Category: Travel

Volume 2, Days 48-50

The heat wave reaches London with temperatures predicted to reach into the 30s on Tuesday and Thursday, but when I awake in the morning the dorm is as cold as an icebox. The A/C–necessary evil of the Anthropocene era–is a lifesaver. I guess I had sprung for the slightly higher booking price to get the included breakfast, which helped me save money as I could pig out in the morning, but the spread was nothing special–toast and cereal with two machines doling out liquids that can only questionably be called juice or coffee.

At 9am, after eating my fill, I crossed Hyde Park to the area south of Prince Albert Hall and the Imperial College to visit the collection of museums, i.e. the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Victoria and Albert. Despite a somewhat leisurely walk, I still reached the NHM about 5 minutes before its opening time and was floored to see the crowds queued up out the door. The adjacent Science Museum also had a sizable crowd waiting to get in. I guess it makes sense that tourists will avail themselves of the free museums, but sometimes I like to think that the hoipoloi are too busy shopping or spending money on tours to be bothered by soaking up any knowledge or culture.

The NHM was underwhelming overall. The earth science parts were okay, explaining plate tectonics (volcanos! earthquakes!), rock formation, and with comprehensive displays on minerals, but the life sciences sections were both too crowded and sparse. I could barely tolerate the crowds in the dinosaur section and passed through the hallways with various taxidermied animals quite quickly.

Exiting the museum, I headed over to the Imperial College, where a farmer’s market was taking place on the “quad” (or Queen’s Green in the local parlance). After much heming and hawing over the selections, I opted for a Steak and Ale pie, served on mashed potatos and with onion gravy. It was massive and tasty and affordable.

Nourished, I headed to the V&A next and found it overwhelming. One full day would not be enough to see all the exhibits in the V&A (not even including the several special exhibitions with their own fees). The layout of the museum doesn’t lend itself to a natural course, so I just did my best to wander about without worrying about missing anything. I mostly just took in the displays visually without worrying too much about reading the signs explaining historical context, which with “decorative arts” is quite important. I would definitely recommend the museum as a must-see.

Finally because it was there and free, I popped over to the Science Museum. I’m of mixed feelings about the quality. I definitely enjoyed the several halls full of old machines, respectively themed around the “creation of the modern age,” the “secret world of the home,” and flight. But, it would be fair to say I was pretty tapped out by that point with my brain incapable of absorbing much additional information.

I headed back to the hostel for a longish rest with coffee, water, and a chocolate orange before it was time to head over to a pub to meet up with my London-based friends. The pub was within walking distance (by my skewed standards). I had spent a little time online trying to look up pub quizzes and was a little worried about the accuracy of the information I found, but the pub was good and crowded. Every inside table not otherwise occupied had a piece of paper reserving it for later, and every outside table was full of people as well. My friend, F, who had been coming to London on business the past six weeks was already there, standing on the corner talking on the phone. We staked out a claim on an otherwise reserved big table and ordered some food. My other friend W, who lives in London fulltime, showed up jsut as the quiz was starting, which made it awkward to catch up.

It was a good quiz and we won on a tie breaker. The prize (for our 2 GBP per person entry fee) was a 50 GBP bar credit, usable that day. Unfortunately, we had individually paid for a couple of drinks, so we didn’t maximize the value of the winnings and I, being the only person drinking, was stuck hanging out at the pub drinking one more than I wanted.

When I got back to the hostel, I noticed that the A/C in the dorm room was not blowing cold air. I popped down to the reception to ask turning it cooler, but they said a request for maintanence had already been filed. I could swear that someone had gotten their hands on the remote and switched it from “cool” to “fan” and that no real maintanence was really required, but I didn’t push the point. I took a cold shower, and went to bed.

Volume 2, Day 47

It took a while and two breakfasts before I could say my goodbyes and get out of the house on Monday. At the bus stop, I let a couple buses pass me by because I wanted a bus operated by a specific company. In my internet research on how to get to London, there is a bus running between Oxford and London for a cheap price, but the real kicker is that they advertise free local bus travel to get into Oxford to catch their bus. Unfortunately, when I asked the driver for that ticket, he didn’t know how to sell said ticket and I was stuck paying regular full fare.

Disappointed by my failure to secure the cheapest possible travel, I rode the “Park and Ride” bus past the parking lot on the outskirts of Oxford and past central Oxford all the way to the train station. It would be a lot cooler to take a train into London and given the fact that I was off peak, I should be spared the exorbitant commuter rates. Yeah, no. I didn’t want to pay 27 quid for a train ticket, so I walked back to the bus station and took my original 8 pound bus to London.

The bus wound its way east through Oxford picking up additional passengers at stops before getting on the highway. It was a quick two hour journey and we went from sailing along the highway to stopped dead in London traffic in basically the blink of an eye. I alighted at Marble Arch and headed straight into the Tube to buy an Oyster card and catch the Central line two stops over to my low rent hostel.

The neighborhood, north of Hyde Park (Kensington Gardens) and west of Paddington, has a real immigrant vibe to it, but maybe that’s just how London is. In any case, I spotted at least five Chinese restaurants within 50 meters of the Underground exit, which got me wondering how one could scientifically define a Chinatown by ratio of Chinese people, text, or shops.

The hostel consists of two houses in a row of town houses and is just as musty and run down as I expected. Several guests were chilling in the patio between the house and the one way street, and I checked in. The cramped room with 16 beds has lockers under the beds, but the hostel decided it could make more money by installing electronic locks on them and charging a pound a day for guests to use them. That is the most egregious bullshit I’ve seen anyone try. The room is pretty small and there is barely enough room to lay a suitcase down to get anything out of it, so blocking off the valuable under bed real estate is a crime in itself. On the other hand, an air conditioning unit was doing its best to keep the room at a frosty … I’m going to say 18 degrees. A group of Egyptian boys had checked in just before me and promptly went to sleep as soon as they made their beds.

I took a minute in the lobby to liaise with a couple friends I am planning on meeting up with in London, then immediately walked down the street and into Kensington Gardens. I made a beeline for the Serpentine Galleries, and took a walk around the park to check out a few monuments and the public swimming area. Given the fact that a heat wave is striking Europe, it may be worth the four quid (including locker, shower, and sun deck) to go swimming in the lake. In any case, it should be sunny and hot these days, so I am grateful to be back in shorts finally.

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My stomach was grumbling while still enjoying the bright sun in the park, so I headed back to grab an early dinner from a supermarket. I had salad, but dressed it up with precooked chicken breast slices (on sale) and a mix of feta and olives. I also bought a lot of water. London is more expensive.

I sat in the interconnect basement common rooms (kitchen, TV room, etc) and ate my meal while doing some travel planning (I’m dying to get back on the continent). After hydrating and allowing a proper amount of time for digestion, I changed into running shorts and did a loop around the parks. Let’s see if I can squeeze in a run every day between museum visits and pub quizzing.

After the run, I showered and sat back in the common room working on my computer for a while. It was after 10pm before I even realized it, and I headed upstairs to lazily scroll through social media a bit and fall asleep.

Running Total: 17681 RMB (USD 2569.76)
Daily Average: 376.2 RMB (USD 54.66)

Volume 2, Days 45-46

There was a pretty decent breakfast spread in the morning included with the price of the bed at my Oxford Backpacker’s Hostel, so I rolled out of bed into a leisurely breakfast while catching up on the news. I still needed to make my own coffee since the provided drink was instant — I’d rather drink tea in that case. I don’t really need to list out all the events of the morning, but there were a few details that stick with me. Firstly, there was a table of one, two, and eventually three Americans–all either college students or recent grads–that got into conversation with each other. As always, the sound of Americans chatting cuts through all the ambient noise to attack my brain like a drill and shatter my attention. It didn’t help that one of them was passing through England on his way home form a mission trip in Kenya and kept making extremely evangelical word choices.

The second notable occurrence of the morning was that someone turned the telly on to the morning news, as provided by RT. It was just a bunch of tabloid garbage and I heard them cycle through the same handful of news stories over an hour or two, e.g. the internet response to flamethrowers on drones and the choice of one Florida community to use “Baby Shark” to make the streets more hostile to the homeless. After checking

After checking out, I hung around the lounge for another hour or two to kill time. I was in no rush to reach Woodstock as my friend might not be back until the afternoon. But, eventually, I bored of eavesdropping on the South African fellow monologue at any woman in earshot, and headed out to catch a local bus. Good lord, the buses are expensive. It is weird in Britain that the bus sits at the stop while the driver processes each passenger in turn like a supermarket checkout, and while I appreciate the ability to pay with cash, I do not appreciate the high price of a ticket, especially when I swear I had seen enough adverts on the sides of buses or at bus stops advertising more reasonable rates.

Woodstock is a tiny hamlet of a town about 12 miles north of Oxford and still located within Oxfordshire. The town is probably most famous for housing Blenheim Palace, which happens to be the birthplace of Sin Winston Churchill and the home of the Duke of Marlborough. Not to be confused with a certain smoking cowboy, the current duke showed up to kiss the ass of a particularly small handed, long tied state visitor not so long ago. Anyways, I took a three minute walk around the triangle of streets that made up downtown Woodstock and parked at a cafe to chill out with my luggage. When I was ordering a 2 pound Americano and a 1.5 pound scone, I somehow got up sold on the set with cream and jam while being assured it was more cost effective. The bill came out to over 6 quid, so I’ll be blimeyed if these country folk know how to add. It was a really tasty afternoon tea, and I had just finished shoving it all into my mouth and shifted my attention to the new book I picked up from the hostel book swap (a knockoff Chinese novel), when I got a message from my mate O that they had returned home.

I dragged my suitcase the 5 minutes over to their lovely house on the corner in a residential neighborhood and rang the doorbell. If these adventure logs ever get novelized, I suppose I should paint the fuller character portraits of my friends, but for the internet here, I need to be circumspect. I know O and his wife from Beijing, but hadn’t seen him much in the past couple years, and had never met is now 3 year old daughter, who was napping on the couch when I arrived. What follows is mostly just catching up with friends, a home visit.

In the afternoon, the whole family headed over to an annual event called the Mock Mayor. A centuries old tradition in Woodstock, the people gather outside a pub where the is music, games, and the election of a mock mayor who is paraded to the town square in a grand procession and ceremoniously dunked in a brook. The event was very family friendly with face painting, carnival games, tug of war contest, and a magician. The pub had its full selection of food and drinks, but there were a few independent food vendors grilling burgers, baking pizzas, and frying up chips and the event organizers were selling bottles of prosecco and buckets of Pimm’s at bargain rates. The only catch was you had to pay a 1 quid deposit per plastic cup and there was no one available to refund the deposits when we wanted to head home (during the parade) for more snacky, bready goodness.

Back home, I may or may not have spent quality time entertaining a child and reading bedtime stories.

Volume 2, Day 44.2

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My destination for the day was Oxford. Because I ended up coming to England a day early, I had a day to myself to kill. The rain never let up as the Megabus worked its way north across England. What a miserable place to spend a summer, I don’t know why its so popular. As soon as I got off the bus, I headed over to the hostel I had booked to drop my suitcase for the day. I had several hours to kill before I could check in, and I headed out into the streets to have a look around.

The city is impressive. It’s medieval looking with almost all of the old buildings made of this tan stone. There was a market on a square, mostly selling street food, but I wasn’t quite hungry yet for lunch. I needed to get out of the drizzling weather and get some caffeine in my system. I found the main drag, full of fast food chains, Uniqlo shops, and a handful of money changers. After the minimal amount of price comparison, I changed over a bit more money into pounds to improve the average of my exchange rate then settled into a Starbucks with a venti “filter” coffee. I guess “drip” is an exclusively American term. I was surprised that the Starbucks was no more expensive than McDonalds across the street or any of the other coffee shops I had passed.

There was a spacious upstairs seating area and after a quick trip to the bathroom to put my contacts back in, I settled in for a while on my computer. Most of the guests were kids, probably here for summer camps. At one point, and entire class took over a large table next to me and I eavesdropped on the morale building session lead by their nonnative teacher.

The streets of Oxford are wildly international. It has got the greatest concentration of Asian restaurants I have seen since I left China, and I heard more Chinese on the streets than English. Funny how that works. I go to Germany and all I hear is English, but in England, no one speaks English. I suppose I should have expected Oxford to attract a lot of tourists. It is world famous and all.

By the time the Starbucks started filling up with teenagers bringing in bags of McDonald’s takeout, I decided I needed to get some food. I had priced a few restaurants with displayed menus because I needed to quickly learn what things cost in England. Fast food is 7 pounds, a basic meal around 10 pounds, a 2 course lunch is 14 pounds. So the street food in the market would be a good meal. Now that it was lunch time, the market was fully in swing and there was enough of a break in the rain that one could sit outside without getting wet. I took a long look at all the international food and settled on a stall marked “Goa.” It was great, rice with two vegetable curries (potatoes, dal) and two meat curries. I needed some bread at the end to soak up all the goodness, but alas I didn’t have any.

It was a few minutes until 1:30, but instead of heading straight back to the hostel, I decided to pop into a Tesco to investigate England via the supermarket. Prices looked fairly reasonable overall, though I think the Paris shops certainly created a bias. It is true that the main and most affordable drink is cider, while beers are pretty pricey at 1-2 pounds each. By the way, a Pound buys as many Euros as a Euro buys dollars. So, after getting used to thinking in “dollars” indirectly through Won and Yen, I could remember to add a mental markup on prices in Euros, now I have to do it a second time.

While I was in the shop, I went ahead and bought toothpaste, which I had run out of, some digestive biscuits (for later), and a big bottle of water to encourage me to hydrate since I had not been drinking much water the last few days.

The hostel is a bit rundown, but the staff are friendly and the prices are reasonable. I checked in and immediately went for a nap. Afterwards, I popped in the shower and had myself an afternoon coffee with biscuits. Fully refreshed by this point, I headed back out into the nasty weather to explore the city.

Oxford is quite big and has all the shopping and dining options one could hope for in a bigger city while retaining the charm of a small medieval town. It was nice and the pubs looked pretty inviting. Eventually tiring of the wet, I headed back to the hostel to chill for a while and read, but I got distracted by a movie on the TV in the lounge. When the movie (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2) ended, I ran out to the Tesco to get some stuff for dinner with a 5 pound spending limit. I should have done a salad or something light, but with the weather, I wanted hearty and ended up with a big meal of roasted chicken legs, mashed potatoes, and spinach. These convenience meals, in between a frozen dinner and a fresh meal, are dangerous stuff.

It was a quiet night. I ate my dinner and watched Youtube videos for a while before going back to reading and finishing “The Big Sleep.” I was in bed by 11 and found it strange that although my 12 bed dorm only had 4 residents, we were all crammed together. Okay, its really just that I don’t understand why a guy chose the bed in between two clearly occupied beds and then spread is stuff out so that I had to climb over his suitcase to get to my bed.

Running Total: 16580.4 RMB (USD 2409.28)
Daily Average: 376.8 RMB (USD 54.76)

So, I definitely lost a lot of value of my money changing Euros to Pounds Sterling, which means the exchange rate I will be using for my accounting here goes 1 pound to 9.98 yuan, while Google lists it as 8.6 today. If only Britain had switched to the Euro.

Volume 2, Day 44.1

Once again I must confess that my actions do not confirm to my original intentions. Why on earth would I visit England on a language learning odyssey? I already speak English. The collective weight of several England-based friends and the revelation that one could easily cross the channel by boat swayed me to change my mind and add a small UK detour to the European travels. I had found a ferry service connecting Le Havre and Portsmouth for what appeared to be a very reasonable 30 pounds, even covering the overnight ferries. I didn’t want to put the fee on my credit card so when I first arrived in Le Havre, M accompanied me into the ferry terminal to inquire about buying the tickets. It was good that M was there because I am not sure how much English the French ferry staff spoke. Unfortunately, it appeared that the price of the overnight ferry on my intended departure date was well over 100 euros, quite a bit more than the 40 something I vaguely remembered. The difference was because I had to separately pay for a cabin on that particular ship, but if I left on Thursday night or took the Friday afternoon boat, it would be the normal price…still quoted to me at north of 70 euros. It need not even be said that I did not make any hasty purchases at the moment.

Upon further research the next day, and cross references bus times and accommodation prices in Portsmouth and Oxford, I was able to do all my booking online: 35 pounds for a reserved seat on the overnight ferry on Thursday, a Megabus from Portsmouth to Oxford leaving one hour after the ferry arrival, and a night in a hostel in Oxford. With all that taken care of, I was able to enjoy the rest of my time with M and his family in Lillebonne.

On Thursday night, they drove me to the ferry terminal with us arriving barely 20 minutes before the 11pm boarding time (and required to check in 15 minutes prior to boarding time). I was a bit anxious about being late, but even more so felt guilty for keeping them up so late. Even after dropping me off, they’d still have a 30 minute drive home. I thanked my host profusely and bid him farewell.

Check-in took all of 30 seconds and I had a few minutes to sit in the waiting area with the dozen other foot passengers. At boarding time, the ticket counter staff donned their security vests and transformed into boarding staff (just like the ferries in Asia). There was a halfhearted security check with an agent rooting through one persons small duffel bag, but when he saw the size of my suitcase, he just waved me through. The passport control procedures were just as perfunctory. We boarded a bus which literally drove us onto the boat. There was an unhitched transport trailer that took our “checked luggage” to be locked up safely for the night and we climbed the three flights of stairs to the fifth deck. The reception area was on the other end of the boat from the stairs/elevator, so it was a long walk down a hallway to find the familiar sight.

Since I was in a chair, I skipped right past check-in to find me reserved seat. Apparently, the procedures for assigning seats packs everyone sequentially. Of course, since it wasn’t remotely crowded, people found a way to naturally spread out. The ship was pretty well stocked with amenities, which is strange given an overnight sailing time of 11:45-7:00, or a 3-4 hour day time sailing time. There was a movie theater with current movies available at some ungodly cost per ticket as well as a shop, bar, and restaurant. Considering we were sailing to England, I shouldn’t have been surprised that people were guzzling draft beer like it was going out of fashion. The facilities remained open until 11:30 England time, and the bright overhead lights were eventually dimmed.

The large and otherwise comfortable seats barely reclined and massive armrests made it impossible to spread out across multiple seats. I managed to sleep, but it didn’t help that I had lost my headphones, leaving me with only the far less comfortable Bluetooth set I use for exercising.

They woke us up about an hour before arrival. Having access to shipboard wifi, I checked the maps and realized that the bus terminal was a good 3 km from the Brittany Ferries terminal. Bloody hell. I started to get worried because I didn’t have any British money and I didn’t know how long it would take to get off the boat and through British passport control. The way ferries work is they have all the pet owners get their dogs out of the way, then all the other drivers, then the bikers, and finally the pedestrians. A British bus came rumbling up the ramp to pick us up among the various scurrying about of crew members moving bits of metal from point A to point B then back to point A. I feel this British/French ferry lacked the polish of the East Asian ferries.

I sailed right through passport control after answering two questions: purpose of visit and how long. Stumbling out into the arrival hall, I had no choice but to change a bit of money at the Travelex counter which gave a bad rate and charge a 5 pound fee. Welcome to England! The sky was gray, it was cold, there was a constant drizzle of rain. Google Maps had details on public buses that could get me to the Hard Interchange, but when I saw the row of taxis in from of the terminal, I pondered how much could it cost to go a mile and a half. A lot, apparently. The meter ticked up 20 pence every 20 seconds. Whatever.

I had actually arrived at the Interchange a good 25 minutes before my departure time. There was free wifi and free bathrooms, though having consumed nothing since dinner the last night, I was empty. I scooped a little water from the bathroom tap to get the parched taste out of my mouth and gawked at the 2+ GBP cost of coffee from a vending machine.

Unlike Flixbus, the Megabus did arrive well before its scheduled departure time in order to board, so I guess I was justified in getting there as fast as possible. If I had attempted to walk (in the rain), I may well have missed it. I tried to sleep on the bus, but my headphones died and they don’t work when they are charging.

Running Total: 16226.5 RMB (USD 2357.85)