Tag Archives: buses

What’s New?

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I’m glad you asked.

Since Christmas Eve, we’ve been quite busy. Let’s start at the beginning.

On Wednesday, January 1, we piled into the car for an eleven-hour ride to Schweitzer Ski Resort, where we spent four nights with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Five of the nine of us skied on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Saturday was by far the best day, as it was sunny and clear. Meanwhile, back in the cabin, my dad cooked all day. On Greek night (Saturday night), he made everything from tzatziki and pita bread to stuffed peppers and white and milk chocolate mousse with dark chocolate ganache, strawberry coulis, and a raspberry on top.

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It was delicious.

Soon, it was back to school. On January 25, Ethan’s 8th grade class had a talent show/auction fundraiser, and I contributed to both parts. For the cake auction, I baked a dozen chocolate-zucchini cupcakes with cinnamon buttercream. They sold for $60- up $20 from my cookies of 2012. I also asked my friend Charlotte to play the piano while I played the flute. Our song “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen won first place.

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The following week was filled with tests, as it was end-of-semester finals for me. On the last day (Wednesday), I was thrilled when my band teacher asked me to join the school’s symphony, which is the most advanced instrumental group at my school. The next week was nerve-wracking, as I hardly knew anyone in the group and had to sight-read all the music. It’s been over a month-and-a-half since then, however, and I know that I have improved.

Last Friday (March 14, Pi Day) was the start of what I dubbed Music Week. On that day, I got to school early to join the symphony at South Eugene High School to play in a festival. It was our first attempt to qualify for the OSAA State Championships. We didn’t make it, unfortunately, but we had played well and our scores reflected that. Monday had piano lessons (as usual), and on Tuesday Ethan had his guitar lesson (also as usual). I was excited for Wednesday, which was the 12-hour trip to Ashland, Oregon, for the symphony’s second chance at states. We performed sub-par, and we returned home dejected. However, Thursday night’s amazing orchestra/symphony/band/jazz band concert more than made up for it, even though we knew our scores (which we hadn’t yet received) wouldn’t be good.

Then we found out today that we won districts by one point and had automatically qualified for the state championships, which are in May. As the only flute player in the symphony, I am terrified.

But I made a cake!

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And it was pretty darn good.

Ciao!

Party in the USA

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Call the press, someone: I have found a way to comfortably sit in Economy class on an airplane.

It only works if you’re small, flexible, and comfortable on airplanes. It involves sitting with your legs crossed and your head down on one knee. In this way, I slept well for a grand total of three hours on our two flights today. So I was awake for… drum roll… twenty-five hours today. We are deadxhausted.

Our first flight, from Athens to Frankfurt, was only about three hours. We were shocked when we were not put through another security clearance to get on our USA-bound flight from gate Z25. We finally got to the gate after a surprisingly lengthy bus ride and going up several flights of stairs. If you look at our passports, we didn’t visit Greece and Switzerland: we got our passports stamped in Portugal (since we entered the European part of the airport to get food), in Morocco, and then entering France. We only got another stamp leaving Germany.

 

The flight was super super long, but we were wide awake when we landed and got through Immigration and our luggage was in our hands. It doesn’t look like we lost anything on that leg of our trip.

We got our Avis rental car and drove south to Kelso, WA, where Dad got a sim chip at an AT&T store for his phone. Then Ethan, the luggage, and I were dropped off at Aunt Linda and Uncle Scott’s house while Mom and Dad left in the Chrysler to buy a car in Sandy, OR. They returned at around 8 pm, about five hours later. Ethan and I played Acquire with Uncle Scott, with four-month-old Guide Dog for the Blind puppy-in-training Navajo looking on.

Supper was, as we had hoped, hot dogs with brownies and Uncle Scott’s potato salad. Tomorrow morning we’ll be having American French toast.

It’s so good to be back in the US of A.

Ciao!

Chocolate & Chow & Chocolate Chow

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We are now in Bariloche!

After a 21-hour bus ride, 1,569 kilometers, and lots of carbs, we made it. We used the Via Bariloche bus service, and the food was, well, awful. Breakfast was toast, bread, two croissants, and a muffin. I only had the croissants and bread, along with a banana we’d brought. For supper, they served pasta, flan, dulce de leche, rice, some type of meat, and cheese. Since we’d had supper already—take-out from Habibi Cocina Arabe that took faaaar to long to get yesterday—we were full. Supper was an Arabic salad, vegetables, falafel, and rice.

As our lunch today, we had chocolate ice cream and truffles. Sounds delicious, right? It was!

We had to walk all the way down the hill again to pizza after seeing that the Afghan-restaurant-that-was-Argentinean-cuisine-not-Afghan was too expensive for our taste. First we stopped by a market, where I bought the hat of my dreams which I will use for skiing at Willamette Pass when we get home.

Speaking of which, it’s open and the slopes are beckoning with seven feet of snow at the top! I wish I could go, but at least I got to ski in Dubai.

Anyway, the pizza was really cheesy, as Argentinean pizza typically is, but the salad and jugo de naranja were good as usual.

Ciao!

What Doesn’t Make the Buses Beautiful

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I do not want to ride the yellow tourist bus(es) ever again. Ever. I know it’s wonderful to be able to do it here in Argentina—an option most people don’t receive—but it’s not very enjoyable to sit on a sticky seat beneath the blistering sun in the oppressive heat of a summer day in Buenos Aires listening to the unvaried music and a nasal voice bore you with information about where you’re going and what you’re seeing.

There are twenty-six stops on the route. We stepped out at the last stop before the salida, or exit. It was wonderful to finally get rid of the spongy black headphones and feel the zephyr toy with our hair as we walked down the avenue to the same place where we got money yesterday. Mom, Ethan, and I sat in the same chairs as Dad got the pesos we needed. That was followed by a visit to the Libertad Café where I selected a scrumptious salad while the other three shared a Napolitana Pizza.

Our stroll to the omnibus station was 1.6 kilometers. Once there Dad got our tickets for our future ride to Bariloche, Argentina, and then we piled into a taxi for the drive home, which was four kilometers. Our sweets course for lunch was taken at Dylan, an ice cream shop with a whopping sixty flavors. I had chocolate and frambuesa, but my favorite part was when “What Makes You Beautiful” (by One Direction, of course!) played.

Ciao!

Death Marching in the City

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We woke up late this morning so we didn’t get out of the flat until after 9:30, which didn’t go over particularly well. We walked to Plaza de Mayo, up to the Obelisk, and to the intersection of Santa Fe and Libertad streets. We got some cash there and then walked back through Plaza Libertad. Dad walked around the outside looking for chips for the phones while Mom, Ethan, and I walked diagonally through the middle.

We walked back home the way we came, passing Teatro Colón, Casa Rosada, and the Metropolitan Cathedral. We also stopped at Stop 0 on the tourist bus route to get more information. After more walking, we got home around three in the afternoon. We walked at least eight kilometers today—no small feat for someone wearing Toms.

Ethan and I did schoolwork (science, US history, and math) until supper, which consisted of ravioli and squash. I started reading See You at Harry’s, which, sadly, is not about Harry Styles.

“We’re going on a walk,” Ethan announced just as it started raining. We walked down to a bakery where we bought a Brownie Coronada, or crowned brownie. It was delicious.

Ciao!

Time-taking Transportation

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Getting to places from a suburb called Beverly Hills takes forever in Sydney. Thankfully there is a complex transport system and a handy app called NSW TransportInfo. (NSW stands for New South Wales, the state in which Sydney is.) To get to the main harbor (Circular Quay train station) from here takes about an hour.

First you have to walk to the Mortdale train station. You have to get on and head toward Bondi Junction. You get off at Central (or Redfern or Town Hall) and change trains. After riding a few more stops you get to Circular Quay and the main harbor.

The way with less walking is: walk to a nearby bus station and ride to the Padstow train station on the green line. Get on the train and ride all the way to Circular Quay.

Once we were there we poked around until we missed the 2:10 ferry to Watsons Bay. To waste forty minutes we got on the train, switched at Redfern, and crossed the bridge to take in the view. We promptly got off at Milsons Point and took the next train back to the quay.

Finally we were on our ferry. We went through all four stops and were informed as we stepped on to dry land that that was the last ferry to Watsons Bay.

We were stranded! (Not.) So to ease our minds Ethan and I went to a playground and rode the spinning seesaw. After we tired of that, we walked up the hill to the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The last time we saw the ocean (not from a plane) was last spring in Costa Rica. And it was the same ocean, too.

Ciao!

Conversational Monk

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Yes, we went to another temple today. Actully, we just went up to Doi Suthep to see the veiw and just hang around in the outer courtyard. After an interesting ride made up of 2 different songtows, we finally got up to the top on empty stomachs, which is probably the right thing, considering that we skipped breakfast in the morning, we walked up the great multitude of stairs to get to the outer courtyard that had a bunch of bells and large gongs (about 6 feet in diameter for one of the larger ones).

After walking around a little ways, we were looking at the veiw that wasn’t that much of a veiw, and a monk approached us, and with his somewhat limited English, began to tell us that he had come from an island in the south and showed us a map (in English!) of the island on which he lived. He also asked how old Eryn and I were and we replied in turn. It was a very interesting conversation because some of us thought that he was trying to get us to buy a tour boat service around the island that he lived on, but who knows??
Still, though, it was an interesting conversation.

Sunshiny Days

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Our father decided that we should get up at the awful time of 6:40 am to be able to leave our hostel at 7:30 for Doi Suthep, the wat up on the hill. After climbing 618 steps and watching Ethan slowly eat a cup of hot corn (and discovering that the waffle man doesn’t get to his shop before 9:30 am), we climbed back in our songtow and headed down the hill.

Once we returned to Chiang Mai and had breakfast yet again at Nature’s Way, we did homework, ate Magnum bars, and played Temple Run until about 3 o’clock. That was when we left for Mom and Dad’s foot massages (Ethan decided not to at the last minute) and my manicure (purple and gold!). Ethan sat on the couch for the whole hour and enjoyed the sticky rice candies. Each massage cost US$5 for one hour, and my manicure cost US$5 as well.

We returned to our rooms, took our doxy, and left at around approximately 6:44 pm for supper, which we had at Ourhouse, the restaurant  associated with the Ourhouse 3 guest house. The little girl of one of the servers, who was wearing a pink dress with Minnie Mouse on the front and Mickey Mouse on the back, was trying to be helpful. She achieved this by taking Ethan’s empty Fanta bottle and napkin off our table, which was only a few inches shorter than her.

It had been roasting hot all day, and as we left the restaurant, the rain started to fall. We had heard the thunder, seen the lightning, and felt the sudden chill, but we didn’t know when it was going to rain. We left in the nick of time. Ciao!

“Our Food is Guaranteed to Make You Look Pregnant”

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That’s what the wall at the Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre says. (Not that I would know. I never saw the sign in person. I just saw it on the camera.) The Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre is where Mom and I went today for seven-and-a-half hours, from nine o’clock to four-thirty.

We were picked up at approximately 9:01 this morning. We were the first of nine in our songtow and were followed by three British guys and a group of four with a couple from Malaysia and a couple from China. After a few minutes at the Centre eating sugared dried bananas, we got back in our songtow and rode to the market on the other side of the river. After our “guide,” Aum, showed us how to make coconut cream, which chilies are spiciest, and more, we had ten minutes to look around as she bought our groceries. I bought a pink Thai cupcake for five baht. Mom and I ate some of it (I didn’t like it very much) and saved the rest for Ethan and Dad.

Our ten minutes were up and we joined the rest of our group at the table with our baskets. We each got to carry some groceries out to the songtow. Upon our return to the Centre, we split into groups according to what noodle/rice we were making (the rice and noodles were pre-made). I was making the thick Thai rice noodles, so I joined a group with Tae and some others. (Tae is kind of important, but I’ll tell why in a few lines.) We cooked our egg, chicken, noodles, and herbs and ate the delicious dish. After we made that, we made and deep-fried our spring rolls (but we couldn’t have the peanut dipping sauce too spicy because we have a kid in our group [me]) and went to work on our green curry paste. This we added to our green curry, which included chilies (with the seeds taken out), chicken, eggplants (mini, of course), and some herbs.

Do you want to hear about Tae now? She’s from Wales and left her job for two-and-a-half months with her boyfriend Richard (who was also at the Centre). The reason she’s important is because she and I cooked the exact same things except for the dessert.

Before we could eat that, though, we had to make our stir-fried dish. I had chosen sweet and sour (my favorite!). That made, we joined the others in the air-conditioned room and savored the curry and stir-fry. The curry was amazing (mostly because there were hardly any spices in it), but the sweet and sour was kind of tasteless. We only had four pieces of pineapple to put in the stir-fry, but all four were very, very, very good.

We had an hour-long rest from eating, and then we made our desserts. Only three of us had chosen to make the fried banana with vanilla ice cream (the ice cream was pre-made). The other options were black rice pudding and sticky rice with mango. I tried my mom’s sticky rice with mango and found the rice’s sauce too salty for my taste. My banana and ice cream, on the other hand, was to die for. So was my panna cotta at supper tonight at Botique della Pasta. Ethan and I had it last time we were there, so we knew just what dessert to get. Ciao!

Hot and Dangerous

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That would be the sun. Today it was more than that: it was a skin-burning, egg-frying, ice cream-melting, sweat-inducing, kid-blinding, plant-withering ball of fiery fire. How do we know? We spent two hours in the light of the very same star you just read about. Where were we? We were at the Ratchapruek Royal Gardens, about 10K southwest of M.D. House.

It was apparently funded by government agencies and large companies like Toyota and AirAsia. Some of the buildings were more interesting than others, like the Groundwater building. Ethan took the time to pump all six water pumps in the front as we watched in the blessed shade. After that, we walked a bit farther to a little pond with a pagoda. Ethan and I were supposed to go to the pagoda and smile for the camera. I’m not really sure if we did that. All we really did was scare the hundreds of little fishies and make the water boil. On our way back to the main walkway, we saw a boot in a different pond. I’m still of the opinion that there is a body attached to it.

After drifting through the orchid section, we found the playground. It is hardly worth mentioning, but I will say this: there was a whale slide.

After [too] much more drifting, we found ourselves at the entrance buying deliciously cold water in .6 liter bottles. Those finished, we walked up to the monument for the king and looked at the walls, which show of his love for his subjects.

Our alotted time over, we climbed back in our song tao and rode off into the sunset. 🙂 Ciao!

The Search for the Perfect Café

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This morning, other than breakfast and updating the pictures on this site, we did… nothing!!! We were going to go to church, but the English service started at 9 am. This we discovered at 11. Eventually, we left with a certain destination in mind. To get there we had to ride in a songtow, which is a red “bus” that works like a taxi but has multiple stops with each load, as different people want to go different places. These are usually red with green padding on the benches and walls of the truck, but there are also yellow songtow. We call these “yellow red buses.” The lining of our songtow was pink.

Chiang Mai Zoo is what the sign says. But it is more than that. It is also a place to buy ice cream, land of the [lame] Snow Dome (-7 degrees Celsius, but it’s only really a photo oppurtunity), and the place to feed big cats (leopards, jaguars, pumas) and hand-feed giraffes. AND it is the only location of the Loo Café (I misread “Zoo” on the cursive sign).

After a very refreshing swim with Louisa (remember her? She’s the one who likes One Direction.), my family members chose the Free Bird Café for supper. It was being renovated. So we walked some more and found a [really good] Indian restaurant. The garlic naan is to die for!!!

Now I’m sitting next to Mom as she gets a foot massage. She says, “It’s wonderful… I could do this every [week].” Hmm. For US$5, I bet you could (and would) do it too! Ciao!

High ‘n’ Dry

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Let me start off by saying we were neither high nor dry today. Now I will continue:

We were going to visit the floating markets of Dar, but we, as obvious American tourists, were advised against it. Instead we had the second-most laid-back day of our trip. We had our typical breakfast of rice, eggs, and some mysterious (but thankfully mild and flavorful) sauce. We also had oranges. We spent a while after that just dilly-dallying until about ten. After a few stops, we finally got off the sky train at the Sala Daeng stop to visit the park given to Bangkok by King Rama the sixth. It’s called Lumpini Park, which is a very Italian name. That explains the sign on a nearby skyscraper that reads “ITALIAN-THAI” in fifteen-foot red letters. That building also has a big white sign on it that says Oregon!

Way back in the 1920s, when the king gave the civilians the royal property, the area was on the outer edge of town. Now it’s in the middle of the business district and has two train stops- a Metro and a sky train- on its edges. There’s also a big statue of the king. The park was named after Lumbini, which is where Buddha was born in Nepal.The whole area is 142 acres and has plenty of things to do, including watching the water monitors and people, paddle-boating in boats that look like ducks, zoning out in the shade, playing on the playground, and getting soaking wet in the sprinklers on the ground and fountains in the lake. We did all of these things, plus getting bit by mosquitoes, bouncing on the see-saw, playing “Escape” on the play structure, “working out” on the gym equipment, and getting pelted by rocks from the edger.

But that wasn’t even the most interesting part of our day. At the station that connects the bus system and the sky train system, we saw part of a movie being filmed. We weren’t in it (sadly), but all the extras were white and the cameramen were speaking in English and the five main actors looked slightly familiar. This isn’t the first time that we’ve been in the same city as some famous people. When we were in Venice in 2010, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp were there filming The Tourist. We figured this out because there was a sign by a canal that said something in Italian, but we found the words “The Tourist” and “filming.”

After that “exciting” event, we went on to the food stalls where we bought our first “street” food: waffles. They came in all different styles, including maple (which I got) and cranberry, and with all sorts of different fillings, including chocolate (which we all got), taro root, Thai custard, and red bean. The outside of the waffle was the best I’ve ever had except for in Florence, Italy: large grains of sugar and coated in a sweet syrup. On the return trip, we got some dried kiwi and mango from a different stall. Yum!

On the way home we bought some groceries at MaxValu, including ice cream, chocolate soy milk, and pomegranate juice. For supper we’ve ordered two pizzas. Since we’ve been home, we’ve swam in the pool, ordered two pizzas and a salad, eaten the dried mangoes, and worked on schoolwork, which made it just a typical day in Bangkok.

WE FOUND IT!!!!! (kind of)

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Well, we finally found the resturaunt. As it turns out, it is a chain that is around Thailand, it is called MK. It is an interesting place, where, sitting in the middle of each table, there is a stove burner with a pot of spiced water in which you put in your food that you order. There are no forks or knives, only a soup spoon, a ladle, and a set of chopsticks for each person.
Now to start at the beginning of the day,
For breakfast, we went to the coffee shop down the street, then we went back to our apartment for a while before heading to the MBK mall by the national stadium.We stayed there for a while (about 6 hours) before heading home. We had supper at the mall

Where was that restaurant again???

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Ice cream and pizza, in Thailand!!! Who would’ve thought?!?!?!
Sounds more like Italy, except there you would change it to be gelato and pizza (or would that be piazza??)
Anyway, today started out like any other day, we got up, took showers and had breakfast. But that is as far as the similarities go, today we stayed at ourbapartment building doing schoolwork until we left for supper. Eryn had looked up everything for our supper arrangements and had it all planned out when we found out that she had remembered the wrong mode of transportation. So, instead of doing that, we decided to go to a Lebanese place somewhere down the street.

Guess what, it wasn’t there, so we changed our plan again and decided to go to a piazza place. The pizza was okay, but what I really liked was the chocolate ice cream…..YUM!!!!!

Exploration & Transportation

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Today was apparently cooler than yesterday, but obviously we couldn’t tell. What we could tell, however, was that the Or Tor Kor vegetable market was missing because of construction in the area. We walked what seemed like miles just looking (and never finding) it. It was supposed to be right by the Jatujak Market (nicknamed “JJ” by the locals), but we walked up and down and side to side on those streets and never found it. We did, however, find the three main forms of transportation in Bangkok: BRT, BTS, MRT. (The bus rapid transit, the sky train, and the underground.) Well, all three except for the Chao Phraya Express (pronounced Chow Prayuh), which is the system of taxis on the Chao Phraya River (แม่น้ำเจ้าพระยา).

First, we got on the BRT at the stop 50 feet away from our apartment– Wat Pariwat. Wat (วัด) means ‘temple’ in Thai, and, yes, there is a wat that you can see from our balcony. Anyways, we got on the BRT and rode to the Sathorn station, which is the end of the line. It connects to the BTS station Chong Nonsi. As you should remember, the BTS is the sky train. Most of the people on our train, including a Canadian family who, no, Destiny, we did not talk to, got off at the station that connected one line of the BTS with the other. That was at the station of Siam. After that, we got off at the last stop on the second route, Mo Chit (หมอชิต). Once you walked out the doors, you were in the blazing Thai sun and the Jatujak park and market. We arrived around 8 am and finally left at around noon.

On the return trip, we entered the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit- การรถไฟฟ้าขนส่งมวลชน) station of Jatujak Park. The moment we entered the shade, it seemed like it was five degrees cooler. As we descended into the tunnels, it became even cooler until we were in the train itself and it was like a freezer. It was on there, and at breakfast our first morning in Thailand, that we noticed the weird TV ads they have. I’m not going to describe any, for the sake of both my weary fingers and the content, but some are very interesting.

We rode the MRT to the MRT Si Lom/Sala Daeng BTS station and boarded the sky train. We rode the one stop to Chong Nonsi, where we switched to the BRT. We rode the bus from the first stop on the route– B1:Sathorn– to B4: Thanon Chan, which is where our landlord told us the Tesco Lotus was. Well, we looked and asked and were finally redirected to the next station, B5: Nara-Rama III. We walked a ways, found the store, and ate sandwiches at Au Bon Pain. After we bought some groceries like rice and eggs and Tim Tams, we found a Bangkok map and finally arrived in our own B7: Wat Pariwat. Ciao!