One of the first things you’d notice when you touch down in Vancouver is the large community of Asians down here, about half the staff at the airport eats rice as a staple diet.
Another thing you’ll notice is how minuscule Vancouver Int’l is compared to great and mighty Changi; from the bottleneck called immigration, to the single arrival corridor that every flight shares.
Hell, even that corridor was under retooling, with scaffoldings and stuff.
We then proceeded to the eatery; otherwise known to us as a food court, to have a light meal and plan out our journey. Word of warning though, don’t come to Canada if you aren’t ready to burn a hole in your pocket for your meals.
Taking an example off the chinese menu at the food court, fried rice with 2 sides (meat or veg) cost CN$6.50, which amounts to around SN$10. Imagine paying the red Yusof Ishak note for a plate of chai perng (2 meat + 1 vege) at aircon kopitiam back in Singapore.
And I haven’t even factored in tax, which is 20%+ on top of your amount you pay for your meal. To coin a phrase from a funny brudder, “Like that is zi tao robert liao.”
As a segway, the Chinese Asians here really have a self depreciating humor here; I mean, you really hit it when your marketing slogan is “Have a RICE day” or “Let’s WOK and roll!”.
To quote a wise man, “racism is wrong, but its sure as hell funny”; especially when you get it to sell plates off your rocker. Or is it… Wokker? Haha.
Anyhoo, we managed to secure a brand new Toyota Highlander for our week long escapades. And another word of advice, if they offer you to rent a GPS system, just bloody take it already! We got lost for abit in Vancouver city, initially using pen and paper maps, delaying our journey for about a good 45 mins.
Our plan was to make our way east, to a town called Hope, which will then make point for our further journeys into mountain territory. If we can’t make it there, we quite “hopeless case” already (pun heavily intended).
We went along Canadian Trans-Am Highway 1, and looking at the map, precariously near the USA border. My initial impression of Canada is almost like it southern brother, only sleepier and more frenchy. The mountains with their white trimmed snow caps were breathtaking, as well as the red-hued oaktrees I could see along the highway as we jettisoned to our first stop.
True enough, about 3 hours after we left the airport, we sortied Highway 1 at exit 170 to arrive at the sleepy town of Hope. We then settled in a motel ironically called “Slumber Lodge”, which is nice, cozy and suprisingly spacious.
Dinner was Chinese at a place called “The Golden Star”, in which they don’t use the word ‘buffet’ but rather ’smorgsabord’.
Sweet and sour pork here tastes more sweet than sour and nothing like the zhi char version back home. The staff at the Golden Star speak in a dialect somewhat an offshoot of Cantonese, I know cause my mum doesn’t have a clue what they say. They could be cursing our Singaporean cheapskateness/value-for-money for all I care.
It was a good meal though, finally eating something closer to home for a change.
Broke a fortune cookie, said “You can be lucky today regarding your creative talents.”
Whatever man. The same paper has random numbers on the back, could come in handy back home. Beats using “Quick-pick” at Singapore pools.
Hot shower and I’m off to bed, thus begins my journey into the Canadian wilderness.
