London Trip

Hi... I'm in Changi at the moment, blogging from the Airline Lounge while waiting for my flight to Jakarta in about 2 hours from now.

Just back from London, basically a fantastic trip - where you arrive there one day and you directly go back to Jakarta the next day. Fantastic cause you don't get to feel the jetlag and boom you're flying back again, leaving your body busy in translating the correct date and time.

But anyway... I'm still grateful the flight was nice, and I still get one day to get around the city. I was in London for a business meeting with my colleagues from office - one that unfortunately I can't share about right now... as it is still classified confidential. Anyway, I'm not here to talk business. I like to share about my personal experience in London.

One thing I can advise to you is not to visit London in March. We learned from BBC that it would be freezing, so I packed an overcoat, shawl, jacket and handgloves. Turns out I was still freezing. The temperatures was about 1-2 degrees celcius when we started our walk hunting for breakfast in the Oxford Street on the morning of 24th March. The stores were still closed, but we managed to find a Halal kiosk that sells coffee and all kinds of pastries. First thing I like about London - It's not hard to find Halal Food, a bit like here in Singapore.

The hotel we stayed in was just at the end of the famous Oxford Street, however - here comes my second advise - do prepare lots - at least doubled - budget if you travelling to London. I'm not talking only about the exchange rate of 2.1 x US$, but also that the price of a hotel room here are outrageous. To stay in the nice downtown area major chain hotel, you must be prepared to spend at least 200 GBP or around US$ 400. The hotel my company used to stay in central London charge about US$ 500/nite.

OK moving on, to get around efficiently we decided to take the Hop-On and Hop Off bus. We get in at the Piccadilly Circus, and the bus went around the route to landmarks of London such as Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, London Eye, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street No. 10. We were on the upper deck of the red double decker bus, and we literally freezing our butts as we realized the rain changed to delicate form of snow. It was SNOWING !! You may call me corny, but it was my first experience with Snow... so despite I was freezing to death in that bus, my heart was singing ! Lalalala......

The bus stopped a while alongside Thames River - where you could hop off and get in the boat cruising the famous yet muddy Thames River. It was true, the water was not clear instead it was Brown, much like our Ciliwung River. It turned out we have to hop off and change bus. Something attracted my attention, as I saw far behind the London Eye - suddenly stopped moving. Later I learned from TV news that London Eye did stopped that afternoon due to power/electricity shutdown. People are being kept in the high altitude about 1.5 hours ! Phiuh... I thank God we did not take the ride as we planned that afternoon.

In the afternoon, we took a tube down to Harrods. My colleagues convinced me there's something you can buy at that high-class jetset stores, and frankly speaking I get lured. The stores was full of Arabic people - they spent lots of money I believe, cause I did check on one jacket price tag and it says 1200 GBP which is about US$2,400 or Rp.24 million. Well, it's no wonder considering current sky rocketing oil price certainly brought a lot of cash to Middle East countries. At the end we bought some souvenirs, like the famous plastic bags with HARRODS logo on it, and that costs me Rp. 220 rb ! I ended up spending about US$250 only for souvenirs.

The second thing I like about London, is how polite the people are - although they are pretty snob as well. But, I can feel their warmth and they seems to accept moslems better than Americans. I saw in BBC this morning that Al-Qur'an preaching is considered to be included in the school curriculum, and one article in the Daily Telegraph suggests that by 2020, Moslems going to Mosque will outnumber Christians going to Church.

Even in the office complex in Sunbury, I can found mosque in almost every floor. Very encouraging.

Someday I'm gonna be back here, and I will spend a proper time to visit the places I desribed above. If there's some city I would like to stay outside of Indonesia, I think it will be London.

Gotta go... need to grab some souvenirs (again) for my sons...

Wassalam,