Letters from the States

It's now my fifth day in the United States. The first day was very hectic. We took a 4 hour flight to Hong Kong, followed by a 12 hour flight to Los Angeles and then an hour to San Francisco. It was exhausting taking airplanes for such a long period of time. I did not have the best of experiences in the Los Angeles airport. I thought the staff were a little unfriendly and I was made to go through a security check all over again just because I had a little more water than was allowed. It was quite stupid because they told me to go out of the security checkpoint to finish my water and I had to queue up and go through the checkpoint again.

The first night when we arrived in San Francisco was quite a disaster. The guesthouse we went to did not receive our reservations and so we had to go to another one which was quite a distance away. So, carrying all our luggage, we had to walk more than a dozen streets to reach our place. And we were lost in the process. Fortunately, someone helped us along the way. It's quite heartwarming to find Americans more than willing to lend a helping hand to us. Strangers who see us looking lost will offer directions to us. We had fast food for dinner on our first night and the portion was huge. I thought the fast food in the USA was a lot better than the ones offered in Singapore. There was also a homeless guy who asked us for money in the fast food outlet and it was quite disturbing. There are quite a number of homeless people in San Francisco.

The second day, we visited Golden Gate Park, Golden Gate Bridge, the crookedest street in the world and Chinatown. We did a lot of walking and navigating the streets was quite a challenge. Public transport on that day was free as they were celebrating some Save the Earth day and thus we were quite lucky.

The third day was spent mainly on Fisherman's Wharf and we managed to take the cable cars in San Francisco. The cable cars are icons of San Francisco and so it was quite fulfilling when we managed to get on one, especially as every single tourist will try to get onto the cable car. We had to wait quite a while but it was worth it.

I think we managed to cover quite a lot of attractions in San Francisco. The only significant place we missed out on was Alcatraz as it was fully booked already. We took a train back to Los Angeles and it took 12 hours. The train was huge and it was quite a comfortable ride.

I will be updating more on my trip the next entries. So far, I've just about settled in the States. It's not that awkward especially since there are a lot of Asians in California. I'll try to cover as many places as I can. After all, it's quite been quite difficult getting here and I don't want to miss anything.