17th May 2018, Thursday
Worked from home in the day before heading to the airport. Our flight was at 9.20pm so I went to pasta mania for dinner with my parents before proceeding to check-in my luggage. This travelogue will feature mainly zj and myself since we are the ones going on this trip :PI am seriously disappointed with the lack of vegan food around the airport (random rant). My mum didn't really like her pasta and neither did I. My dad liked his laksa pasta though.. But because I was using grab pay I had $5 off each pasta so I'm not complaining! My pasta only costed $4.20!
Met zj at the check in counter after dinner and she was shocked to see that my luggage weighed 22.4kg. She brought her luggage to work in the morning and everyone who walked by would ask her where she's going, what she's doing, etc. Hahah she almost wanted to hide her luggage because of all the question and answer sessions. One of her colleagues asked what she brought since her luggage was huge. She replied "a lot of clothes" and I was like yeah I'd think she'd be bringing a lot given that a few days ago she was telling me about making sure her clothes are vibrant and photo-worthy. So I assumed that she would be bringing many clothes for pictures. In the end when I found out exactly how many pieces of clothing she brought, I was like "a lot" is relative. I packed 30% more clothes than she did 😑. Her luggage was only 13kg! Lol I really got a lot of barang. Even brought my rice cooker along 😆
It was still early so we just sat outside the departure gates. I had to wash my hands so zj got to talk to my mum. She said that my mum and I are really similar, not just physically but also in terms of temperament. I beg to differ. 😂
We went in around 8pm and walked around. Went into Sony shop and saw that the camera I bought a few months ago was selling at a huge discount (and tax-free). Zj wanted to get the camera, one model better but apparently credit cards were not accepted due to some airport technical fault. It seems to be affecting the entire airport as I was told the same thing when I wanted to buy eye drops in the public area. We left without getting anything.
Zj took some vids of us boarding the plane haha. Funny stuff cos she was filming me and holding up everyone behind. 😂 Our plane was quite empty. The rows next to us had nobody at all and we contemplated switching since there's more leg space.
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| Row beside us |
However I was told I needed to put my bag in the overhead compartment and I didn't want to so I went back to my seat. Zj decided it'll be too boring to sit alone so she too went back to her original seat by the window, beside me.
It was 10pm SGT when we were served food. I was quite full and I usually don't eat after 9pm. But since we are going to a different time zone, I tried to eat.
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| What I was served |
We stopped at Doha, Hamad International Airport, about 8 hours later, sleepy. I was sleepy because I didn't get enough sleep about (5-6 hrs) while zj couldn't sleep at all! Our transit time is quite short, about 1.5 hrs and we decided to walk around the airport since our gate was not yet open. Oh yeah, we both had a swollen foot. Not sure what's the cause but halfway through the plane ride I had to loosen my shoelaces...
We saw a buggy and asked the driver if we could take a ride. The driver asked where we wanted to go and we said gate E. He laughed and said it's just right in front. So we changed our answer and said that we wanted to go shopping. Looool. The couple sitting in front of us were from Singapore and they were headed for Croatia. When they heard that we were going Switzerland, they got really excited and kept talking about it 😂 it's not just me. Lol. (Background info: I stayed in Switzerland for 6 months on a student exchange programme and loved it there)
I spotted some fruits at this shop and was tempted to buy because surprisingly there were no fruits in my vegan meal on the plane. After connecting to the airport's WiFi, I was horrified to find out that the watermelon in cup selling for QAR 12 is SGD 7+. And we can get that easily for SGD 1+ back home. Wow.
We walked around a bit more, checking out chocolates at duty free stores and one of the guys who was giving out free samples talked to us. Zj took all the different flavours (about 4) and in the end we didn't buy anything. Rationale being she didn't know she was taking Swiss made chocs so she decided she will just buy them in switz. Hahha so paiseh.
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| The exhibit that I couldn't appreciate |
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| Walkway |
When we got to our gate, it was boarding time... And we realised we weren't boarding the plane directly. We had to take a bus to our plane and walk up the steps leading to the plane itself.
Once in the plane zj hoped that she will be able to sleep because she felt too uncomfortable to sleep previously. I was like but we are sitting at the exact same seats of the same plane model (although I believe it's a different plane), so there should be no difference? But surprisingly, she slept on this plane ride. The plane is quite crowded. An hour into the ride, my neighbour, probably a Swiss, changed seats. He said it was uncomfortable (to the air stewardess). No, it's not me. 😂 So I think he switched to bigger space maybe? Idk. Haha but it was nice not having someone block my pathway to the toilet 😂 though it was quite weird that he left his shoes with us and only collected them much later. Lol. Was he walking around the plane in socks? It was too dark to tell.
It seemed that I've hit my max sleep quota as I was quite awake but we had 3 more hours to go. So I decided that I'd write this. And as I was writing, zj asked what I was doing. She asked if I was gonna write that she took a long time in the toilet because she was squeezing her pimple. Well, I guess I did. 😅
Talking about fruits... Finally got some in my next meal. And there was tofu hidden underneath the tomato which was really tasty! Surprisingly good. This is coming from someone who doesn't like tofu. The tomato sauce/paste was better than the tomato sauce from pasta mania hahah.
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| Yummy |
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| Sweet and savory snack |
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| Almost there! They have the direction of Makkah too for Muslims to pray |
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| Snowflakes because it's freeezing outside! |
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| I'm such a fan of clouds/nature |
Switzerland can be expensive, but it is doable on a budget too. If I have time I will do up a post on tips and tricks to save (I spent less than SGD10k for my 6 months stay in Switzerland, that's including rent!). For this trip I spent roughly SGD3.5k (excluding gifts I got for others which I think is highly variable person-to-person). here's my cost breakdown:
- Return flight from Singapore - ~SGD840. We bought the tickets during Black Friday promo from Qatar.
- Mostly free travel covered by our Swiss travel pass youth 15 days - 416 CHF (~SGD573). We did have to pay 50% on most cable car rides though
- My travel insurance costed me ~SGD80 (Didn't have to claim for anything though on this trip)
- Airbnb accom - ~SGD983. We planned for this trip almost 6 months prior. So naturally, we had more choices. I came up with the plan to stay in Olten, so that we can do day trips to wherever depending on the weather within 3 hours of travelling time. So because we were staying in one location for 2 weeks, we had some discounts on that 'long term' stay.
- ~SGD1000 - The rest of the money was used for food and snacks (we didn't spend a lot on that since we cooked), admission fees to attractions, and additional transportation cost not covered by the Swiss travel pass.
- We didn't get any data sim card because I insisted that there's no need... 😅 Because data sim costs a bomb there. What I did was to plan ahead (refer to my each day posts!) and if necessary, get WiFi at home/major train stations
Stay tuned for my next post! I know I don't have the best track record when it comes to completing my travel posts... but for this trip I wrote most of the content while on the trip so... it wouldn't take me longer than other posts! :)
