London overnight trip- 1st & 2nd Feb

Wednesday morning, me and Audrey could barely drag ourselves up from bed (we had slept at 4am before, see previous post). In my mind, I had ½ wanted to cancel our London trip. But no way! I can’t do that, been planning for this trip since 1 month ago. Going to London was our way of letting loose after the January exams.

We boarded the 8.50am National Express coach and reached London Victoria at 12.40pm. Then the both of us hoped onto the tube and rushed down to Leicester square to get our ‘Lion King’ musical tickets. The matinee was supposed to start at 2pm. At the ticket booth, Audrey and I had a minor disagreement. I wanted to buy the ₤25 seat tickets while she wanted to get the ₤32 ones. Both options were on the Grand Circle (3rd highest out of the 4 floors). Naturally, the more expensive the tics, the better view one would get. In the end, I gave in to Audrey and went for the latter option. ‘Buden’, I told her, ‘We’re going to buy the ₤20 tickets for the 7.30pm Le Miserables later.’ Audrey agreed.

Got the tickets at 1.40pm… 20 mins to Lycum theater but we didn’t know where that was. Didn’t have a map too, so we just rushed along streets, asked around till we found our destination 5 minutes before show time.
Since it was a weekday matinee, there were many empty seats. Just before the show started, the ushers asked the people who were sitting at the back of us (₤25 seats) to fill up the seats in front!!! I was like ‘Huh?!’ That was sooooo unfair, I mean hello?! There were people who paid more, shouldn’t we get the better seats instead? *Haiz* Should not have listened to Audrey…. A lot of people who had the ₤32 seats were huffing as well.

Anyway, Lion King was fantastic!! They had the original songs from the Disney movie as well as 1 or 2 new ones. Try listening to African music live…. Wow! The stage magic was awesome. Like in the movie, the King would climb Pride rock (a cliff). For the musical, the stage was originally flat, but the center would slowly start to spiral upwards to from a spiral staircase (sort of the kind of staircases you would find behind old shop houses back home in M’sia & S’pore) Before the show, I could not imagine people acting as animals, but the costumes were beautiful and cleverly designed as well. For giraffes, they had people crawling on fours, on stilts! I spent the 1st few minutes of the show with my mouth wide open. Was bouncing and humming along to all the Disney tunes as well.

After the musical

Due to our late night on Tuesday, Audrey could barely keep her eyes open. As such, we had to cancel our original plan and not watch ‘Le Miserables’ after ‘Lion King’. I was a little disappointed actually, as I was really looking forward to this Musical Marathon trip. Oh well, didn’t want Audrey to waste her money either. Hence, we hung around Covent Garden till the shops closed at 5pm, then headed down to Chinatown for dinner. We went to Crispy duck Restaurant. Audrey said that that place served Dim Sum. (Yum! I’m missing that loads). However, the restaurant had stopped serving Dim Sum when we arrived =( Instead, I had duck rice and a bowl of wan ton. Audrey had some eel rice dish and wan ton. That dinner set me back about ₤10. *ouch* Think I can easily get those dishes for under RM10 in M’sia…

Crispy duck resturant

After that, we had to make our way to the hostel where we were going to stay over for the night. I was a little excited and scared. Lol, that was my 1st time staying in a hostel. Kinda budget right? But what to do, we’re just students and staying in London is pretty expensive. If my parents knew that I had stayed over in London, they would be horrified. If they found out that I had stayed over at a hostel, they would be mortified. Heh, felt a little of adrenaline rush in me because of this tiny rebellious act =p
It was dark by the time we went searching for the place. Audrey had only a printed map and it was a little difficult searching for the hostel in the dark. We wandered the streets and asked around for directions. In the end, we had to go through a small alley in order to reach the place.
The hostel reminded me of my old hall, a little dirtier tho. I was a little afraid of the thought of sleeping in a dorm with other strangers, but Audrey said that she requested for a 3-person room instead. However the person whom we were supposed to be sharing the room with didn’t show up, so we got the room to ourselves!

Smile Audrey!

Our bunks

We stayed at the Generator

That's the small alley we had to go thru to get to the Generator's entrance

The next morning, we checked out of the place after our breakfast. Our 1st stop for the day was the British museum. Didn’t know where it was so we walked around and asked for directions again. (Although I’ve been down to London a couple of times, I’m still not familiar with the place. London is huge! Its even bigger than Singapore, it would take ages to finish exploring the place.) In the museum, I got to see mummies for the 1st time. It was freaky though. The Egyptians do have a very fascinating history but some of it gives me the shivers. There were quite a few mummies displayed there, even Cleopatra’s (Later, OJ asked me if she was beautiful…*rolls eyes*) I stared at the exhibits with horrid fascination. It’s amazing how the Egyptians were able to preserve their dead for thousands of years. At the same time, my skin was crawling and I knew that I was going to have nightmares later… =p The metal rod which the Egyptians used to hook brains and pull them out thru the dead noses was displayed as well *Eeuu*

Anyway, we would have stayed longer at the museum if not for the busloads of kids who invaded the place. The little kids were fairly irritating. You could be standing in front of an exhibit and then all of a sudden, your view would be blocked by screaming kids. Initially, whenever the little ones blocked my view of an exhibit, I would just move to the next. But I had to keep giving way to them…. It got onto my nerves after abit. So when 2 kids went to one of the mummy exhibits which I happened to be looking, I stood on my ground and resisted their pushings. It worked for a while. The 2 kids stopped pushing and went to the other side of the showcase. Seconds later, I was swamped with noisy kids trying to shove me aside. =( 2 kids, I could handle, but when they sent for reinforcement, I nearly toppled over. Ahh!!! I was defeated… tried to move away from the showcase but I was caught by the swarm of screaming little warriors. Terrifying…

Audrey outside the British Museum

Me inside the museum

After the educational trip, we headed down to Knightsbridge and had lunch with Audrey’s sec sch friend- Eko. He brought his girlfriend along as well and the 4 of us headed to a crepe café for food. I ordered a Norwegian crepe which had chucks of salmon inside. Yum!

Waiting for lunch

Next stop for me and Audrey was Harrods. While walking to our destination, a group of guys came by and shouted into our faces. They were saying stuff like ‘Can you even read the menus? Do you understand me?’ Obviously a racist attack. Me and Auds were like ‘What-ever’…. Anyway, after the group walked away from us, this lady came up and apologized on their behalf. I was a quite surprised at her, out of all the racist thingies I’ve experienced over here in UK, this was the 1st time anyone apologized on the behalf of total strangers. Wow=) You could tell that she was embarrassed and disappointed with that group of locals. We told her not to worry, we were used to it by now. Lol, once we said that, we regretted it coz the lady was shocked and even more disappointed. Yep, was really surprised by her. It goes to prove that not everyone has negative perceptions about people who originate outside the Western word.=)

Besides window shopping Harrods, we went to Oxford street (I bought a brown crumpled formal skirt there), Covent garden and Chinatown. Bought loadsa stuff from Chinatown. Among many foodstuff, I got Laksa mix, Yeo’s drink, Canned Bobo chacha and grass jelly, CNY ‘nian gao’ which were imported in from M’sia & S’pore… *Sighz* These stuff I used to take for granted back home, now such things are delicacies…

By the time we got to Piccadilly Circles, we were exhausted. Carrying our backpacks round London for the whole day, my shoulders were burning when we met Jo for dinner. It was Jo’s 21st B’dae then and we decided to treat her to Jap food. Japanese cuisine is the ultimate treat for us, its very hard to find places that serve jap food here in UK. The price of course, would be fairly steep as well. We ordered 3 set meals which included free flow of Mizo soup. In order to make my money worthwhile, I was determined to have at least 3 rounds of soup… Hehe, we asked the waiter to top up our bowls a couple of times, it was evident that we were the typical Kiasu Singaporeans.=p

Together with the Birthday girl (Poor Jo had a serious case of flu on her 21st)

Dinner was yummy and the 3 of us had our fill after several rounds of soup. After dinner, both Audrey and I took a bus to Victoria coach station. Boarded the coach at 9pm where we slept all the way till reaching Loughborough at 11.45pm. Taking into account that I had spent so much money over the past 2 days, I wanted to walk back home from the coach stop. It would be a 40mins walk in the blistering cold, but it would be alright I guess. However, this was against Juvi’s and Gabriel’s wishes… heh, really feel that they are my elder sis and bro, so yeap… had to listen to them and take a cab home.

On the coach

That’s the end of my brief summary with regards to my London trip. Yeap, its brief, there’s so much more details which I’m too lazy to include in. Maybe Auds would add that in in her blog. (Btw Audrey, didn’t we agree to both update out blogs? Yours hasn’t been touched for weeks! We went to London 2 weeks ago…. Even if u update ur blog, it wldn’t be up to date liao. Hurry up gurl! =p)