Day 57 19/5/06 - Canada

Richmond -> White Rock -> Granville Island -> Richmond

Highlight

• The pampering starts again now that we're back at Slokky's relatives' place. Breakfast this morning was 3 different things, including fresh baked egg tarts(!), with another 3 things available for lunch. Since Slokky is "way too skinny" now he has to eat twice as much too.
• The sun was missing this morning when we visited White Rock, which is famous for... yup, a white rock. This area reminds me of Brigton Le Sands, except the houses around seem richer and there are no high rises. According to Aunty Teresa, the whole area has been done up since they last visited. There's now a pretty nice seaside walk, but they don't allow dogs anymore, and of course all parking is metered. We didn't find it particularly interesting, and the white rock? Well... the rock is certainly white, if you don't look too closely, you can't see the graffiti people have added. I was really disappointed, it was just a rock that got transported to the seaside and man painted white. I can't believe I travelled all that way to see that...
• Granville Island is much more interesting, it's a little island in the middle of the city. The whole island is famous for its arts and crafts, and it has a very reputable arts school there too. We browsed through several shops as well as the public markets, selling the usual food and arts items.
• An amazing sight, we went the Asian shopping mall area in Richmond, and no wonder they call it Hongcouver there. Asian shopping malls are everywhere!! We passed by at least 5, and apparently there are many more. I have no idea how they can support that many malls, but there are a lot of Asians...We went to the Aberdeen Mall, which is about the size of a mid-sized Westfields, and it has all these shops you can find in HK. We found all the cool stuff we got from Japan (darn!) and for a cheaper price too (darn!). The most exciting shop was the franchise of the Daiso chain, just like the 100 Yen shops. As well as Jap, there are the quirky Asian food stores, Taiwanese dried goods, Honkie clothes, bubble tea... anything an Asian will ever need really, plus more! Now is it cheaper to fly to Japan or Canada??
• Slokky made me mad today because he did his look at the computer and ignore everything else thing, and he also forgot to bring the camera not, this being maybe the 10th time he's forgotten on this holiday.

Food

• Chicken soup.
• Sticky rice.
• Egg tarts.
• Vegetable dumplings.
• Dumplings in soup.
• Pigs parts and eggs in vinegar.
• Taste testing at Granville Island.
• Singaporian/Indo/Thai restaurant dinner:
  • Mixed satays
  • Indo spring rolls
  • Curry clam soup
  • Indo style vegetables
  • Coconut baked rice
  • deep fried pork
  • Malaysian roti with curry sauce