Being in Rochester, there aren’t that many options for a direct journey to anywhere beyond New York. My stay here which is coming to about 4 months now allowed me to try two modes of travelling, by bus (specifically Chinatown buses) and by train.

                Suffice to say using Amtrak was more comfortable than using the bus and despite the review I read on the internet, I find no fault in their service except for that one time when they were late by about 40 minutes.  The price varies from cheap to bloody expensive and the cheap ones come with a catch; the schedule will never fit you or if it does, it’ll just cause so much trouble for you and the person picking you up. If you’re not expecting anyone to fetch you, I highly suggest using Amtrak for the long distance trip.

                Chinatown bus is not a very good option for long distance travelling, my last experience with it was not something I would like to go through again. For a two to three hour journey the Chinatown bus would be a very cheap and viable means to travel to anywhere and I will reiterate that it is not meant for long distance travelling. The office where you get your ticket and wait for your bus, and I’ve been to three of them, is not pleasant to the eye, very disorganized, almost akin to Pudu station, at most it may be worse than Pudu Station. Most of the passengers that took the same bus with me from Roc –> NY and from NY -> Roc were very unpleasant and loud, taking the red eye trip is not very comfortable when you have those kind of people around.

                Also it seems that it’s cheaper to buy the bus tickets when you get to the office than when you buy them online which is a difference of 5$-8$. The buses never arrive or depart on time because, what the operators would do is that, they will not depart until the bus has ALL of its seats filled, which I and a few other passengers felt negatively affected by it.

So here’s a quick comparison between Amtrak and Chinatown bus

Hitherto (Can’t believe I finally get the chance to use this word), I recommend Amtrak if you have to travel more than 4-5 hours and Chinatown bus if the trip is about 2-3 hours.

                The last week was  filled with adventures and joy, yet again!!! I managed to travel around NYC (alone, bummer), Pennstate and Philly (it’s my second home now), met up with my good friends from INTEC and had a Thanksgiving dinner. NYC is a good place to walk around during the day and a tad eerie in the night if you’re lugging around a backpack; Walking around with my faithful brown backpack made me felt like I have this big sign that says, “Rob Me!” 

                The heart of NYC is pretty much like KL without the greenery scene plus a stupendous amount of buildings, and it was all too familiar for me which made navigating around so much easier.  Navigating around Chinatown is hard, well, navigating anywhere outside the heart of NYC is hard. Chinatown is the spitting image of Petaling Street, maybe Penang but you get the idea.

                My gravest mistake was not printing a map of NYC. Well, I didn’t plan on walking around NYC in the first place but yeah, a map would have made life easier. But that’s how I am, I have this tendency to jump into an adventure without planning ahead, I like the surprises and randomly spontaneous adventure I come across in my life.

Here’s what I’ve learned from my trip in NYC:

My next post will be about travelling from Rochester to ANYWHERE. There’ll be review about a few transportation services. So watch out for that!