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Apparently Scott is not sick of papaya salad, because last weekend he spent $8 on a green (unripe) papaya. We used it to make a buttload of papaya salad, with basa filet mixed in. It was incredible.

It was easy to shred the papaya with our Thai vegetable shredder thingy. And I used our pressure cooker to perfectly cook the fish and green beans in 4 minutes.

I didn’t really have a recipe, I just mixed shredded green papaya, bean shoots, steamed green beans, cilantro, cherry tomatoes, peanuts, and the basa filets, plus a sauce made from lots of fish sauce and lime juice, and a bit of brown sugar, chili flakes, sesame oil and salt. It was great.

I made mango shakes to go with our papaya salad, to complete the holiday experience. Frozen mango cubes, mango juice, ice cubes, simple syrup and water blended up until it’s silky smooth. So good.

A 15 year old Melbourne kid named Morgan spends all his free time making doughnuts. School is out this week so he had a pop-up shop all week in Windsor, near where we live. I’d heard about him from a bunch of different sources so I went to check it out this morning.

I forgot my phone in the car so I couldn’t take a picture of the exact descriptions, but clockwise from the top: Cookies & Cream with custard syringe, Cinnamon Nutella, Lollies with strawberry filling, and Vanilla Chocolate Glaze with raspberry syringe.

The doughnuts are soft and fluffy, not oily at all. I liked that the glazes are made of chocolate. And the fillings are generous, there must have been a few tbsp of Nutella in the cinnamon one!! My favourite was the Cookies & Cream.

Bistro Morgan Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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Last month I went to Sydney for a weekend for Rae’s hens party.

A brief timeline of our friendship: Became friends in Beijing in 2008. Visited each other lots of times in Sydney/Melbourne in 2009 and 2010. Last saw her the day we left Australia to move to Canada, at the Sydney airport on our stopover, in 2010.

So it was awesome to see her again and catch up after so long! The first night we stayed up way too late just chatting and laughing.

The next day was Rae’s hens party. It was Great Gatsby themed. We had food and drinks at a restaurant, played lots of games, and then went to a club afterwards. Her friends were really nice. It was fun!

She just got married last week in Germany. <3

The next day we got ramen for lunch at Ryo’s. She said that people come from all over the place to go to this particular ramen restaurant. Then we got there and a man came out and said that they were closing early because they had such a busy morning. But Rae told him that I had come all the way from Melbourne and I was leaving that night (lies! haha) and asked him to PLEASE let us eat! And it actually worked!

I had pork soy sauce ramen with egg and vegetables, and Rae had chicken ramen. My broth was rich and tasty and the pork was super tender and fatty (in a good way). The egg was great, and the noodles nice and chewy. A very good bowl of ramen.

Ryo's Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

After lunch we went on a long walk. We walked through Wendy’s Secret Garden, down by Luna Park, Milson’s Point, the place where Rae and Thomas got engaged, and back to her house. It was a beautiful day. Sydney is really pretty.

Then that night Thomas came back from his weekend away and we all had dinner together at home.

Monday I went to the zoo by myself. I had never been before. What a great location! I especially liked the gorillas.

Then Jessie picked me up after finishing work and we went to get Ava from daycare and hang out for a bit before my flight home. Ava likes to drag chairs around and eat cheese.

It’s too bad that Halloween isn’t really a thing here because I think Ava would make the cutest Eleven ever. All she needs is a pink dress, some Eggo’s, and a little facepaint nosebleed. :D

Thanks for a great weekend ladies!

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This week started off kind of bad, but it got better, thank goodness.

I was feeling really sad and lonely. It’s hard being away from Rosemarie and the rest of my family and friends. And most of my old friends from Melbourne don’t live here any more. So… time to make some new friends, which is hard as a generally awkward and introverted person. Finally I decided to stop being a baby and follow Leslie’s tips about making friends in a new city.

So now I am a yes person.

I already met some nice people at an internet meetup the other night. And I stopped wearing my headphones at the gym. I think I’ll try and join some kind of board game group? Or maybe take some lessons in something. I dunno.

The other thing that got better this week is that SCOTT GOT A JOB!!! Woohoo!!! Things were getting a bit stressful in that department! He got the call on Tuesday for an interview A FEW HOURS LATER. And then that night they asked for him to come back the next day for a second interview. And then he STARTED the next day! SO FAST. It’s only a 3 month contract for now but at least he got something.

So now I have the house to myself to concentrate on my Netflix studying.

Scott is feeling much better these days. He is able to eat bad things without pain but he’s still not drinking alcohol and keeping the healthy diet except for Sundays. So that means I have to drink our trivia prize pitchers by myself, haha.

Weightlifting is going well. It’s so good to get back to it after six months off. I’m weaker, obviously, but I don’t get as sore… so I think there is still some memory in the muscle. Excited to get strong.

I did a little re-design of the ol’ blog. It should look a bit better on mobile devices now. If you are on a phone or tablet you can find the sidebar with the search, Twitter feed, links and stuff if you click on the little gear icon on the top left.

 

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Every avocado I’ve bought so far in Australia has been perfect. In Vancouver we always had to plan ahead and buy super hard avocados at least 4 days ahead of time, otherwise you’d probably be buying a mushy avocado skin bag full of brown yuck. Here you can buy a perfectly ripe avo ON THE DAY, with no bruises. It is incredible.

I think I’m up to about 70% looking the right way when I’m crossing the street.

I still can’t tell if trams are coming or going though. Why does the front and the back have to look the same??? LOL.

We’ve moved in to our apartment in St Kilda. We even have furniture and stuff now! Including my first real bed ever. How grown up. We also made sure to get a table big enough to play Agricola and 7 Wonders because we’re not actually that grown up. ;)

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July 16th – July 21st, 2016

July 16: Our overnight bus was supposed to drop us off in Bangkok at 6AM, but it got in early… at 4AM. It was still dark and there was nothing around except extremely annoying taxi drivers. I was very sleepy and quite annoyed. Eventually we figured out that we were pretty close to Khao San Road where there was a 24 hour McDonalds. I had a burger for breakfast with all the drunk people and we just waited around for a couple hours. Eventually we took a taxi to our hotel with hopes of being able to check in early, but instead they said to come back at 2PM… approximately EIGHT hours later. Sigh. At least we were able to drop our bags off though.

So then we went to Chatuchak weekend market. One of the largest markets in the world. It has EVERYTHING, like new and used clothes, snacks, art, (possibly endangered) animals and fish…

Best way to kill time in Thailand: massages!!

Finally we could check in to our hotel. I can’t remember what else we did that evening but I’m pretty sure I was asleep by 8PM.

July 17: We took a taxi to Khlong Lat Mayom floating market. This market is much smaller than the one tourists normally go to, but it’s way closer and way more relaxed. There were a few people selling things from boats, but most of the market was food stands on the land part. I saw tons of things I have never even heard of. It was really hot though and I don’t have much appetite when I’m overheated, so we didn’t actually try that much. I did enjoy my passion fruit slime over soda and ice very much though.

We also took a 20 baht boat ride around the area, paddled by a funny Thai man (see above lilypad hat). It’s too bad we couldn’t understand him because it seemed like he was giving A LOT of info about the area. It was still a nice relaxing tour though. It was by far the cheapest boat tour I’ve ever been on (about $0.75!).

That night we went out for boat noodles. These are very small bowls of noodles for 10ish baht each ($0.37). People have competitions to see who can eat the most bowls. I had 4.

July 18: Shopping day!! We went to Siam Paragon, Siam Discovery and MBK mall. We thought we might buy phones but chickened out. Actually I don’t think we bought much at all, just did a lot of browsing. That night I got the most vigorous Thai massage of the trip. She really worked my muscles. I decided it was like someone else foam rolling you for you. I did feel pretty great afterwards, once the torture was finished.

July 19: Temple day. It was Asalha Puja (a Buddhist holiday) so the temples were extra busy. We went to a few. There was singing, praying, sermons etc. At Wat Po you could also pay for a zodiac candle that you throw into a melting pot and then ladle a scoop into the gigantic candle mold. You could also line up to get patted on the head by a monk with a wooden stick brush thingy. We did that.

Coke in a bag after overheating in Chinatown. I don’t drink Coke very often but that was dang refreshing.

That night I planned dinner at a nice fancy restaurant a short cab ride away from our hotel as a treat for our anniversary (on the 14th). But pretty sure our cab driver ripped us off, and then dinner ended up costing twice as much as I expected, and then no cab would use the meter on the way home so we had to walk. Didn’t end up as fun as I had hoped.

July 20: Our last day of Bangkok, Thailand, and vacation. We did last minute shopping at Platinum Fashion Mall and Central World. We got jeans and t-shirts, and gifts for the nieces and nephews. Then we saw the BFG… what a nice movie.

That night we went to one of the open air restaurants near our hotel that was always filled with locals. I had minced chicken with morning glory and a fried egg, and sticky rice. Scott had papaya salad (duh). Really nice and really cheap.

And then we went for one final Thai massage, at the vigorous place. It was great.

July 21: Relaxed morning and then packed our bags to fly home. :'(

I really enjoyed Bangkok this time. I have been there a few times before but this time we really crammed in a lot of fun activities and it ended up being really great. Plus it seemed easier to do things? I’m not sure if it’s because the city has changed or I am just less young/inexperienced. But yeah for the most part it was way easier to get taxis, directions, information, and use public transit, and I don’t think we really got scammed at all either. Success!