Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Day 1 and 2 in London 27th September 2001 in London, United Kingdom


UK Keyboards have a totally different layout from US keyboards. The spell checker and grammar checker are turning my words of Canadian English into Peikie (see Snatch).

Day 1: London

I arrived at 2pm in Heathrow International Airport. I waited a queue for customs for 2 hours. About 3 or 4 individuals were caring false passports and held up the line. When I finally got up to the customs agent she took my passport, wrote out a few things, laughed that I put ?Internet Guy? as my occupation and sent me on my way.

I walked through the airport for a half hour to get to the Tube station. I got my ticket; a Tube map and I boarded the train. I got off in Bayswater and that's where the first signs of Culture shock hit. One side of the street will have one name and the other side will have another name, as well they name the block and not the street in a lot of cases. I carried my bags around for about 45 minutes trying to find somewhere that was a 10-minute walk away. When I finally got to the hostel I walked into the most dirty, smoke-filled place in the world. £12 a night doesn't go far in West London. I got my key and went to my room. In there were 2 Italian guys and 1 Italian girl. There English isn't great so I have to improvise and try to understand Italian if they don't know a certain English word.

In Sydney I felt culture-shocked because everyone had a strange English accent, I would give anything to be surrounded by English accents right now. I'm in the centre of the English world in a city of 30 million people; apparently half of the English people in all of the UK live here and everyone speaks Spanish, Italian or French. It's pretty lonely at the hostel since there isn't really anyone to have a conversation with.

Anyway, I unpacked my stuff and went for some food. Everything here is very expensive so I went to the cheapest source of food? McDick's. Afterward I came back and ate my food and sat in my room with my roommates. I was feeling really tired so I took as nap? when I woke up the room was filled with opium smoke and they were snorting cocaine off the mirror on the floor. This is the last thing I expected. I know there is a lot of pot smoking in hostels but I never expected something like this. My roommates smoke up 6 times a fucking day. I hope they don't go o.d. on crack and jump out the window or anything. I've never had to lock my stuff up at another hostel because the one I'm staying at is to risky.

I decided to leave my room and go shower? I have never seen smaller, dirtier washrooms anywhere in the world. Nowhere in the entire commonwealth is there a dirtier washroom than at the Place Hotel in Bayswater, West London.

Day 2: London:

Today I went to go get my Social Number. After travelling to the south side of London I was told I would have to go to the East side of London to get my number. So after taking Bayswater to Westminster to Green Park to Russell Square and back to Green Park to Westminster to Bayswater, I have a temporary number. In Canada it took about 6 weeks for my SIN to arrive, there is a backlog of 8 months in London, apparently Exeter isn't as backed up.

I'm going to try and get out to Exeter as soon as possible. I heard you could get a place out there for £40 a week. My main priority is to get my own flat and a computer to get onto the Internet and a phone to I can talk to all my friends and family again.

London is the biggest place I have ever seen, take Calgary multiply the people and area by 30 and you have an idea of what it is like.


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