Pacific Mall

More stories from my holidays - continuing on my Asian immersion experience in Toronto

I took my husband to Pacific Mall, the largest indoor Chinese mall in North America, located in Markham, of course (where else?).  The mall corridors are named after famous Hong Kong streets, and the shops are filled with huge crowds of Chinese people, and tourists who want to look at the huge crowds of Chinese people.

Like China, the mall was crowded and it was nearly impossible to find parking. Eventually after circling around and around, we just illegally parked the car in a spot that arguably could be a parking spot if you didn't look too closely, and we didn't think anyone would look too closely.

Pac Mall used to be really famous because of the way the shops would openly sell very illegal pirated copies of movies, video games and TV shows. Basically, you'd go into the shop, scan the very expansive catalogues, and indicate to the shop clerk what Korean drama you wanted to purchase. The store clerk would take your money, tell you to wait five minutes, disappear and re-emerge with a freshly burned DVD of whatever you wanted. Nowadays, in the age of Netflix, I wondered if the open-air bootleg industry was still thriving at Pacific Mall.

It seemed like despite the rise of the Internet, the pirates were still in business. We still found the "video store", with their stacks and stacks of movie selections, and angry signs that mysteriously read "No!! Sony player".  They weren't as plentiful as they used to be, though.

I am told these photos do not do the grime of Pac Mall justice

We grabbed some bubble tea from an area that seemed to be the Bubble Tea zone and checked out some of the other shops. They sold all sorts of things, but especially cell phone accessories. A few years back, these places were all about the little ornaments you could hang from your cell phones. Now that iPhones have replaced the flip phones, it's now all about iPhone covers and selfie sticks.  Each store had more angry signs that said things like "PLEASE DO NOT TRY OUT THE LIGHTS OR NAIL CLIPPERS". We did not try out the nail clippers.  I spent the majority of my money at the Korean cosmetic stores. We also bought a pair of knock-off Crocs, which to my disappointment were not called "Clocks".

Pacific Mall is a pretty magical place. Terracotta warriors guard the public bathrooms. The oddly familiar looking electronic store "Best Shop" is on the top floor. The food court is just past the "Luck" Bridge, and is like a step into Asia, with the ramen noodle stands, pig's heads and whole ducks hanging in the display cases, and a tattoo shop located right in the middle of the food court. It reminded us of shopping in Bangkok.

the "last chance" Christmas bazaar

On Saturday, Cambridge Bay held its "Last Chance" Christmas Bazaar, named as such to distinguish it from the other Christmas Bazaar held earlier last month, and not because it's actually the last chance to buy Christmas gifts because everyone knows that you can always run to the store ten minutes before closing on Christmas Eve (not that this is a habit of mine...)

The opportunity to go shopping in Cambridge Bay is very exciting for me, and I'm sure for a lot of other people too. This is why the fact there was a blizzard did not stop us from going shopping at the bazaar.

Of course, walking through a blizzard is not the easiest thing. Even with my parka to keep me warm, I had to battle the winds which threatened to pick me up and blow me away like a kite.  And to protect my face, I had to pull my coyote fur-lined hood down low, which basically means I had no peripheral vision while walking. You'd hope that as I'm blindly stumbling across the street that the drivers in the car would watch for me, but I find that their peripheral vision is often limited by their parka hoods too.

It's kind of surreal to listen to Teen Daze's Beach Dreams record while walking through the Arctic blizzard.

Once I got to the Bazaar, it was clear that I wasn't the only one battling the blizzard to do a little shopping. The high school gym was packed.

Vendors included crafts, Mary Kay cosmetics, Bangladeshi food from Salma's Kitchen, photography from Denise Lebleu Images (our band photographer), a bake sale to raise funds for the food bank, and Red Sun Productions selling their famous prints on muskox poo paper.

I had gone to the bazaar with the intention of buying Christmas gifts but as you can see I spent most of my money on food.  Again.

Oh well, I could always run into the Future Shop at the last minute on Christmas Eve...

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a survey of Canadian cities in seven days: Toronto

Continuing my stories of each Canadian city I visited during my seven day sprint across the country:

Toronto is an assault to the senses for every Canadian that is not from Toronto. It's the biggest Canadian city. As an outsider, you are pretty much guaranteed to be overwhelmed every time. There is ten of everything. Two Korea towns. Millions of people. Cars everywhere, even in the suburban plaza parking lots. Traffic jams at midnight.

I have fallen in love with the pace of small town life, but I confess that even as I continue to live in Cambridge Bay, I often dream at night of going back to Toronto. In these dreams, I always have a limited amount of time and a burning desire to see everything while I'm there. Shopping on Queen West! Lounging at the Beaches! Soondubu chigae at Bloor & Christie! Ramen at Momofuku! Soju bars at Yonge & Finch! Plus dozens of friends I'd like to catch up with.  In my dreams, there is always a continuous theme of not having enough time to see all the things I want to do in Toronto. It doesn't help that I hadn't been back there in years.  Having moved to Nunavut, all of our trips down south are to Ottawa, and we usually just don't have enough time to make a side trip to Toronto.

This time, however, we made it happen. I had twenty-four hours in Toronto. There was no way - no matter how much sleep I was willing to give up - that I was going to have time to do everything, or really, anything, that I had been dreaming of doing. I certainly wasn't going to have time to see any of my friends, so I kept my presence in the T-dot a bit of a secret, slipping in under the radar.

The official reason we were in Toronto was to celebrate my grandmother's birthday.  The entire family came out, and I think she was pleased that we had all gathered for the occasion.  We met up at a Japanese-style Korean restaurant, one of those joints where the food that is served is inspired by Japanese cuisine but in reality is run entirely by Korean staff serving a Korean clientele, because Toronto is big enough to have those things.

A sushi boat

the "kids"

birthday girl

Shortly after this photo was taken, the birthday cake caught on fire.  My grandmother is no spring chicken, you know, and there were a lot of candles on the cake, which was made out of mugwort.  As the flames started and everyone started panicking, my grandmother reached her hand out in the most nonchalant manner possible and put the fire out with her own fingers.  She's so tough.

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family photo

After dinner, we went to a Korean karaoke bar at Yonge & Finch. With my grandmother.  Let me tell you something about my family: we love to sing.  Impressions of western-style karaoke seem to involve drinking several beers to gain the liquid courage to go up on stage and sing an old classic in front of a crowded bar full of strangers.  My family, we love to sing. We'll sing completely sober. In a private room. Korean karaoke style.  With lots of snacks, of course.

Well, if I wasn't going to have time to do everything while I was in Toronto, the one thing I wanted to do was hang out with my peeps (Koreans) in my place (Korea town).

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Afterwards, some of us younger folks went downtown to a club. Clubbing in Toronto is always a radically different experience than Ottawa and other smaller cities.  It involves walking through the clubbing district while barkers try to get you to go into their club. If one of them happens to be working for the club that you actually want to go to, you stop, pretending to be bored and disinterested and express to them in a bored and disinterested manner that you just don't want to pay $20 cover to get in; can he not give us a deal?  Also, we don't want to wait in line.  It's useful to bring young good-looking people around when you engage in such negotiations. I doubt I would have gotten very far on my own with my rural sensibilities and my grey hairs.

This, however, is pretty much our second home in Toronto:

Galleria

The Galleria is one of many Korean grocery stores which are the size of T&Ts and Loblaws but devoted entirely to only Korean groceries.  Considering the fact that I come from a town where I am the only Korean and the only grocery store in town is about the size of the Galleria's produce section, it's pretty easy to be dazzled.

It was a whirlwind 24 hours where I managed to squeeze in sushi, karaoke, clubbing, and grocery shopping.  My list will be much longer the next time I come back to Toronto (whenever that will be), but hopefully I'll be in town for more than a day.

My pick of Christmas gift ideas

Christmas is coming up quickly and it's time to start thinking about gifts. For folks in Nunavut, I have already made an online shopping guide of sites that will deliver for cheap/free to Nunavut. But what if you want to get a unique gift? Handmade from an independent artist? Want some ideas?

I've got some very creative friends who run their own businesses. Check out some of these ideas...

for your girl friend that loves jewelry 
NUNC: My childhood friend Suji Im is an independent female artist in South Korea who makes pretty handmade jewelry. I've bought necklaces from her for my mother for Mother's Day as well as an awesome skull necklace for myself. Also I was surprised how quickly they were delivered to my place - traveling from Seoul, South Korea to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut is no quick journey.


Darling Yes: Ottawa-based artist Carly Smith makes some really lovely earrings and pendants. They're all handcrafted, with images taken from antique publications that she finds.



for your mother:You pretty much can't go wrong with flowers, right? Terry from Hazeldean Florist   has done everything from my prom flowers to my wedding flowers. She's as awesome as ajumas get.

for your geeky cousin: if your cousin is into Dr. Who, JenEric Designs' Dr. Who themed knitted cell phone cases are a unique idea. Me, I don't watch TV so I don't have any idea what a TARDIS is, beyond the fact that it contains a four-letter word in it that I'm somewhat uncomfortable with.


Your foodie friend who loves eating local:
My creatively talented friend Sara makes small batch pickles and preserves for Top Shelf Preserves.

If your foodie friend has a sweet tooth, you really should check out Totally Squared, a very new west end shop that specializes in gourmet dessert squares. I have asked Vanessa to start delivering to Nunavut, but that hasn't happened yet, so I'll just have to drop by next time I'm in Ottawa.




for your kids, your friends' kids, or your nephews/nieces to whom you want to be the "good" aunt/uncle:
The Charter for Children picture books by Dustin Milligan: Why not start teaching your kids about their Charter rights from an early age? And why not use awesomely narrated and illustrated picture books to do it? I love this Charter for Children book series that my friend Dustin has been writing. It's something that not only kids but parents and teachers can really get a kick out of, what with all the thinly-disguised references to Canadian pop culture, and even a guide to the Charter in the back. So far, my favourite book is the Case of the Missing Montreal Bagel, but really, every library should have all of these books.

your sister that is obsessed with everything vintage: My friend Ainslie has started up her own online vintage store Bourgeois Vintage.



that vegan friend of yours for whom you have no idea what kind of gift to get: Because seal fur hairpins are probably not gonna fly over so well, you could always get your friend a copy of T.O.F.U. Magazine, which will fill your friend up with all sorts of discussion topics for food politics. My friend Ryan Patey works hard in running this magazine.

And how about me? What do I want for Christmas? Well, besides world peace, I always love:

• cool socks. The kind that people will see and remark, "Hey, cool socks!"
• unique, pretty earrings. But not expensive ones, because I always lose earrings.
• fashionable but warm sweaters. These are very handy up here in the North, as you can imagine.
  this "sweater" is not useful in the Arctic.
• new music. I love discovering new bands but it's hard to keep up when I live in such a remote location. I also LOVE getting mix CDs.
• board games. any board game. we already own Carcassonne, Catan, Ticket to Ride and Dixit. That's it.
• Tea.

Where to Shop Online if You Live in Nunavut

There aren't many (any?) shopping malls in Nunavut. In most communities, our shopping is done at the local Northern or the Co-op, which are predominantly grocery stores that also feature an aisle of other random items like basic clothes, video games and guns.  These stores carry more supplies than I'd originally expected, but sometimes there are things we do need or want that they don't have, so we tend to spend a lot of time shopping online.  And after a while, you start to get a feel for online stores that 1. actually deliver to Nunavut and 2. offer cheap or free shipping to do so.  Finding stores that meet these criteria at all is harder than you think.  Some stores advertise "We ship for free anywhere in Canada!" but add in small print "but not to Nunavut, ha ha you suckers." I'm looking at you, Well.ca and Forever21.  Why you gotta be like that? Nunavut is so a part of Canada. Nunavut is a large part of Canada. Thanks for being that company, the one that offers free services everywhere but to the country's poorest region that needs it the most.

The reason why shipping costs are a big deal is because all supplies must be brought by airplane (there are no truck deliveries in Nunavut), and the airlines generally charge according to weight and volume. The costs add up pretty quickly because there are only a few flights that come in every day, so there is precious little real estate.

An additional obstacle are companies that insist you use "real" physical addresses rather than P.O. boxes.  Everyone uses P.O. boxes here. Nobody gets their stuff delivered to their house.  Even if I gave you my physical address, the courier companies would never find it because 1. my house has no house numbers 2. my street has no street sign.  It all goes to the post office.  So generally you have to try to get away with writing your address as something like "123 Fake Street, Apartment XXX", xxx being your post office box number.  The post office folks understand the code.  They're good people.  Companies need to understand how rural mail works.

Anyway, with that aside, here is a list that I've compiled of online shops that deliver to Nunavut, often for cheap or free.

(Note: most of the shipping rates I quote are for standard shipping. Express shipping probably costs more and is pointless because usually it doesn't actually come any faster. Also, shipping rates may change at any time so make sure you check for yourself).

FREE SHIPPING TO NUNAVUT
Sometimes I wonder if it's only a matter of time before these companies go, "What? Who is this rungloriarun that is increasing our sales in Nunavut and forcing us to lose profits in shipping costs? Time to shut this baby down. FREE SHIPPING TO ANYWHERE IN CANADA (except Nunavut, ha ha you suckers)."

• Amazon: Amazon is my favourite site for shopping, because they offer free shipping anywhere full stop for orders over $25. And you can get pretty much anything from Amazon, from books to cookie cutters to body suits. I order most of my music on vinyl from Amazon. My friends give me heck for not ordering directly from the record label, but honestly, it's hard to argue with FREE SHIPPING.


• Costco: Costco used to offer free unlimited shipping to Nunavut, but too many people were ordering entire bedroom sets and treadmills to be shipped up, so no more unlimited free shipping. But they still do ship a lot of stuff for free to Nunavut, so it's worth looking at.


• Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC): Offers free shipping to Nunavut on orders over $50.  It is easy to spend over $50 at MEC, and in fact, what exactly can you get under $50 at MEC? This is great, because MEC carries a lot of things that you'll find you'll need in Nunavut, especially out on the land.


• David's Tea: Free shipping to Nunavut on orders over $50. That's a lot of tea, you might think, but you just order your year's supply at once and you have something tasty to keep you warm through the cold Arctic winters. Also, free samples of loose leaf tea with every order!


• Sephora: Free shipping to Nunavut on orders over $75. For all your makeup needs.


• asos: Fashion clothing company based in the UK but ships for free to a bunch of countries including Canada. I don't see a "but not Nunavut" exception in the shipping policy, probably because most places outside of Canada haven't heard of Nunavut (which is a good thing in this case!)


• lululemon: Free shipping to Nunavut...also, they explicitly mentions that they do ship to P.O. boxes and rural addresses in Canada. Win!


• Running Room: Free shipping to Nunavut on orders over $150.. And, when I last ordered from them, my order came with a nice little handwritten note, which is pretty sweet.
  


• Best Buy: Same day free shipping on orders over $20 (which, you know, is like everything)


• Future Shop: Pretty much the same deal as Best Buy.


• Dell: Free ground shipping on everything with no minimum purchase. I don't see a Nunavut exception so I assume it includes Nunavut, even if you can't get there by ground.


• The Shopping Channel: at the time of this writing, this company offers "Free Shipping On Almost Everything When You Spend over $100" limited to all items with a shipping weight of 25lbs or less. However, the site notes that courier shipping requires a physical street number and address (no P.O. boxes), and does contain the line "Should your address fall outside normal delivery areas, you will be contacted and informed of any additional shipping charges", so keep your eyes open.


• Old Navy, The Gap & Banana Republic: Free shipping to Nunavut on all orders over $50.

CHEAP/REASONABLE SHIPPING TO NUNAVUT

• Smart Set: $7.50 flat rate shipping. Also, free returns.


•  Meeplemart: For all your boardgaming needs! My board gaming friends all swear by Meeplemart as the cheapest place in Canada to order board games. It's a company based in Toronto, and they ship reasonably quickly and cheaply. Our last order cost us only about $10 in shipping, which is pretty good.



• Bluenotes:  They have a wide variety of clothes to choose from, and their shipping costs are a steal - often between $5-8, even if you are ordering a whole new wardrobe change because you realize that summer dresses are no good in the Arctic. 


• La Senza: from my research, I have found that between La Senza, La Vie En Rose, and Victoria's Secret, it's La Senza that offers the cheapest shipping prices for their clothes - a flat $9 rate, even to Nunavut.


• Ricki's: As in the clothing store. Offers shipping to Nunavut for $9.95.


• Mark's Work Warehouse: Flat shipping rate of $6.50. These guys carry felt-lined jeans, which are so key for Nunavut winters!

AT LEAST THEY SHIP TO NUNAVUT:
 I haven't ordered from some of these shop because the shipping prices are a little daunting, but my friends swear by these places, and at least they deliver to Nunavut.

• Well.ca: Like Costco, Well.ca used to ship for free anywhere in Canada, but they've now jumped on the "but not Nunavut, ha ha you suckers" trend. Which is too bad, because you can pretty much order anything from this site: gardening supplies, groceries, socks. But their shipping rates are based on the price of your order: $20 shipping for orders under $99.99, $40 shipping for orders between $100 and $199.99, $100 shipping for orders between $200 and $499.99, etc.  And I'm not going to drop $100 for shipping on a $200 order. Oh well.

• Bed Bath and Beyond: Actually, these guys offer a pretty reasonable shipping rate that is based on a sliding scale according to the cost of your order ($9.50 shipping for order under $25, $10.90 shipping for orders under $50, $12.95 for orders under $75, and $14.95 for orders under $100, etc.). However, I have not ordered from here yet because I refuse to let myself get to the point where I admit that I am excited by sheets and things.


• Asian Food Grocer: This site is awesome, especially since Asian cuisine ingredients are the things that I find I miss the most while I'm up here. You can order pocky. You can order wasabi. You can order pretty much anything you'd find at a T&T. Unfortunately, they ship from the States, so an order of $200 would cost us an extra $100 in shipping. Eep. For now, I just have my parents send us care packages full of kochukaru and thai curry powder, because they are awesome.

shopping in Bangkok

Bangkok has been, quite frankly, a second injection of culture shock to our system since we've begun our honeymoon. Going from Siem Reap to Bangkok feels to me like all the times I went from Windhoek to Johannesburg. Bangkok is a proper metropolis of some 14 million people, a never-ending cityline full of secrets that you will never have the time to discover, no matter how long you spend here. Things here are more crowded, more expensive, more smoggy, more polluted, more exciting, more everything. The sidewalks are crowded with street vendors selling everything from fake Lacoste shirts to postcards to sex toys to fruit. The delicious smell of street food mixes with the less delicious smell of garbage and sewer. There are more motorcycles on the streets than I've ever seen in my life. My sophisticated hotel tv greets me with a "Welcome Ms Gloriameerang" (that's what the hotels and airports here think my name is. I guess it sounds more southeast Asian than just the short Gloria.)

We've arrived in Bangkok with no agenda. We plan to stay for a week. On our first day, we decided to try our hand at shopping. We've been told that Bangkok is shopping heaven, both for brand names and brand name knock-offs.

We were given the advice to window shop at the mall Terminal 21 first and then actually shop at MBK afterwards. Terminal 21 is the really nice mall with like hundreds of boutiques and many floors. The bathrooms each have bidets. Each floor has a different theme based on an international city: Rome, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo...no Vancouver yet, but maybe the mall will expand. Lots of gorgeous fashion forward dress styles that I'm sure will make their way to North America in five years or so. I didn't buy anything. I was afraid that if I bought one thing, the barrier would be broken and I wouldn't be able to help myself from the shopping spree deluge that would follow.

tokyo

paris

MBK is pretty much the original Pac Mall. Picture a huge building with many floors and hundreds of little stands on each floor. It's the cheapest place anywhere to buy a mobile phone. It's the place to go to be buy Gucci sunglasses. It's the place to go to buy phone numbers and license plates with the lucky number 9. It's the place to go to buy illegal copies of software. It's the place to go to get permanent makeup tattooed on your face. It's the place to go to sharpen your bargaining skills with people who do not speak any languages that you do, which is, in itself, quite the experience.

It is also, according to the Lonely Planet, the place to go to eat. The food court is the awesome Asian style that I wish would become more popular in North America, where you get a special credit card as you enter, and then you go nuts at all of the international stands inside the court. One day, I'm going to eat one too many fried noodle dishes, and the people of Siam will forever refer to the Great Noodle Explosion of Gloriameerang.

Like the tourist I am, I bought more Thai silk that you can shake a Thai stick at, and tried on a bunch of ridiculously pretty ridiculously cheap dresses. I bought some clothes that are more appropriate to wear here. In a country where modesty is important but the weather is oppressively humid, my spaghetti strap tank tops don't work, but neither do my thick skinny jeans. In Asia, by the way, I am no longer a size small.
In the evening, we stopped for cheap drinks ($2 beers) at the aptly named Cheap Charlie's, a bar randomly located in a dark alley surprisingly popular with ex-pats. It was a bit odd to be standing in an alley drinking Tiger beer as more and more young white guys in business suits showed up to crowd the alley, but it was a quirky atmosphere. After our Asian aperitifs we headed for the trendy lounge Zanzibar next door, for green curry, chicken satay and fried calamari, where a young long-haired Thai man crooned Elvis songs on the piano exactly like Elvis. It was freaking awesome. They say you haven't experienced Bangkok until you hear a Thai cover of the Eagle's Hotel California at a hotel bar. I eagerly await this experience.

in Edmonton, kind of

I arrived in Edmonton, completely overdressed in my winter coat and wool scarf. I was sensibly dressed for the Arctic, where I'd be heading next, but for now, during my layover in Edmonton where it's sunny and warm, I looked mildly ridiculous.

The flight was relatively smooth, minus the part near the beginning where the pilot announced that one of the motors wasn't working but don't worry, we'll take care of that within five minutes. Despite my skepticism, he was right.

I had approximately twenty hours to spend in Edmonton, which was just enough time for me to go out and try to get a taste of Alberta, if I could decide on what I wanted to do.

West Edmonton Mall was not my first choice of sightseeing attraction, although I wasn't sure what was. I remember reading tips in music magazines on how bands can avoid getting stabbed in stabby Edmonton. When I asked my friend from Edmonton what would be a nice walking tour of downtown, he replied "Oh no, don't bother walking around downtown."

My friend had suggested that Whyte Avenue would be nice, so I asked the front desk at my hotel how to get downtown.

"Downtown Edmonton or downtown Leduc?" the hotel clerk asked. He suggested that I go to downtown Leduc because it turned out we weren't actually in Edmonton proper anyway.

"What's there to do in downtown Leduc?" I asked.

"Oh, not much," he replied.

Sigh. I decided to go to West Edmonton Mall. Capitalism always makes it easy to go shopping.

Because West Edmonton Mall is one of the top tourist attractions, I was able to climb into an airport shuttle to get there, one of those old white vans that reminded me of the sketchy combie buses I use to ride all over Namibia. I sat next to a sullen young woman who punctuates all of her sentences with disdainful sighs. The other passenger, an older male, tried to engage her in conversation.

"Are you here to party on campus?" he asked her.

"I'm here for a funeral" she answered. I decided to let her be sullen, and watch the scenery. Edmonton is flat all around, and the suburbs look like the suburbs back home. Do you ever notice that Canadian suburbs all look the same, no matter where you go? I love the Canadian landscape.

West Edmonton Mall is pretty big. But then, when you hear about the biggest shopping mall in North America (and the fifth largest in the world), you've got a lot of expectations about something monstrous that you'd get lost inside, like the casinos of Las Vegas designed to make you lose track of time so you can wander inside spending money infinitely. Like I said West Edmonton Mall was pretty big. You certainly couldn't fit the whole structure inside a single camera picture. I was full of so many questions. What is inside? What kind of stores do you have to fill up the continent's largest mall? And was that a sign for a shooting range? Oh, Alberta, I have arrived.


The shuttle dropped me off at the Fantasyland hotel, which was once the subject of a major intellectual property litigation case against Disney that we learned about in law school. I hurried through the lobby and took in the sights. Little boys getting military buzz cuts at the barber. Little girls in pink shirts carrying fake pistols, pointing them at babies in strollers, also holding fake pistols (oh Alberta!). Young Asian couples speaking to each other in sign language. A young skateboarder, sleeping against a wall on his skateboard. Immigrant kids learning to skate wearing jean shorts, speedily passed by white dads training their little boys for hockey. Adventure golf, two word I never thought to put together.



Not to feed the flames of old litigation, but the whole place reminded me of a Disneyland for adult consumer whores or maybe a Las Vegas for teens. There were different sections of the mall with different "themes", like Europa Avenue, designed to look like the streets of Europe (or maybe kind of like Disney's perception of Europe?), and Chinatown, which not only featured Chinese gates but a T&T market. As well as other traditional Chinese shops like Rogers Wireless and Stitch It.




There was also a Bourbon street, which contained a lot of the restaurants that we don't have in Ontario that I've missed since I lived in Vancouver - Earl's, The Spaghetti Factory...and of course there was a Hooters.




There was also a huge food court with like five Chinese fast food places with no discernible difference between any of them. That was where I spent my lunch. Hey, I am not always classy or cultural. In fact, I am rarely so.

It was only after my big greasy lunch that I discovered the roller coasters. Galaxyworld is the world's largest indoor amusement park, with the world's largest indoor rollercoaster. The rollercoasters made loud boom sounds that sounded like jets. I was, as you might expected, disappointed that I had discovered the awesome rides only after eating my large lunch. Unlike Canada's Wonderland, there weren't any lines for any of the rides.




West Edmonton Mall also has the world's largest indoor water park, which features a fake beach area with a fake beach bar, a huge wave pool, and numerous water slides. It obviously has a fake feel to it, but it's also quite brilliant to have all these things indoors, given how cold Edmonton gets for a big chunk of the year. It's nice to escape the cold winter for a few hours and catch a few waves in the warm 26 degree water park.



Oh yeah, the world's largest indoor water park also featured the world's biggest indoor bungee jump. Which looked, to me, incredibly scary, but then so did the wave pool, maybe because I almost drowned in one when I was younger, trying to save another kid.

After a while, I realized that I'd spent all this time in the mall without ever coming across the shooting range. I began to question whether I was actually in Alberta. Also, I began to wonder if the mall featured a nap room. There was just so much to see! Sea lions, real ones (I had thought they were fake until one ran along side the pool to follow its trainer). A marketplace chapel. Next to the chapel, a store that I accidentally walked into that appears to sell apparel for strippers. A tattoo, piercing and hair salon, a combination that I guess makes sense, but I'd never seen before.


what do you suppose it's like to be a sea lion trainer in a mall?



Despite having spent hours wandering around the mall (I did a circuit around the whole thing four times) I didn't end up buying much. Ever since I moved back from Africa, I haven't been really in a mood to buy things. You'd think it'd be the opposite, emerging from a shopping drought after spending the past year living in modest Namibia, but I guess I figured out how to live with less stuff. I've been wearing my stuff out, even if my family and friends are begging me to throw them out for getting so holey. Still, even though I didn't walk out with a pile of shopping bags, I was glad for the chance to experience the largest mall in North America. Now if only they could build a fake beach with a fake beach bar and indoor wave pool in Ottawa. Next time I come here, I'm eating lunch after I visit the amusement park. Also, I'm trying out the shooting range - if I ever find it.

this was the closest thing i found to the shooting range - a kid's game