Day 60 22/5/06 - Canada

Richmond -> Vancouver -> Richmond

Highlight

• Today is our outing day with the "Ah Po", Slokky's grandma and her school mate Betty. The two of them have been friends for years, and they are so cute together. They always go out, using their senior pass, and take public transport everywhere. Today we experienced a typical day in the life of senior citizens in British Columbia.
  • Catching a bus then the sky train out to the Metropolis Metrotown shopping centre to find a toilet.
  • From Metrotown, catch another bus to North Burnaby for yum cha. As it was a public holiday, it was really really crowded. I don't know what they were thinking, but they made us stand next to a table to wait, while the old people still haven't left. We ended up standing there for 10 minutes waiting for the people to leave (who were really taking their time), trying to dodge other people and yum cha carts. It wasn't pleasant, and we had to share a table as well. And because of the amount of people, they ran out of teapots, and the food were either cold or unavailable, a very disappointing experience.
  • After yum cha, and another toilet stop, it was time to hop on yet another bus, for Chinatown. The activities here involved the grandmas introducing Slokky to all the shopkeepers in Chinatown and Slokky's grandma stocking up on 42 preserved eggs.
  • After the walk of about 5 shops in Chinatown, it was time to hop on yet another bus for a very long and bumpy ride to Simon Fraser University. Unfortunately, it was raining really hard and it was really foggy, so we couldn't see any views, so we took a quick tour of the campus (it was uglier than UNSW can you believe?) and caught the bus back down, this time to Downtown.
  • Downtown. Toilet time. The grandmas sure knows where to find toilets. We went straight to the Hyatt hotel, and I have to admit, their toilets are pretty nice.
  • Our outing over, it was time for the 2 bus rides (taking over an hour, including waiting time)home. All in all I can say we fulfilled the grandmas' wishes of getting the most value out of our $8 all-day pass.
• All our activities seem to involve watching TV and eating, so the next exciting episode today, if you don't count all the Chinese dramas on TV, was for dinner at Aberdeen centre again. Tonight was a very quiet night. The Chinese tea house was charming, they had great tea and pretty decent food. Even though we've eaten a lot of Chinese, we haven't eaten the same thing twice yet, I'm quite impressed.

Food

• Chicken pie.
• Fish soup with biscuits.
• Chocolate chip cookie.
• Yum cha:
  • fried prawns
  • prawn dumplings
  • prawn pie
  • prawn and corn dumplings
  • lotus seed parcel
  • fried taro ball
  • chives and prawn dumplings
  • chives and prawn parcels
• Almond biscotti.
• Chinese tea house dinner:
  • spring rolls
  • beef rolls
  • vegetables with beef
  • chicken in tea flavoured sauce
  • deep fried prawns salad