Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Our Eastern US tour starts today! Finally time to tour US properly.
the tour company had originally said that our airport would be sheraton newark. but we ended up at hilton east brunswick which is freaking far away from newark. [this is in the state of New Jersey, and newark is quite near to new york city] I was really pissed cos I had made plans in new york city that night [there's no program on the first day, except for airport pickup], and now I had to find my own way into manhattan.
We managed to strike a deal with another 4 tourists [a chinese man who spoke cantonese but has been working in buenos aires or something and his 3 kids who spoke spanish.. very complicated] and the driver. So if we paid $70 he would bring us into manhattan chinatown. Well, sounded good since it would only cost us $10 each.
We later found out that the return trip would cost us $120. Well.. what to do. We didn't wanna take a cab back cos it would cost, like, a lot. Since now the bloody hotel is so so far away. And it's good to have a peace of mind at least the driver knew where we were going.
we had lunch in chinatown! but they complained that my char siew was spoiled. I gobbled it up anyway.. chinese food leh.. mai hiam!
walking around in chinatown.. haha, the missha shop here is so damn ulu!
it was that cold! see all the smoke coming out from the sewage
i brought them to take the subway.. mummy's getting addicted to this self taken photo thing
the subway gives you a free trip for every 5 you purchase, so 3 people is the perfect combi, for a round trip. we went right to the heart of nyc. i loved that liberty statue outside some souvenir shop, it's so cute!
grand central terminal..
new york public library
damn cool water cooler [not working anymore]
haha, daddy's damn cute
and times square!!
we grabbed a bite at mac donalds. at this point, the buenos aires man called us and said that he wanted to go home first cos his daughter was cold. like duh, it was freezing cold and she was wearing only a thin jacket. anyway i felt bad that we made them stay til about 11pm cos of our commitments so, yea they took a cab back first.. which meant that we had to find our own transport!
at this point i was calling up hilton about the transport, whether there were cabs near the station and stuff.. and they were so shitty they kept putting me on hold, i was sooo pissed off. that explains the look on my face. i kinda came up with a rough plan on how to get my parents and me safely across the river to new jersey, and then to our hotel which is in some ulu place that i can't place on a map cos i wasn't informed beforehand.
and the reason for all that trouble.. the Phantom of the Opera at a broadway theatre!!
the pretty stage.
i love love love the songs. although it sucks that everytime i'm at broadway it's after a long tiring day of walking around and i can't sit through a 3 hour musical without having to fight to keep awake.
it was quite stupid though cos at curtain call the phantom started talking.. and he was there to promote some charity, and selling autographed Phantom memorabilia.. ok, i mean it's for a good cause but it totally spoiled my image of the phantom, from mysterious, to.. salesman. boo.
no time to waste after we walked out of Majestic Theatre. We had to run to catch the trains, of which I had no idea when they stopped operating. Our aim was, just to get as close as we could to the hotel by using public transport, and then take a cab back when we had no more access.
And our mini adventure began.
First we ran 2 streets to the 42nd Street MTA Subway station to take the Blue Line towards World Trade Center station.
Then from the WTC station we took a PATH rail system train over the Hudson River to reach New Jersey. We took it all the way to the Newark-Penn Station.
This was the tricky part since I had no idea where East Brunswick was. So we had to ask around. 2 policemen very kindly brought us from the PATH platform over to the NJ Transit platform to take the NJ Transit train. Felt so much safer with policemen around. Turned out they were on their way to get pepsis anyway. One of them suggested taking the train to New Brunswick, which was the nearest to our hotel, but he didn't sound entirely sure.
So we went to this machine to buy the tickets. And I wanted to make sure so I asked this black guy there, and he said, oh, to get to East Brunswick you go to Elizabeth station. Which was crap I thought cos I knew that Elizabeth was only about a couple of stations away, whereas the hotel was quite some distance from Newark. And the ticket to Elizabeth was $2 as opposed to $6.50 for New Brunswick.
There wasn't really any one at the dark station left. I'd asked some old man but he was like, 'espagnol?' boo. And another white guy came up to the ticketing machine and I asked him and he agreed with the black guy, saying i should go to Elizabeth. HMM! So I just bought the ticket to Elizabeth.. cos BOTH of them seemed so sure.
We boarded the train, and when the conductor came along, I passed him our tickets (3 x $2) and asked him about East Brunswick. Two fellow passengers in that carriage agreed with him that I should go to New Brunswick station instead of Elizabeth.. Really nice of them. In the middle of the discussion, I asked the conductor if it was ok for me to top up my tickets with him, and he said something to the effect of "No, what's important first is which station you are alighting at."
Which was so sweet of him [it helped that he was quite cute too, complete with uniform and hat], it's like he cared more about whether you get home safely than getting your $$. So we decided it was New Brunswick, and he walked off after punching a ticket left at our chair, so we kinda waited around for him to come back to collect the $$.
After a while I looked at the ticket, and realised that, he had probably punched our ticket for New Brunswick already! And he really didn't come back to collect the extra money. And as we alighted later on, he was also on the rail, shining his torchlight on the ground and guiding the passengers to safety.. sooo sweet of him! It's a pity that I didn't get to thank him on the train or take a photo of him cos we were too worried half the time of whether he was gonna collect the extra money from us.. haha dumb of us.
It's interesting how new york and new jersey is just a tunnel across, yet the people in the 2 states are so remarkably different. while i was buying mac donalds in nyc, someone commented that the workers were 'rude, but efficient'. very true, they almost freaked me out cos they were so rude and they seemed almost pissed off if they called for you and you hadn't made up your mind yet. Well, people in new jersey seemed really nice, except for the 2 idiots who made me go to Elizabeth, I wonder if they were in cahoots and were gonna rob and kill us when we reached Elizabeth or something.
Luckily there was a line of cabs waiting along the NJ Transit station. We hopped into one and I asked if there was a meter. NO METER! I quickly asked how much to East Brunswick and he went, 'Don't panic, I need to call to report first' Which totally made me panic even more.. but i was quite disappointed with myself that my fear showed through so easily. Tsk. But it was quite legit cos the whole row of cabs were of the same company and white, and the company's office was right there next to the row of cabs.
So anyways.. it was just $13 to get back.. AND we did get back safely. I was so relieved that I was so happy to pay him the money.
Compared to the $60 we were willing to part for the taxi (if we shared with buenos aires man, a lot more if we took a taxi ourselves cos you have to pay for tunnel toll and all), we spent (nyc subway $2 + PATH $1.50 + NJ Transit $2.00) * 3 adults + cab $13 = $29.50!!
Well, we were freaking tired and it was soo late already. But it was a little adventure, and sometimes it's things like these that you remember, a little about the people and their culture.
