day 6.5: aunties from singapore

I know I said this is a-post-a-day blog but there are a million and one things happening and it pains me to leave them out. So I cannot promise this will be the last of my 'day x.5' blog post.

We have been overly pampered in Warwickshire - accommodation, food, drinks, transport and activities were all taken care of by Gavin and Serene. Once we got on that Megabus to London, we were back on our own.

The original plan was to leave for Paris today, but a Eurostar ticket would cost each of us £179! We decided to lengthen our stay in London for two nights so a ticket will be £57.

We were exhausted by the time we weaved through peak hour crowd with our 15 kilograms backpacks and secured the Eurostar tickets. But before we could heave a sigh of relief, we had to find a place to sleep for the next two nights!

Jerrain - while blonde most of the time - came up with a brilliant idea to hijack the train station trolley for our backpacks while we roam the Kings Cross area for a hostel. Thankfully, the YHA hostel (part of the Hostelling International group) had space. We got the £28 bed in a six-bed ensuite dorm for tonight, and a £60 private room for tomorrow.

After all that drama, Jerrain and I needed a drink or two (or three, or four... Ok, you get the idea). It was a little too late to join the hostel pub crawl, so we went to Belushi ourselves. Situated at Covent Garden, it has a proper mash of locals and tourists. There were flags (the only Asian one I spotted was Korea) on its ceiling and random posters on the walls, including one of the London underground in case you did not know your way back. When Retro Velvet, the Scottish two-man band, was not playing, Belushi reminds me very much of Singapore's Ice Cold Beer on Emerald Hill.

People were friendly, though who could be otherwise to two sweet and petite Asian girls? We chatted with George and Antonio (who are school teachers in the day) from Retro Velvet, Josh and David who knew each other since they were five, and a bunch of lawyer trainees whom we spent more with at another mini club after we were chased out of Belushi about 1am.

• Location: London, Britain
• Cost: £57 Eurostar to Paris, £88 hostel for the next two nights, £4 per vodka cranberry
• Highlight: Feeling like I am on Amazing Race, not knowing where, when and how we are making the next step; clubbing in London with Jerrain and meeting new friends.
• Lost and found: Only lost really - my camera landyard and Melody whom Caleb my iPhone has grown to love (he is now in mourning)

In case you have not figured out the blog post title, middle-age housewives in Singapore often push the supermarket trolleys back home, until the shops started making them return the trolleys to get their dollar back. I felt so much like one of them pushing the train station trolley on the London street.