Canada!!!

So Sunday the 2nd was my birthday which was really good but it was more importantly the day i flew out to Canada! I left Perth at 930 at night flying Tiger airlines to Singapore, and just a tip, if you are over 5'8" then dont choose them because the lack of legroom is beyond ridiculous

Tiger work hard at making their food look appealing...

Got into Singapore about half an hour late and went through customs and picked up my bags, that was all fine but then i asked a customs officer where i needed to go (singapore airport has 4 terminals, all of which are absolutley huge) he said i needed to get to terminal 1 and the best way to do that was by catching a free shuttle bus to terminal 2, then following the signs to the sky-train and catch that to terminal 1 which sounded easy enough

so we waited outside in the humidity for about 20 minutes at 4 in the morning, the bus finally came and took us to terminal 2. We got there and it was absolutly dead; all the shops were closed none of the check in counters were open, there was hardly anyone around and so i just followed the signs to the sky-train, when i got there the service board said "next service: unknown" so basically it wasnt running so early in the morning. then i turned around and saw an asian man in his late 20's lying on a bench apparently asleep, but when i looked again i realised his eyes were partially open, so was his mouth, he was very pale and i didnt see him breathing...im pretty sure he was legitimatly dead, i freaked out and i was running late for my connecting flight anyway so i bailed and luckily saw a staff member and told her about this guy.

then i saw a sign saying terminal 1 walkway, so i decided to follow it, it led me through carparks, the darkest dodgiest stairwells known to man and through the streets of singapore at 430 in the morning while carrying heavy ski equipment, it wasnt fun...

i got in just in time...

then i flew delta airlines to tokyo and thankfully i had a row of seats to myself so i could just make a bed and i slept on that for most of the flight. Once we got into Tokyo i had a 2 hour stopover so i got some food and found free wi-fi so that helped the time pass.

mmm airline food...

japanese Mcdonalds

in Tokyo

this scene is made entirely out of paper, so cool!

then i flew from Tokyo to Seattle and was unfortunatly right in the middle of the plane which was pretty uncomfortable so i only had about half an hour of sleep.

got into Seattle about 7am and went through customs and collected my bags, then i had 4 hours to kill so i went and had starbucks and wendys burgers for breakfast...and lunch. Seattle looked really cool, lots of pine trees and hhuuggee snow capped mountains

Seattle!

gingerbread latte and a sausage egg and cheese breakfast biscuit.

inside the dining hall in seattle

then while i was waiting for the plane to go to Vancouver i got talking to some students from the University of British Columbia or UBC and found out they go to whistler most weekends so we have said that hopefully we will catch up at some stage which was really cool. caught a little prop driven plane to Vancouver which took about half an hour. collected my bags and then caught a train right into the heart of downtown Vancouver, it was freezing cold but so nice! when you walk up the main street you can see the moutains about 20 minutes drive away which looks amazing.

on the plane to Vancouver

the hostel im staying in is about 300 meters down the main road, Granville st which is really convenient, the amount of homeless people here is ridiculous, in that short stretch i saw about 8 of them sitting on the sidewalk with cardboard signs, one of which said "I have had 3 epileptic fits today in the 1 brain, please help me pay for my medication" which is pretty hectic if thats the truth.

just outside the train station

looking back up Granville street with mountains in background!

my room

new york slices of pizza for $1.70 sooo good!

then i got settled in the hostel and went and met Jake Ross and Sandra Veneklass in their accomodation which is directly across the road from me, we went out to a restaraunt next door called the factory where nothing is above 5.95 and it is really good food. The prices are really strange here though, you have to add HST to that price which is like GST and is another 12%, also tipping is huge here and on average you add 10-15% on top of your bill because everyone gets payed minimum wage, it is very annoying and would be much easier and fairer if they just payed their employees more.

Jake and Sandra eating