Summer Trip Travelog : Day 1 - London, Part II

As a student, money would always be an issue when traveling. Other than that, familiarity is a comfort when in a foreign land. Combining both aspects, we have chosen Malaysian Hall for our accommodation during our stay in London for the first few days. It's relatively affordable with rates as low as £10.80 per night with £10 as a deposit. It's also located at the centre of London, with an abundance of Halal restaurants nearby.

Finding the place was not a difficult task. When we arrived at the Bayswater station, we have already Googled the directions beforehand. A map was also provided outside the station which we have used to double check our location. We got some help from a man working at London Tourist Information Centre to show us our way as it was a relatively common destination for fellow Malaysians.

It was quite a sight to see Malaysians all over the place in a foreign land for me. Ottawa was deemed as the Kampung Melayu in Canada but never have I seen as many Malaysians as London had.

When we arrived at the door of the Malaysian Hall, a Malaysian man greeted us and offered to help us with our luggage. As we entered the building, we told the woman at the counter that we wanted to check in and then we were given some forms to be filled in before we were given the keys to our room. We also took that opportunity to ask whether our friends have arrived but according to her, we were the first ones to check in.

My housemate and I then went up to our rooms and tried to reach our friends once again after we got an internet connection. It turned out that our friends were at the airport still and decided to wait out for another friend before making a move to our accommodation. While waiting for them to arrive, we got ourselves some rest as we were super exhausted after the long-haul flight.

At around 8 p.m., my housemate and I went down to the Malaysian Canteen to have dinner. I myself had a nasi campur with one lauk which costed me £3! Free cordial drinks were provided and of course, I opted for that. Hehehe.

After dinner, we then walked around Bayswater as there were a lot of souvenir shops in that area. By the promotions, one could tell that Malaysians are their regular customers as everywhere, things like 'sepuluh, lima belas', 'murah, murah', 'discount baik punya' were being shouted by the salesman! It was an interesting marketing strategy somehow.

At 9 p.m., we met up with the rest of our friends at the Bayswater station. We were glad that we found each other and brought them to buy dinner at an Arab restaurant across the street.

Before we went to sleep that night, my housemate and I visited our friends in their room across the hall - despite the no visiting rule - to discuss our plans for the next day. We whipped out our gadgets to look up must-visit attractions and planned our directions to ease our journey. We were quite unlucky as the tube workers were on strike for the next two days...

However, we managed to plan the best way to get to our destinations - with much difficulty. We wrote down our choices and took screenshots of Google maps for us to use and there, we were set to take on London!

Ramadhan

Ramadhan is here, once again!

This year, I am just truly grateful that I would not be having my sahur or sungkei (breaking fast) all by myself. I am just contented enough with the fact that I'd eat at a table full with half-awake people (which means no deep meaningful conversation would be involved) during sahur and a table with well-balanced meal during sungkei instead of my usual lazy meal.

And also, I would take this moment to appreciate the fact that my fast will only lasts for 14 hours instead of 18 hours. Those four mere hours made all the difference! Trust me, it's different! The amount of food you can stuff within that time - for example! Hehe.

Anyways, I hope this Ramadhan, we can all cultivate new good habits and leave all the bad ones behind. May this holy month brings positive changes to our lives as we attempt to make full use of the time given to collect handsome rewards and points for the hereafter.

Most importantly, semoga istiqomah. :)

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