Paris suburbs

Grace, Kristine, Lorelei and me rolling "tang yuan"

Last Monday, a Canadian French family invited some of us from church to their house to celebrate the Cambodian New Year. It was great fun coz it felt like CNY again for us! And they made dessert which looked like our "tang yuan".

It's pandan flavoured! Ha.

The party ended at about 11pm and because the house is in the suburbs, we have to take a train (not metro) back into Paris centre. Ron (our pastor), Lorelei (his wife), KW and I were the last group to leave the house and take the train.

"This stop doesn't look familiar," said Lorelei as she looked out of the train window.

Oh no. One of the worst things that can happen with the french train system is getting lost. The system is great, but the signage is terrible in france. We looked, checked and double checked. Yes, we got on the wrong train even though the sign had said this train goes to Paris.

When the train finally stopped, we were further out into the suburbs, at a train terminal. Carrying a leftover apple tart wrapped in aluminium foil in his hand, Ron asked a nearby frenchman how to get back into Paris and he pointed us to get back into the same train because it would be the last train into Paris. "Oh, so we did get on the right one." That was a relief.

So we got on and talked some more and saw the train pass all the stations that we had previously passed till were back at the station we had gotten on. And just as we were laughing about it, the girl next to us asked us if the train was headed to Cergy.

"Oh no, madam, this train is headed to Paris," said Ron.

Her face turned white because we all knew this was the last train to go anywhere and Lorelei and I immediately felt sorry for her. And KW and Ron took her to the sign board in the train to explain to her where we were headed.

"I don't think I've seen this stop before," whispered Lorelei to me as we passed by the next train stop.

"Ya, this stop doesn't look familiar", said KW and he got up to check the sign board again.

Ron just shook his head and said, "No, we are definitely in the right train."

"Guys, i think this train's not going to Paris. I'm not kidding." said KW as he came back to his seat. I burst out giggling hysterically till I cried. This was too much.

And so it seemed the girl was right and we had gotten ourselves lost with the signs system that probably only the french can understand! It was 1:30am and we were out so far in the suburbs (way beyond JB if you thought in terms of Singapore), we couldn't even call the family we were with coz they wouldn't know where we were either. Trembling in the cold night winds of the suburbs with our summer wear, we got directions to the nearest hotel (which turned out to be a hostel) and tried to get a place to stay but the hotel was full. We must have looked pretty desperate coz the hotel staff allowed us to just hang around the lobby till the first train left near 5am in the morning.

So we sat there and tried to sleep, think how we could have gotten lost twice and finally gave up trying to make sense of it all. So we took some silly pictures of ourselves, ate some chocolates and waited for the time to pass.

us at 4am

By the time we actually made it back home, it was almost 7am in the morning.

I think we won't be going to the suburbs for a while.

Jo