Finding My Feet

On my first full day on my own in United Kingdom, I had a few little errands to run. I needed to organise myself an English phone number and look into opening a bank account. Hollingbourne, the village I am staying in is only very small, according to Wikipedia, has a population of just over 800. There aren’t any mobile phone stores, so I jumped onto the train and travelled to Maidstone, which is a large town two stops just down the railway.
I knew my way around the main streets there thanks to having dinner and a few beens there the previous evening. Finding a sim card was fairly easy, most of the carriers in the UK will offer free SMS for a month for around about £10. All of the phone carriers have very good coverage across the country.
After this, I found myself some lunch at the local Wetherspoon, £4.99 for a good steak and monster beer. I’d organised to meet a friend from work, Rachael in the town in the afternoon, so I didn’t have a chance to visit the bank.
Was awesome to see Rachael, she’d been around the UK and France for just over a month now and was great to talk with her about each of our trips. Went back to the Hollingbourne Cricket Club in which I am calling home for a couple weeks and waited for Shaun to get home from work.
Once night fell, we headed back to Maidstone for a dinner and a night out, the second I jumped off the train, I realised I hadn’t brought any Identification nor did I bring enough money with me, I’d been so used to going out in Thailand and not having to even carry a wallet on me, just a couple hundred baht.
Totally different here, a few places have I.D. scanners and are quite strict on having correct identification, we skipped out on going to the Liquid Night Club, and just went to a couple of the local pubs, they were pretty cool, Shaun, Rach and I had a load of pints and a few shots and we caught a taxi home.