VINTAGE;
rock on!
It was such a tiresome experience going through the Miami International Airport borders. Both of us decided to check in earlier as we had nothing much to do at the airport other than chit-chatting (which we have been doing so everyday for the past 2.5 months). Of course, we thought early was 2 and a half hours before the boarding time. But I checked with this lady working at the airport and she told me that we could have checked in 5 hours prior to the boarding time. I was shocked. Wondering why would anybody check in so early.
Join the queue for checking in and the wait was longer than ever. Finally reached the counter and the lady behind it told us it was too late for us to check in our luggage! Panicked a little bit, then she asked how many luggage we have. She said she could check in one each for us. BIG relieve. I cannot imagine bringing my luggage up the plane with me.
Two reasons:
1) my luggage was 58pounds- the lady stuck this tape- HEAVY, on my luggage and told me that I exceeded the limit by quite a little bit.
2) I believe domestic flights will not have enough space for my huge luggage.
Then we went to the boarding gates. AGAIN, the queue was terribly slow. Realized that the queue for internationals was much slower than that for the American citizens. Then we realized that they checked the internationals in a very detailed fashion. I had to go through several compression machines and have some kind of weird air being sprayed at me before I can proceed to the next step. Then, I still had to wait for some gates to open for me before I can move up. The airport staff had to check my bags and all very carefully, using some kind of filter paper to wipe the inside of my bag to check for something. ARGH. The whole process was so irritating. Especially when we were about to be late to board the plane. We concluded that my HRP friends must be right, Miami has many drug dealers. No wonder there’s the need to check every international so carefully.
Ran all the way to the gates to board the plane and was almost late. And we thought we checked in earlier than we should. =(
At Newark Airport in NYC, we realized that we don’t really know the address of the hostel we were staying in. I forgot to save the details in the computer. But we managed to find an address and gave that address to the driver of the airport shuttle sending us to the hostel. Arrived at the hostel only to know that we were at the wrong place. Instead of being at Chelsea Centre East, we were at Chelsea Centre West. Oh man. The kind lady at CCW gave us details on how to take the subway over to CCE, which was pretty far.
According to Wanling, we did a lot of vertical physical training. Lugged my 58pounds luggage up at least 8flights of stairs, walked streets after streets and took the very-noisy-and-super-not-convenient-like-Singapore’s-MRT subway. It was so tiring. Fortunately, we met some kind souls along the ordeal who helped us with carrying the luggage up the stairs.
Things I noticed:
1) These people would usually ask before actually touching your luggage, very courteous. (: They would go: “Is it fine if I help you carry it up?” and I would very happily answer: “yes please” despite my heart screaming “YESYESYES!!!!”
2) The subway stations have no escalators and lifts. Or rather, they were so hidden we could not find them and were left with carrying our luggage up the stairs.
3) Singapore's MRT IS THE BEST!!! (: smiles. AWW i really love Singapore=)
finally reached our hostel feeling all tired and smelly. BOO. haha. so we both took a long comfortable shower before we head out for a whole new journey around New York City. *i think the people in the hostel believes that me and Wanling are lesbians because we enter the bathroom together every single time. WAHAHA.
posted by *joanne- @ 9:31 PM
