Day 0: Before Sweden

Hello World! 

I’m here blogging live at NAIA.  I can’t wait to get to sweden.  It’s my first time to go out of the country without my family.  I’m gonna be there for about a couple of weeks for work.  :D  Wonder what it’s like there. 

Anyways, it’s 2:18am and I’m waiting for the check-in counter for my flight to open up.  This must be the longest time I’m having to wait to check-in for my flight.  That’s about 8 hours before my scheduled flight which would be about 10:45am.  hahah >_<  We were supposed to stay at a hotel tonight but our flight from Davao to Manila got delayed for a couple of hours and we arrived here past 1am already.  So we decided to just stay here and wait for our flight instead and battle it out with the benches.  I thought there wouldn’t be a lot of people waiting at this time of day but was I wrong.  The benches are full with people sleeping waiting for their flights also.  Note to self: take a pic of these people. wahahah

2:24am:  A couple of korean stewardess just came in to the airport and passed us by.  I should have taken pictures. tsk tsk tsk

2:28am:  This network is really slow.

2:33am:  A lot of foreigners coming in lately.  I wonder where they’re going?

2:36am:  My companion just went to sleep. lol. I’m getting really bored.  What’s there to do here?

2:40am:  Not much happening.  Just more and more people coming in by the minute.  First thing they notice are the people on the benches.  hahah.

2:46am:  My laptop’s battery is dying.  I’m signing off now.  I’ll get back when I arrive in sweden.  I’ll post pics by then too.  Wish me a safe trip. ^^

[Update]
After 17hours of traveling and sitting I finally arrived in Linkoping (read: lin-sho-ping), Sweden around 11pm local time.  I’ve never been so tired in my life for just sitting down.  The travel time from Manila to Amsterdam was 12hours and all I did there was sit my ass off watching movies and listening to music from the plane’s entertainment system.  My feet got cramped a few times coz I can’t move much in my seat.  I felt like a couch potato on rehab during the entire flight. hahahah.

I liked the plane’s in-flight entertainment system because it offered a lot of things to do.  It had movies, music, games, tv series, sms/email system and a flight tracking system.  It also had a nifty remote control which also functioned as a credit card reader, gamepad, satellite phone and a qwerty keyboard.  Wanted to use the satellite phone but t’was quite expensive so I went for the sms/email service instead.  One sms/email consists of 160 characters and would cost you $2.5 (roughly 100php).  EXPENSIVE!!!

After four movies, 2 meals, 1 snack and about 2 hours of sleep later, we finally arrived at the airport in Schipol in Amsterdam.  It’s one of the nicest airports I’ve been to.  Very clean and very organized.  It also has a lot of shops you can go around to if you have a long waiting time for your next flight.  Going through security isn’t much of a problem either compared to other airports.  2 hours later we boarded our plane to Linkoping. 

Arrived at the city 2 hours after.  The airport in Linkoping was quite small.  I was told it used to be a private airport for the plane manufacturing plants in the city but recently opened it to the public.  We were welcomed by our host then we took a taxi to our hotel.  The taxis here are expensive.  I don’t know the flag down rate but every 5 seconds or so after that the meter would increment by 1sek (~7php).  The city isn’t that big so it only took a few minutes for us to arrive at the hotel.  Went inside, unpacked, got acquainted with the rooms and called it a day.

Word of the day: tack, which means thanks in swedish.

See more at my flickr photostream.