14-17 August : Montpellier, France

Stansted airport became nicer, from my last time there about 3 years ago. And by that, it also means that more chairs to sit or rather sleep on haha..... It's a lively place cox the whole airport is full of people like me who take Ryan Air and Easyjet airlines. The beauty of budget travel haha...

interior in the brand new 737 of Ryanair

Did some final charging before stepping foot on France as the plug will be different and I only had one I used in Indonesia, hope it's the same but turned out not to be. Montpellier airport is quite small as showed in my previous post but I guess it's good enough.

stansted from the flight

I had some trouble looking for the house of my host, Olivier. The instruction he gave was perfectly detailed and simple; take a shuttle bus from airport to the Place d'Europe which I had to go to the tram station and take the one going to Mosson. The station I should get down was clear and simple but once I was at the tram stop, I can't find the street name in the map!!!! (it's called plan for French). OK.. this spelt trouble as I dunno any French besides moi (which means me and not I, as reminded by Sebastian), je t'aime, bonjour and oui.

The street I got is Rue (which is street) Jean but the one my host gave me was Jeanne XXXXX(the female version) so I hentam saja and follow the direction to the Rue Jean. It turned out to be wrong!!! How now? I speak no French and I didn't have the number of Monsieur Olivier really problem lah. Turned out an uncle saw me despaired and clueless pondering and walking and he approached me and asked if he can help...OK, I deduced it myself as he speaks "yat lun jui" of French words and I "tia bo". He saw the add I wrote in my notebook and he also didn't know where is that.

He brought me to a bakery nearby and asked the owner, a sweet and helpful lady who said she dunno as well but offered a small map and booklet of the streets in Montpellier. Thank God but wait....still couldn't find the street mentioned. I started to have some back-up plan in my mind now; worst come to worst, I will go to any McDonalds (I spotted some along the tram journey just now, hopefuly they have WiFi connection as I don't see any Starbucks here!) and try to login CouchSurfing and hope Olivier replied my latest email and tell me his mobile number.

The uncle bid goodbye as he can't help much anymore and I really grateful for what he did. But before he turned into the small alley behind the street, a lady came out from nowhere and on the way to the grocery stores we stand nearby and the uncle asked her about the street and VOILA!!!! She stays on the SAME street!!!! Gracious God!!!

I felt so thankful that moment as it really felt like Godsend haha.... She's a kind lady but she asked me to wait at the store for about 10mins for she has to go to other nearby store to get some chicken or something. And yes, she speaks some English. So, 10mins I waited and yes, she came back and we walked together to the street. It turned out that the area is new and not included in the map at the tram station. By the way, tram is cool and it will nice to see places like Penang has it, now I understand why Anil Netto keep promoting it.

And the apartment that lady lives is just next to the one my host live and thanks to her, I reached Olivier's house about noon time. More on Olivier and Montpellier soon....