My Vancouver, B.C. and Seattle Trip on Aug 17-21, 2006!

I had my fish n chips here. Okay, I was pointing at the food place, not that guy! But he's pretty cute anyhow, haha!
Downtown of Seattle, Washington. Taken on the top of Space Needle.


Me, Megan, Sean, Ariel, and Justin. The 2 girls are Sabrina's daughters.
The 3 Muskerteers at the beach of Stanley Park.


Well, after a whole terrible time of summer class, Justin, Sean, and I drove to Vancouver, B.C. (Canada) on last Thursday for a total of about 15 hours. We had to drive through Idaho, Oregon, Washington and then Canada. Yep, the drive was long and tiring, but it was fun! It saved us an airticket money too. We arrived there on Friday morning at about 10:30 and we stayed at Sabrina and Eric Chan house. Eric Chan is Mervin Chan's brother. We were told that we were their first guests to live in the new house they just bought early this year. It is a pretty decent house and there's this projector used to watch movie in their basement. The whole screen is so huge and it's even better than a cinema. There is also a foosball table and the guys were crazy playing it all the time. However, they were trashed many times by the family's elder daughter, Ariel who is only 13 years old. Haha! On the very same Friday, Uncle Alvin Lee (Daniel Lee's father) brought us to a chinese restaurant to eat dim sum. It's not too bad, it's just that they were out of egg tarts and char siew shou. But anyway, I bought them later at a bakery shop. Then at night, we went to a night market selling all kinds of Asian things, vcds, Dvds, and food at Richmond, which occupies by Chinese people only. They also sell roti prata!! The 2st pic u see is smelly tofu. Both Justin and I loved it!!!

On the next day, Saturday, we went to all the beaches and lakes such as Bonzan Lake and Stanley Park to view all the beautiful scenery. There were many people and the weather was very nice. We also went to see the lighthouse. For lunch, we had ALL YOU CAN EAT SUSHI!!! The Chan family paid for the whole meal and I accidentally heard that the total cost for 7 of us was $108!!! Oh my gosh, we felt so paiseh man! However, I enjoyed it alot, especially the sashimi dipped in soy sauce with wasabi! Hmmm...yummy yummy! We had spent lots of time traveling around by car because the traffic was pretty bad esp during weekends. We also went to Asian shopping malls and supermarket to buy Asian things and food! We drove past downtown area and we didn't stop because they were all branded shops. We didn't have money to buy lah. I was very surprised to see so many Asians on the streets and the Angmohs were like half of the total population only. I felt like I'm in Orchard road where you see different ethnicities and culture. Later at night, we went to this Hong Kong restaurant to have dinner. We had Braised Tofu with mushrooms, steamed cod fish, baked Salted Prawns, sweet and sour fish, beef claypot (in cantonese niu nam bo), pork shops, and free lotus and ribs soup and Pulam itam dessert. Oh my gosh, guess how much I ate? ALOT!!! They were so good and I couldn't bring myself to say STOP!

On Sunday, we attended the sacrament (Justin and Sean didn't bring sunday best and so they wear pretty funky attire) and we left after that. The Chan family was really nice; they knew that we only had short time in Canada and they were willing to continue bring us around. We went to a food court to have lunch. Guess what we had? I had char Kway Tiao, Justin had Hokkien Mee, and Sean had Mee Goreng and Nasi Lemak. Haha! There's this store selling Malaysian Delights and the line was one of the longest of all the stores! I also bought some panfriend red bean pancake from a China store and it's super delicious! Then later, we caught up with our last minute shopping of food that we wanted to bring back to Provo. For dinner, Bro. Eric Chan was going to be our chef! He's one of the amazing husband I have ever met; he cooks and sews!!! Cooking is his hobby and he can make almost anything! Sabrina is so lucky to marry him! We heard about his famous chili crabs and he really made it for us. He also fried the man tous for us to dip with the chili crab sauce. Besides the crabs, he also made satay and satay sauce. Yes, he made them from scratch!!! Once again, I couldn't resist the temptation, I ate so much that my tummy was like 2 months pregnant!! How could u get such good food in Provo man? Life is a paradise for me for this whole weekend and I really couldn't bare to leave.....

Finally, on Monday morning, we started off at 7 so that we would have enough time to stop by Seattle. We went to outlet to shop and also wanting to stop in the downtown to visit the Space Needle. Unluckily, something went wrong with Sean's car! His battery broke down and we drove around hoping to see a body shop. Finally we found one and we bought a new battery and replaced the old one by ourselves (to save the workmanship cost). It took us about 25 minutes to fix it and we began traveling to downtown again. We finally found Space Needle and went up to see the whole scenery of Seattle. It's a mix between San Francisco and NY! It's pretty dirty though, haha! Later, we drove to the famous Fish market where you can buy clothes, flowers, food, seafood, fruits, and so on. I miss Fish and chip so badly and I got to eat it! Yeah!!! Then, it's time to travel home again. However, both Justin and I were in urgent to pee and we walked around looking for restrooms. Okay, this thing was pretty frustrating. All the restrooms were locked esp. in the restaurants and cafes. You need to buy their food before you can go in. We went to Macdonalds and Justin had to buy a milkshare in order for us to use their bathrooms. There was also a camera showing people going to the bathrooms and a security guard in the Macdonalds!! Can u imagine that? A Security in Macdonalds! Justin showed him his milkshake and asked if both of us can use the bathroom! Of course he said okay and we finally released our burden. This is ridiculous man! Anyway, we were so late and only started moving off at 4pm. We drove and drove and drove through midnight and we were all so tired. We only arrived in Provo at 6:30am and we all had to work a few hours later. True enough, I was late for work because I overslept and also I couldnt find a freaking parking space in school due to education week. I drove around and in the end, I parked at the south campus, along the road, close to Keshia's home... And then, I was overwhelmed by the super crowd at the courgareat.

Overall, I really like Canada because it is beautiful and the people are friendly. I don't even feel that I'm a minority over there. There are so many Chinese and Koreans. The Ang mohs are very nice and friendly to us too maybe because they already got used to the diverse culture in their country. I really don't mind living there. Actually, I just want to live in a big city, not places like Provo or Salt Lake City. It's too boring for me!

Joyce Chia