22 days train trip in Spain and Portugal- Portugal part 2

We chose to fly from Faro to Porto instead of taking the train because the trip would have been 6 hours. Unfortunately, the hotel I booked cancelled on me the last minute because apparently it actually tests my bank card for its remaining balance and found it not enough to cover the total payment even though it accepts cash (at least it said so on Booking.com but actually the hotel at Barcelona also said it accepts cash but apparently because we booked 4 nights it was over the threshold for accepting cash and I had to use my card to pay instead) and we basically intended to pay with cash when we arrived at the hotel. So I ended up booking an apartment instead and it was actually an apartment with a bunk bed. Mum and I had climbed onto the upper level of a bunk bed before and we figured we were not going to start trying now when she was approaching 80 and I’m in my 40s. So we ended up squeezing together on the same bed on the lower level. To be honest, we didn’t sleep well at all. The first night, when I was sleeping on the inside, I felt like I couldn’t breathe and Mum had to swap position with me. Then because I’m a sound sleeper, Mum couldn’t go to the toilet at night because I was obviously blocking her. Sound penetration was also quite bad. We were on the first floor and there is another floor up above us and every night there would be some stomping that we could hear from the apartment directly above us. But other than that, the apartment was fine. I especially like that the hot water from the shower comes quickly, unlike some of the other hotels we had lived in. And the upside is that the cost for 4 nights is about ⅓ of the cost for the original hotel I booked. Anyway, in terms of sightseeing, we only did the Clérigos Church and Chapel of Souls. We also tried to look for Sao Bento train station but got turned around a lot and then figured that we might as well look for it for real tomorrow since we are taking the train to Braga from it tomorrow. For dinner, I quickly booked the only decent restaurant that I could find through Google, which was the restaurant for a 4 star hotel that is at one end of the same street as our apartment. It had a small menu so we ordered garlic shrimps and sea bass with sweet potato puree. The food was decent but not great. 

After snapping enough photos of Sao Bento train station, Day 2 was spent at Braga. We took the bus to Bom Jesus do Monte as soon as we arrived and we almost didn’t go up via the funicular due to my fear of heights but it seemed such a waste of time in terms of phototaking if we didn’t so we took the plunge. And actually, it wasn’t that scary, it had a cable that pulled the car up that ran parallel to the track and it wasn’t that steep an incline (at least when I was sitting inside). So it took us all the way to the up and we walked a several set of short steps down to the take the obligatory picture with the cascading blocks of stairs (I don’t quite know how to describe it properly, see pic above) but being slackers, we didn’t go all the way down to the big oval place, just a vantage that would allow us to snap it. Then we walked back up to take the funicular down again. Then we took the bus back to the city and quickly snapped photos of Congregadors Basilica, Chafariz da Praca da Republica and Theatro Circo before stopping at Largo Sao Jao do Souto for lunch. Mum ordered a crepe and I ordered the banana split for lunch. It was quite tasty. In the afternoon, we visited Santa Barbara Garden, Largo do Paco and Arco da Porta Nova. Then we made our way back to Porto where we had dinner at the place I booked where we ordered 4 codfish cakes (very big, a little too much for our appetite, but not bad as they go) and an octopus dish. 

Day 3 was a day trip to Aveiro, the Portuguese Venice. We stopped a bit to take pictures at the Largo da Eastacao with more tile paintings before heading down Avenida Lourenco Peixinho on a straight path towards Moliceiros pier to make the obligatory boat tour. Actually, the boats here were more colourful than the Venice gondolas and I quite easily took a photo of an empty boat that passed by us but taking a photo of the boat we were on was tricky since we were allocated to sit at the back portion of the boat (the Aveiro boat fit way more people than the Venice gondolas). It was a 45 minute tour and after it, we had the local specialty pastry of Ovos Moles for lunch. It’s a pastry with egg yolks inside and it’s actually salty as opposed to sweet. After that, we took the line 36 Costa Nova bus to the end stop to snap pictures of the colourful striped houses. Actually, it was a pretty narrow strip of houses and not much to see. But we still took a long time. With a long gap between the 4ish and 6ish buses, we were basically stuck at Costa Nova and couldn’t even spot taxis. Eventually, we caught the earliest 6pm line 36 bus back and got back to Porto at around 8pm. It was very hard to find a restaurant without booking around such peak dining hours so we ended up ordering a Pepperoni pizza which was the only place that had ample sittings inside. 

The last day at Porto originally had breakfasting at the Majestic Cafe as an item but we scratched it because it wasn’t an experience we are actually interested in so it’s basically a church visiting day in the morning covering Church of Saint Ildefonso (which looks exactly like the Chapel of Souls except that it has two crosses instead of one in the middle and you can hardly see that it has two crosses unless you specifically looked for them), Igreja de Santa Clara, Porto Cathedral and Igreja de Sao Lourenco. During lunch, I ordered the francesinha and Mum ordered the biscuit pie. She really liked her pastry lunch but mine was so-so- I only ordered it to try the local specialty but didn’t really expect to like it. It basically tastes like a cheesy pizza with three types of different meat in it- the steak was a bit tough and the bacon tasted much better in comparison and there was a 3rd type of meat in it that I forgot was what. In the afternoon, we walked along the Duoro River. For dinner, I prebooked a place the day before in order to cheer Mum up with oysters. We also moved from the apartment to the 4-stars Mercure hotel up the street (where we had dinner the first day at Porto) in the morning (with the help of someone from the apartment who helped us carry our checked luggages down a short flight of somewhat narrow stairs and up the very narrow street to our new hotel) and with phone booking, the total cost of our Porto accommodation still came out cheaper than that of the original 3-star hotel I booked. Due to the late booking, the only slot available for dinner was 8:15pm. But it was worth it- we had oysters, barnacles (small portion that came with the oysters) and clams. It was the first time we had barnacles and it was the only live seafood that interested us because the prawns and crab all didn’t look too fresh. We were going to order razor clams but it was all sold out so we had clams instead. But back to the barnacles, we were shown how to eat the barnacles by the waiter- you had to pull really hard on the triangular bit at the bottom in order for the ‘covering’ to be pulled off, leaving the meat behind which tasted a lot like crab legs. It was always touch and go for me whether I could manage it but eventually Mum taught me that I could squeeze out the meat from the broken off tube/covering if I accidentally snapped it off with the meat inside instead. It left us more expectant of the next time we would have barnacles (I encountered them on the menu of a Lisbon restaurant during my detailed trip planning back in Melbourne and decided we would try them, knowing that Mum’s forever curious about new food and I personally have a fondness for what I call shell-like food: well, mainly clams, a lot of shells are hard to suck out so I tend to avoid those since I’m lazy). Overall, a great dining experience.

Broadening Horizon Reads 2025

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter 

This was to be my first foray into the heist thriller, a subgenre of mystery that I have never delved into before. But the novel itself had too much of a literary fiction bend and the pace was just too slow for me so I DNF’ed it. 

Withered Hill by David Barnett

The plan was originally to read the Little Stranger by Sarah Waters but then laziness took over and I couldn’t be bothered ordering a physical book from my local library that I then had to go in to borrow. So instead, I stumbled upon this particular novel, self advertised as “A dark and unsettling British folk horror novel”. 

To be honest, this book rather fell short for me in terms of being a horror novel. It felt more like a thriller to me, with folk horror elements. I agree that it can be dark and unsettling for some people, just not for me. Having said that, this is not a bad novel. Why I likened it to a thriller is because it’s a sense of tension and curiosity over what bad things are going to happen to the main character that kept me reading. So that’s good. It just probably wouldn’t stay with me that much compared to the case where I am truly unsettled by the ending. 

Scene by Scene breakdown- Reflections to date 

I did feel like my amended version of the scene by scene breakdown was more easy to fill out compared to the original version. In particular, it is certainly more suitable for my needs due to my tendency to lose access to my characters. Or rather, I should say that I’m mostly in contact with them via thoughts and their logical thinking and less so regarding personal feelings. That makes sense given the type of person I am but is a weakness in terms of being a fiction writer. Basically, this amended version allows me to home in on my protagonists rather than worry about sidecast and their reactions which often bog down particular scenes in my draft. 

On the other hand, the original version is a more bird’s eye view on a scene in terms of its key elements regarding what the ‘key players’ each want and their emotion changes. Depending on the goal for the scene by scene breakdown, that could be more useful. 

The Role of Etiquette in Chinese culture (2)- Left versus Right 

There are two aspects to which left versus right is important in Chinese culture. 

The first is that unlike Western society where right is considered the power position, it’s the reverse in Chinese culture. By the power position, I mean both seating arrangements and whether you walk to the left or right of someone else. The core reason is that left is associated with Yang and right is associated with Ying. Being male dominated for much of ancient China, it is not surprising that the left is favoured. So in Australia, Mum always walks on my right but in Hong Kong, she walks on my left. I don’t think she’s doing this deliberately to express power over me or in our relationship because ours for the most part is a relatively equal relationship but it’s just one of these cultural cues that she reacts to. 

The second is that being left-handed does have very practical implications on those you dine with in Chinese culture. Essentially, the problem is that if you are left-handed and sit next to someone who is right-handed, it is very likely that the two of you are going to impede each other when you try to reach out towards dishes with your chopsticks. So Chinese parents were known to at least attempt to educate children born left-handed to try to change their habit towards right-handedness in order to avoid this kind of socially awkward outcome. 

That’s it for today. Let me know in the comments if you have additional insights or want to know more about something I mentioned here. 

Moonlake’s Writing Updates- September 2025

Due to an accidental hand injury which lasted for a week and the two changes in approach I made for this particular task (first changing from index card to Excel and then leveraging FATE scenario creation technique for my novel), I’m expecting that it would probably be closer to the end of this year that I finish the re-outline of my WIP. But the good news is that I’m finally being able to integrate some of the new scenes that have emerged in the process of my decimal drafts. In fact, I believe that I can finally increment to draft 0.84 after this (it has been stuck at draft 0.83 for 3 years now, looking back at file properties, it was created in September 2022). 

And that’s all I have to report for progress. As I’ve said time and again, onwards with it!

The Role of Etiquette in Chinese culture (1)- Titles and Personal Addresses 

This topic is actually inspired by my study in translation (I started my graduate certificate in translation in the middle of July) and I thought etiquette does play a very important role in Chinese culture, all the way from ancient times. 

Before I delve into the topic area of this post, I will just list the following facts to put into context how important etiquette has been for China:

  • Dynasty changes often come with revision to the Record of Etiquette which is about how things should be according to etiquette for everyone from the Emperor to a lowly peasant 
  • Etiquette is one of the core standards of operation for a human according to Confucianism which has been in dominance as a philosophy in ancient China for a long time, probably starting some time in the Han dynasty as far as I know 
  • The Bureau of Etiquette has been one of the Six Bureaus (top tier administrative areas) in central government in ancient China ever since the Sui dynasty

Now, we move on to talk particularly about titles and personal addresses. What I mean by this specifically is how the nobility referred to themselves in ancient times but I will also talk about applications to modern days. 

Growing up in Hong Kong, the first title I think of is 朕 (pinyin-wise, zam in Cantonese or zhen in Mandarin) which Emperors call themselves. This term goes all the way back to the Beginning Emperor of the Qin dynasty, the first dynasty accredited with unifying all of China under one rule. Basically, he was the one that decided that this is now a title reserved only for the Emperor (before then, it was essentially just a term meaning “I” that everyone uses) when he’s referring to himself. Similarly, there were special reference terms that only a Lord could use such as 孤 (Ku or Gu) and 寡人 which both have the connotation of being someone alone. It reflects the Chinese cultural value that humbleness is a virtue but also the fact that you only inherit that position from your father when he has passed on (you have become a fatherless orphan). 

Now, modern equivalents- we don’t have titles anymore in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan but what is kept is the general idea of humbleness i.e be humble when referring to yourself while praising others. In modern days, this is used less for humans now- it used to be that you would refer to your own wife as ‘stupid/non-nimble wife” and calling someone else’s wife “respected wife” but it’s an ancient practice that didn’t carry to modern times. Instead, we might use this type of language differentiation when talking about our own homes versus someone else’s home for example. And when we do that, it usually indicates a quite formal tone that perhaps means we are talking to elders or people we don’t know too well. The specific term for my home in this context roughly back-translates into English as “abode below” whereas the equivalent for your home is “grand abode upper”.  

That’s all for this topic. If you want to ask me more questions, let me know in comments. 

Moonlake’s Book Discoveries- September 2025

Fantasy 

The Wilderwomen by Ruth Emmie Lang

Technically this is the subgenre of urban fantasy or supernatural fantasy but to be honest it felt more like a family story to me because it’s all about two sisters’ efforts to find their missing Mom. It’s okay, the pacing is a little slow at bits but I think that’s to be expected given the storyline and focus. The ending is satisfying. 

Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare 

This is more the traditional fantasy that was my main reading interest and love and I do think it is a good story interweaving between two interesting protagonists. In fact, I like how their stories were at first separate but then became intertwined with each other. Not quite sure whether I will continue onto the next book yet but considering it. 

Strike the Zither by Joan He 

I already covered it in a separate post so won’t repeat it here.  

Mystery

The Secret of Three Fates by Jess Armstrong
It’s a good enough mystery in the sense that I didn’t guess the culprit and it does a good job of introducing that it’s set in the past with the vocabulary at the start. 

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

This is part of my Broadening Horizon Read for this year. I had started it but it’s too early to say anything about it. 

Literary Fiction 

The Lost Legends of New Jersey

This is the 3rd of my min-reading challenge- the first chapter is titled Constellations. It is really a family drama story, focusing mostly on the son but there are a few chapters written from the father’s perspective too (although in third person rather than first person for the son) and there is definitely an echoing effect between the two characters. And the story is set in New Jersey and apparently that’s the theme for the novel too. 

For me personally, this is not a story that has me really engaged because my reading taste does not lean towards literary. But it is engaging enough in its own way. 

22 days train trip in Spain and Portugal- Portugal part 1

We caught a Flibus from Seville to Faro and didn’t do much at all on the first day because once we moved to Portugal, my prepaid Spanish Orange 20 stopped working. And basically despite us receiving a printed out map at the hotel on how to get to the city, we ended up going on the wrong street altogether and all we achieved was for us to get two pepsis at a fast food place where I could borrow their wifi to find us back to the hotel. For that entire day, the other landmark we visited was the Arco de Vila. The place I booked for dinner was right across the street and we ordered half a dozen oysters and the mariscada or seafood platter. It was two storey high with a whole crab and two oysters at the top and prawns and two different sizes of clams at the bottom. It was too much for two of us and I think we only finished half of it. The collection of the seafood together was also far salty for us (basically the sea in the region must have higher salt content than the Tasman Sea or whatever the New Zealand sea is). 

Day 2, we asked the hotel to book a taxi for us to the train station and we did that every day at Faro (in general, we catch taxis a lot this trip because it’s that affordable. Usually each trip is under 10 Euro excerpt when we are travelling to and fro airports.) We bought a three day Travelcard for the Algarve Regional train line and went to Ferragudo. I thought I should be able to catch a taxi at the train station but the reality was that there was no taxi (it was a tiny train station and felt like situated in the middle of nowhere) and when we asked someone about it, apparently we had to call for a taxi with a number that should be posted at the train station. So the end result was that the entire trip just ended up being a Macca’s lunch following by an attempt to find a church that ended in a road that went nowhere. We called it quits. We could have caught the train back and stopped at Albufeira and a Google search suggested that it would take a whole hour to get to the attractions from the train station and we always wanted to have dinner early and just stay in our hotel after dark. So instead we returned to Faro where we spent the afternoon visiting the Cicada Velha which we went past on the first day but did not venture into it due to the steep street at the entrance and it being slippery to the pair of non-runner that I was wearing (it was a pair of shoes I bought from Hong Kong, sort of like first-gen Sketchers runners but with air). Anyway, the steep incline was actually just a little bit and it was no longer slippery when I changed to my Nike runners. But there wasn’t much to see- one big church and then the Arco de Repouso which was basically just an arched door. I cancelled all the dinner bookings after the first dinner’s experience and we ended up going for Hawaiian pizza. It was okay but didn’t have enough fillings for it to be really great- the pineapple did have juice but there wasn’t enough pineapple on the pizza. 

Day 3 was Portimao and Praia da Rocha. We bought two pairs of sandals specifically for this beach trip (nowadays we buy clothes and everything trip wise online for the affordable prices) . We were a bit hesitant on going onto the sand initially because we didn’t like walking on sand but we finally took the plunge because otherwise we would have bought the sandals for nothing. We didn’t enjoy the sand walking experience- me specifically because I could hardly walk, my sandals kept wanting to slide off every few steps, but actually the sand were really really fine, so much that after we went back onto the non-sand area, there was hardly any that clung to our feet and we didn’t have wash them with water at all. And somehow time went past pretty quickly in that we spent way longer at the beach that I expected. We had lunch at 2pm or something at the beach as opposed to having it at the marina like I had planned. I ordered a tuna sandwich and Mum something else but actually my tuna sandwich was much more tasty. For dinner, we went a little further to a different street and had the seafood cataplana. It was okay- again tomato based but I found it tolerable. 

The last day at Faro was spent at Lagos, the end stop of the Algarve Line. We walked past the Premenade which apparently was an attraction but didn’t see much in it. We went straight to lunch because it was pretty much that time and it made more sense to start the actual sightseeing after lunch than do a little bit and have to interrupt it for lunch. To be honest, we didn’t see much in Lagos. We went to the old town after lunch but didn’t feel like there was much. Then again, most people would have come for the Bengali cave boat tours but we were not interested in that due to similar things we had done in New Zealand (not the same type of caves but we just didn’t feel like it was an experience we would be keen in). Dinner was spent at the other place I didn’t cancel because I was curious in their crabstuffed. I thought it would just be the crabshell stuffed with things but actually it was still a whole crab and we also ordered sauteed clams and crispy bread to go with them. The crab shell had its own unique texture and flavour-very creamy in texture and the other parts of the crab that was the stuffing did feel like they ‘showed up’ (the crabs claws and legs, however, felt totally tasteless to us because they were boiled). But to be honest, such creamy texture usually gave us a feeling of fullness that shrunk our appetites (I remember I did write about how we almost left a truffle oil pasta untouched in Switzerland last year, or at least that’s what the waitress saw since it was a very big plate and we just took the top layer off which wasn’t very obvious, I have to admit. And basically it was the same thing). The waitress told us that the crab was 625g or something and Mum and I routinely have crab cooked in Chinese style up to 1kg. But on that day, we basically left half the crabshell with fillings and only had one each of the crab legs/claws (so 2 pieces out of 4 between us and we couldn’t even be bothered using the crackers to extract the meat from the claw or the leg). The clams were also very tasty so to be honest, it was a meal I had appreciated except for leaving so much leftover food that can only be discarded. The waitress did try to pack it away in a takeaway box for us but we had to decline it because we couldn’t possibly want to snack on it in the middle of the night and we never had seafood leftover from one day ago for fear of causing diarrhea. 

I see the way…

The jump off lines is from Collecting Light by Deb Cooper and this is from a day when I’m not feeling the prompt:  

I see the way my fingers dip into the trough of hand cream and withdraw while leaving the shape intact. I see the way, or rather feel the way, this pen I’m holding to write slide up and down my hand because it is slippery with cream. 

I see the way my hair falls across my face like a curtain that obscures vision because I had gone for the ionic straightening treatment. I see the way jigsaw puzzles click into place as I line up the right pieces next to each other. 

I see the way bad actresses tense up their muscles as they smile or act angry. I see the way right ahead of me, the pavement right in front.

I see the way the timer ticks down in seconds but the blue line that goes around the circle with the countdown in the middle hardly moves at all. I see the way white cursor on my PC screen stays motionless because the mouse is still, nestled below me. I see the way the blue line is now visibly shorter as time ticks off. I see the way a porcelain work can change colour under different lighting or I imagine it does. I see the way. 

Running a FB group for aspiring novelists

I am running out of writer craft insights to share and so I’m branching out to this other enterprise that I have been running for my fellow students from the UBC novel writing courses. I created this back in 2018, off this random idea I have of providing a platform for us all to gather after the courses are done to see each other through the novel writing exercise but also for collective learning etc. 

One problem I continually have been running into is the issue of engagement. Basically we only had one administrator and no one had expressed an interest to join me when I asked around (small membership was an issue and probably continues to be an issue. To date, there are a total of 62 members, the most recent joined 8 months ago- the course instructors kept about my group and directed new students to this group of mine so I get occasional new member requests). One solution would be more activity from me which I think did work on a short term basis when I had daily craft questions or themed months that focused on a particular craft element with weekly tasks. However, usually there would be only one person who would engage with me on a given thread. Also, it does take energy out of me when I was the only content provider. 

Recently, I had played with the idea of bringing the themed months back but tried to elicit more content providers to reduce the workload on me. However, I’m very doubtful of this working. 

On the other hand, there have been subsidiary groups run off this particular FB group of mine in the form of writing sprints. I was even asked to join as a member but it’s not really my thing so I ended up declining the offer. 

In summary, is it easy to run and manage such a FB group as I had created? Yes and no. It is not hard if I want to maintain the status quo of minimal level of engagement and just a platform for general encouragement for each other. But it does get hard if I want to take it beyond that. Which I haven’t.