on canadian soil part 1: the journey :)

Sorry for not updating this space for the past few days as I didn't have internet access! The internet rocks man... without internet I feel so cut off from the rest of the world!

I'm officially on canadian soil! :)

Shall blog about my "adventures" now! Part 1 focuses on the journey to canada.

Getting ready to reach changi airport

Mum woke me up at 2.45am. I hurriedly changed out of my clothes and prepared to leave for the airport, luggage in tow.

Reached the airport at 3.30am. I got a pleasant surprise when my NUS Econs Soc friends Aijia, Melvyn, Denis, Gary, Ben and Stephanie came to send me off! I also received a lot of SMS-es from my friends wishing me all the best in Canada.


Thanks friends, for coming to send me off at such an ungodly hour! I feel really blessed and happy :)

My luggage was overweight by 6.1kg! Thus I was slapped with a "fine" of $90.

Then I saw hong juan, yi ling and joanne and it finally dawned upon me that we had to board the plane. Saying goodbye was quite difficult, but it had to be done...

Plane journey!

We boarded our first flight, NW0006, which brought us to our first stop, tokyo. Northwest Airlines provides pretty good service. Hong juan and I sat together while yi ling sat behind us. There was a TV screen to each seat and I watched Meet The Robinsons! But soon I felt tired so I spent the rest of the journey sleeping.

At tokyo, I realised I left my mobile phone on the plane. Crap! Many thanks to the airport staff who took great pains to find my phone. I'm such an absent-minded person.

We proceeded to board the plane to our second stop, detriot in USA. It was the worst plane ride I ever endured - I constantly felt thirsty and I couldn't get to sleep despite trying many sleeping positions! To make matters worse there was no TV screen to every seat, so my hopes of watching more movies/playing games were dashed! It didn't help that this flight was more than 10 hours!

At detriot, we queued really long for baggage inspection and had to fill in lots of declaration forms asking lots of funny questions. By then I was exhausted. I just wanted to sleep.

On the plane from detriot to toronto, hong juan remarked, "wanjun, you are really suffering from jet lag". I think I looked and talked like a zombie.

After about one and a half hours, we reached toronto airport. By then I was completely zonked out. In my confusion I almost agreed to pay a porter CAN$10 and an additional CAN$20 in tips to locate my luggage. Luckily I realised it was a blatant waste of money so I quickly turned him down and managed to locate my luggage with joanne's and yi ling's help! Thanks girls :)

Joanne and hong juan remained at the airport to wait for university of waterloo representatives to pick them up. yi ling and I boarded the airport express to global village backpackers, a budget hostel near U of T to spend the night there.

To be continued in part 2!