Monday, September 05, 2011

Gaspé Trip: Day 5 & 6

The 5th day of our roadie was disappointing. We woke up to the rhythm of raindrops. Since the rain was supposed to last all day, we decided that we should keep driving instead of wasting a day in Percé.

Just as we were about to eat breakfast, the rain stopped and waited for us to finish eating and packing up.

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We drank coffee, hot chocolate, or a mix of both. I have no idea why there’s a marshmallow in the coffee.

I can’t remember what we ate for breakfast, but after we packed up our camping gear, we made some instant noodles to help warm our bodies.

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There was leftover rotisserie chicken that my aunt shredded and tossed into the instant noodles. Wow, I just realized that the instant noodles were chicken flavoured.

The rain resumed and so we drove to our next destination – Paspébiac, Quebec. We found a fish market and bought 4 lobsters and about 10 lbs of cooked snow crabs for dinner. Since we didn’t have a place to stay yet, we grabbed lunch at Subway and brainstormed ideas.

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I ordered my usual sub: Subway club with bacon on Italian herb and cheese bread, Swiss cheese, lettuce, cucumbers, olives, and a bit of mayo. You know, I’ve always wondered why the sub doesn’t have bacon. Doesn’t a club sandwich have bacon?

Over lunch, we found a cottage we could rent. Instead of camping again, my aunt wanted a cottage to stay out of the rain. We also needed laundry facilities, so it all worked out in the end.

After we found the cottage and unpacked everything, my aunts and uncles began to get dinner ready.

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The lobster meat was sliced and tossed in a large salad bowl with lettuce, onions, cucumbers, and blanched bean sprouts. My uncle used a homemade dressing of lemon juice, fish sauce, water, and sugar.

While they were doing that, I was trying to take pictures of everything, but my camera couldn't handle all the lobster and snow crabs. I tried to troubleshoot, but nothing worked so I borrowed my uncle's camera for the rest of the trip. I still need to grab the files from him. (All the photos after lunch was taken with my uncle's Sony Cyber-shot.)

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Anyway, my aunt brought some more of the dipping sauce (made of lemon juice, fish sauce, garlic, chili peppers, and sugar) for the snow crabs. I love eating crabs and lobster meat with the dipping sauce. It just cuts through the richness of the seafood. We ate the salad and the snow crabs with steamed rice - of course.

We sat around the TV and stared at the screen blankly. Most of us were really tired. Not the kids though. They had slept in the van. My cousins wanted to play cards so we played a few games. I got bored of the three card games, so I tried to teach them a Cambodian card game that my uncles used to play all the time. My uncles had to intervene and teach everyone, cause my explanation was wrong. Woops! Once everyone got used to the game, the pace picked up. Every round became more competitive and fun. We got so into the game that we played for over three hours! We all ran out of steam in the end and couldn't stop yawning. That was a sign to go to bed.

~

We had lunch at Edmunston, New Brunswick, which was on our way to our next campsite. I saw a few Pizza Delight restaurants while we looked around for lunch. I was hoping that we'd drop into a Pizza Delight, but I was out of luck. We pulled into KFC instead. Lovely...

I really dislike KFC. I used to love it, but that was before all the family road trips we used to take. We would take our van down to hot locations when the air con in the van was broken. I would get car sick on the first few days (and sometimes even more). My parents would usually get KFC on the second or third day, so you can only imagine how worse I felt when the only air I was breathing in was the greasy odour of KFC.

Getting back to the trip; we all spent an extra hour walking around after lunch. We should've just spent the day there because everyone felt sluggish. Instead, we drove a few boring hours to Rivière-Ouelle. I was worried for my uncle because it was such a quiet drive there. A few breaks helped put me at ease.

We settled on Camping-de-Rivière-Ouelle, mainly because of the heated pool. AU and EU really wanted to go swimming, since they didn't swim in the cold waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

Dinner was quite boring. We just finished up our leftovers. Luckily, I still had my other half of my Subway sandwich from the day before. Everyone else had gapit pow, snow crabs, rice, and instant noodles.

4 comments:

  1. Hi are you guys Cambodian? I stumbled onto this blog while searching for the rules of a Cambodian card game I played at home with my family. I couldn't find the correct Anglicized spelling so I got desperate and did a search for "Cambodian card game". Anyways I was skimming but all that delicious crab caught my eye. Dipping crab in that salty/sour/sweet fish sauce is the BEST! I can't believe Americans like butter on it, I agree 100% it goes nicer with the rich tasting meat. Anyways, my search continues... in case you are Cambodian and curious, I wanted to find some written rules so I can teach my American in-laws how to play "catay" or "kha teh" (jury's still out how to spell it in English).

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  2. We're Chinese-Canadian, but most of our family was part of the Chinese diaspora in Cambodia.

    I love the game of "catay"! It's only fun when people get competitive, which isn't hard if you egg em on. ;)

    Here's my take on the rules. I'll try to leave out the different strategies... Everyone (usually 4-6 people) gets five cards. The dealer will begin by throwing out a card. Everyone takes turn placing a card out in front of themselves; either beating the card with something higher with the same suit, or discarding any card face down.

    Whoever wins the round will begin the next one. The cards are left on the playing surface. The winner of each round moves on to the final showdown. If someone doesn't win a round by the time everyone has two cards left, they cannot participate in the finals.

    The winner of the third round leads the showdown by showing everyone one of their cards. Their other card would be right under it (face down). People take turns trying to beat the revealed card and take control or they'll try and guess what card the leader has underneath, looking at the cards that were left on the playing surface.

    Lastly, the person who has final control reveals their last card. The winner wins the game. I like to slowly reveal the last card if I'm leading, just to play around.


    Catay is a great game to play, especially when you win with 2 being your final card. Trollololol!

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  3. Haha, cool. That sounds about the same as how we played it in our family. My brother used to do this wicked thing, if he was leading the last round, he would slowly pull back the top card revealing only the top tip of the card underneath if he had say, a 4. Everybody would see the top of the number and assume it was an ace and then all hell would break loose when it was really a 4 lol. I ended up foregoing catay at the in-laws over Xmas, we played American rummy instead. I'll save catay for another night.

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  4. Yeah, save catay for the next family get together. Sorry I didn't reply sooner.

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