Lesson Learnt

I love to travel and traveled quite a lot in these few years. Due to limited budget, most of my trips were planned at minimal accommodation expenses to gain maximum duration of stay. However, I did over estimated myself. Some accommodations arrangement were too dangerous(at least to me), especially to a lonely female traveller. Thanks God, I was well protected and blessed all the way. Those experience were indeed valuable and "OPEN" my eyes wide enough, but definitely NO second time!

(1) My 1st backpacker experience

It was at Piccadilly Backpacker, located at perfect convenient location. The price is cheap comparatively to other accommodations. What to complain right? Share toilet? I don't actually mind as long as it is cheap and not mixed gender shared-bathroom. I was pretty cool with all these. But, here comes the story. I had a companion (guy friend) who will only arrive a day after me. Therefore, our reservation was seperately into two different bookings, eventhough we both booked same type of room (4 persons share room).

night grafitti = nice packaging

When I arrived, I was given a spaceless room with 2 double decker beds. There was no one using the room and I was happy. After a quick shower, I immediately took a nap. Then, I would actually feel the bed was pretty small and yet making a lot of metal sound. Never mind, I could sleep very still, motionless. The horrible part was that, there were 3 topless white guys standing in front of me when I opened my eyes during mid night!!!!!! Holy crap! I was terrified and not even dare to scream and shout. Immediately, I rushed to reciption counter to ask for a room change. Of course, they turned me down. Backpacker mah!! Then, I back to my room (no other place to go as it was midnight!). I smiled and talked politely to those three topless guys, as I was thinking I ought to know their identity. If I were really killed/raped by them, I would at least know who did it, right? Luckily they were just high school boys from Germany, very polite and quite good looking (bonus). They just like to be topless! An unpeaceful night just passed like that.

The next day, my friend arrived. When I looked at him, I saw a angel ring on top of his head with 2 wings at his back. I was so happy and felt secured. Then, another crap thing happen. He was given a shared-room with 3 girls and welcomed by many fancy bras and colourful hair accessories scatted every part of the room. To me, it was funny to look his face at that time as he was speechlessily shaking his head and cramping his eyesbrows. He suggested we should swap room. I agreed to swap it before sleep. Guess what? We ended up staying in our original rooms for the following few days. I slept with three white guys and he slept with three white girls. The reason was one of the girls was TOPLESS (in middle of changing her clothes) when he entered the room after dinner!!! hahahahaha

The story might sounds very funny but it was dangerous actually especially a lady stay-in alone at backpacker. What if those guys are bad and drunkers???

(2) Language barrier

This happened at Lisbon. We (again with my guy friend) arrived Lisbon at night (again, due to cheap flight time). We were staying at Residencial Estoril. It is a accommodation located above the shoplots (forgot which floor already). Or, I should say it was part of an old building, where there is no lobby entrance at the ground floor.

It was totally dark and I was clueless how to enter the building, needless to say to get in the hotel. There is a small signboard of the hotel but we didn't know what the hell it is written. No one on the street. Thanks God, I had my friend with me at that time. He pressed every button/bell available there, try and error. 30 minutes passed. At last, we grabbed a passby stranger to interpret the sign for us!! What if I was alone? NGAITI @_@

That was not the end of the story. When we finally managed to enter the building, I felt that I was at the haunted building, likes the door at your back will closed very slowly by itself. It was totally dark inside. Crap!! Again, my friend had to figure out himself while I took care of all our luggages. Guess, how should we suppose to accesse to the lobby? By using a very old school lift! Seriously. There is just a sliding grill of it, meaning that you could actually see each floor when you are going up. Of course there was light in the life, but imagine the building was dark and you could see each floor's scary dark corridor. What if a ghost put in its hand and grab me? or just show me the scary bloody faces? That is already enough to make me faint on the spot i guess. So, the clever me decided look at the floor instead of the door of lift. Even worse!! See the photo yourself la!!!

I could see through the lower floor! Ngaiti!!

Besides all these scary dark conditions, the room was pretty clean and comfortable.