13 Dec Wed - Time to Leave Victoria and The Start of Tours

I took some shots around the house and cooked breakfast around 8, our last home-cooked meal. It was a combination of leftover food in the fridge - entury egg+salted egg+beef+vegetable congee. We sat and ate at the dining table, chatting with bee over the meal. It was raining ouside and it reflected our mood. There was a rainbow outside too. I guess it was reminding us to treat this parting as a new beginning. Too bad, I couldn’t feel that way. While I was cooking, I had to control my tears; it was like counting down to how many more minutes I have in Victoria.

Then we left to meet Bonnie, my sister at around 9.30 in Tim Hortons. Bonnie just came back from the Rockies yesterday, and it was a must to see her. If not, we will both feel so bad.

Becky went to Thrifty to use up our remaining money in the card. Bonnie and I just break into tears. I thought I wouldn’t cry again as I cried so much earlier. Sigh sigh sigh. Parting is really painful. This parting is so different from friends leaving for exchange. You know that they will be back, you can still see them back in the country though just at a later time. For exchange friends, there is a high chance that you can only see them physically in a long while. Anyway, with web caming and skype, I guess I can still contact them. Still I felt quite depressed about it. Bee must have felt very awkward as 2 girls were there crying. People were probably staring at us but I don’t care. It was an emotional moment. Becky helped us to take a family picture and we had to leave to allow us to tie up the loose end. At 10.45am, I said my goodbyes to Bonnie.

We walked down the stretch of road leading to the bus stop for the last time we have been so familiar with. And it was still raining, the winds were strong. I hated the weather!

At 11am, Tom came back to return us our safety deposit and both him and Bee helped us to carry our humongous luggage out. I went around taking more shots of the house which we have stayed for more than 3 months. And then, we went to spread our breads with peanut butter, cream cheese, jam for the trip. Eat bread to save money. What a sad life..

At 11.30am, our taxi came and it was time to say our final goodbyes. As the taxi pulled out of the driveway, we kept waving goodbye to tom and bee. On the drive to the ferry terminal, we hardly spoke. Becky sat and gazed out of the window while I broke down again. And it was still raining. The weather was truly depicting how I felt. We arrived at the ferry terminal close to 12pm and bought tickets for the 1pm ferry. While waiting for our ferry, the rain finally stopped and there was a beautiful rainbow again, probably to remind me that parting is evitable and to look forward to the future.

Vancouver - Start of the Tour
We arrived in Vancouver around 2.30pm. Throughout the whole ferry journey, we were looking at the photos we took when we first arrived on exchange on my laptop, and all the time we will go like "oh yeah i remember this" or "remember we did this?" Reminiscing the past was so funny as it seemed as if yesterday the both of us touched down in Vancouver.

From Vancouver airport, we took a taxi down to our hotel, Executive Inn Express. Taking the taxi in Canada is so expensive compared to Singapore’s one because the meter jumps every 4 seconds. We had no choice as our luggage were so heavy and fat. Spent near to a $80 for taxi fares to the ferry terminal and to the hotel.

After checking into the hotel, both of us reminisced a bit more on our beginning exchange days. We fell asleep shortly after though, probably due to after effect of staying up all night and being tired for all that depression. Then we got ready to meet Wenne (becky’s sister's friend in Vancouver) at 6.30pm.


Wenne, together with her husband Tony, and Dennis (another of my sister's friend) came to pick becky and I up from our hotel and took us out for dinner. They brought us to this japanese restaurant for all-you-can-eat dinner buffet and The food was GORGEROUS, DELICIOUS, FANTASTIC.

There were all kind of sashimi, sushi, wraps, rolls, oysters, teriyaki, soup, salad, udon. We just ordered and tried everything that sounded good. It was slightly different from the normal japanese fare we have in Singapore. I tried beef sashimi, BC roll, a fabulous oysters

More variety! Everything tasted superb. Definitely one of the best japanese food i ever had! Guess I had been deprived of japanese food ever since I came to Canada.The sashimi especially was very fresh and we ordered so much that we could hardly finish it.

Man.. It was a great but expensive meal and Wenne’s husband treated us to this meal. I really have to thank them for their kind hospitality.

They wanted to bring us to another place for dessert after that but we were so full, so we turned down their offer. They drove us back to our hotel after dinner so we can rest because we have to catch an early flight the next day and picked up our luggage at the same time. We were depositing our luggage at Wenne's house as we didn't want to lug around too many luggage while on tour...Tony and Dennis who help carried the luggage commented (half-jokingly) how big and heavy our luggage were.