyaAllah) and I do not know if I am well-prepared for that. For now, I'll just buckle up and go with the flow before I start to build a 'life' that I can finally call my own.

Photo credit: @ibanezz06

Summer Trip Travelog: How It Started

A lot of stuff can ignite the urge to travel within someone to a certain place. Maybe it's the culture, the history, the people, the nature or the food. For me, it's curiosity that drives me. I often wonder what has drawn people's attention to come and visit them and I like the adventure of finding the answer myself through my own personal exploration. Sometimes, I fell in love too.

A trip to Europe is the ultimate dream (for most people I know at least and thus, myself). Honestly, I know nothing about Europe in particular. I know that it is one of the world's continent but that's pretty much it. As you can see, I am not really fond of geography nor history...

However, my lack of general knowledge regarding it was not an obstacle. It was money and time that put a limit to my movement.

I nurtured this little dream of mine since I was in my first year of studies. I saw my seniors' photos and I thought that, one day, I would do the same thing and this year, I did it!

It had always been our (my housemate and I) plan to have a Europe trip in our third year. Therefore, I have been putting aside some of my pocket money for the last three years for it. They weren't much but enough for me not to worry about my spending for the next few months or so. This is crucial for a student like me: overspend and suffer to make ends meet after. Alhamdulillah, so far, I have been managing well.

Last January, my housemate and I booked return tickets to London and Kuala Lumpur. After the purchase, we were always counting days to that exact moment. Initially, it was just the two of us but my housemate managed to persuade a few others to join our trip and tada, we have a group of traveling buddies.

It is always an experience traveling with different groups of people. We all have different interests and stuff that we look forward to see and I like that. I get to see what excites them and enjoy them myself. Therefore, our itinerary varied greatly because some people gets excited seeing beautiful man-made buildings and some gets excited seeing the wonderful God's creation, nature.

In all honesty, for our trip, we only had a rough itinerary and most of them were planned as we go because um...we're amateur travelers. A lot of unplanned stuff happened but I love every bits of them because that's the best part: being on an adventure. :)

Here!

I am currently typing away from the comfort of my own home in Kuching! Yes, after a year, eight months and two weeks of being away, I am back!

My holiday started exactly three weeks ago but I have been spending some time traveling around to a few countries. Hehe. I will save the details about the trip for my future posts because let's face it, I have nothing better to do currently.

It's only the third day (or second) and I am still trying to adjust my body clock. I am sleepy all the time and returning home means runny nose and red eyes 24/7. I am definitely allergic to cats... but I love them. Big sobs. I am also using that as an excuse for my lack of productivity. I can't even lift my head and move my body to clean up my own stuff! Tsk tsk tsk.

My sluggishness includes catching up on TV shows and Youtube videos that I have missed while I was away traveling. Bad news: I don't think I'll ever finish any series in a jiffy like how I did in Canada because an hour video is taking more than one day to load. HELP!

Maybe it's a sign that I should not be spending so much time in this virtual world...