Days Of Sunshine & Me In HK
Hey Hey! Just came home from Hong Kong! Yes, I was away for 5 days in Hong Kong with Sunshine. I was really really happy when she agreed to go. I was a perfect gentleman the entire trip, so please scrub those dirty minds of yours clean.
28 Dec 2010
Did not really get much sleep in. Too excited about the trip. Woke up really early to go pick her up from her home. At least our flight was not too early but the timing was good enough. 8:15am flight out of Changi Airport. We slept most of the flight there, I guess we were both exhausted by our lack of sleep. One thing about Cathay Pacific's Boeing 777 planes, the seats are too small! Fat or not, I am not supposed to keep triggering the remote control on the side panels. At least I got us the front aisle seats, so it was some relief for us.
We touched down in Hong Kong shortly after 12pm feeling excited and happy. Well at least I was. Just the two of us without any "tourmates" kids to take away her attention. Haha. After picking up some much needed shampoo, we quickly headed to the Disneyland Hollywood Hotel via taxi. The Disney hotels had really good service as I had sent an equiry 2 days ago and they actually called me the day before our flight (from HK!!!) to provide me directions from the airport. That is what I call service! For those of you who are unsure, although both the airport and Disneyland are on Lantau Island, they have no direct rail connection. Taking the Airport Express will cost more and result in 4 transfers (Airport Express → Tsing Yi MTR station → Sunny Bay MTR station → Disneyland Resort Line → Disneyland Hotel Shuttle Bus) and cost more. Taxi cost only around HKD110 and it was much faster with less hassle. The Disneyland hotels provided a drop-off service at the hotel as the rooms were not ready for check-in till 3pm. You can drop off all your luggage and go enjoy the park but you got to perform your check-in first. It was a cool 17ºC, a great temperature to visit the park.
By the time we reached the park itself it was 15 minutes after 2pm. It was her first trip to Hong Kong Disneyland while it was my second. As we had gotten the Stay2Day offer for those who stayed at either of the Disneyland hotel, we took out time strolling through the park. Although Christmas has passed, the park was still celebrating it and the spirit of Christmas is still very much in the air, what with the giant Christmas tree just at the entrance of the park.
We quickly headed over to the Adventureland for the Lion King show. It can be considered a preview of the musical we are going to see at Marina Bay Sands come March. After the show, we went to Corner Cafe for some early dinner as we were feeling hungry due to our lack of breakfast/lunch. The food on the plane was only palatable and not much to shout about. While having our "Tea-ner", the Christmas parade floats came by and we had a great view from our seats as nobody seemed to be standing up in front of our window. Yeah! Haha.
By the time we had finished our meal, I introduced her to the "crazyness" of the shops. She had heard how people can go "ga-ga" once stepping into the shops and she could understand why. All the merchandise were so adorable and I got myself "Big Stitch". By now, we were both feeling abit exhausted and decided to head back to the hotel to collect our room key and take a shower.
We were assigned a room on the top floor of the hotel and we had "sea-view". Well, the room was great. It was decked out with Disney images and even the shower curtain had them. Haha. Each of these rooms seem to be prepared for two adults and a child as we found the slippers and toiletries prepared in sets of 2 big + 1 small. After a quick shower, we headed back to the park. By now, it was getting chilly with the temperature dropping to 8ºC. I quickly took out the winter jacket for Sunshine as I was afraid that it may be too cold for her and I was right. When we reached the park entrance, her palms were feeling cold.
The displays at the entrance to the park was really beautiful with the combinations of lights. Even the Mickey statue and the christmas tree looked so much better.
We had returned for the fireworks show and it did not disappoint. Maybe it was the chilly weather, the crowd response was less enthusiastic then my previous trip. Hmmm.... After a great day out, we were feeling tired and returned to our room to rest for the night.
29 Dec 2010
Waking up only at around 10am, after a brief washing up, we headed back to the park. But not before checking out and leaving our baggage at the baggage services to look after our stuff while we headed to the park for the day. Great service! When we reached the park, we saw a very large contingent of scouts from various countries. Apparently, there is some Jamboree going on in HK and the activity for the day for them was a visit to Disneyland park. It was no surprise too when I saw some Singaporean scouts. What surprised me though was while I was queuing up to get our lunch at the Starlight Diner was to hear a, "Mr. Ho!". The world is really small. Never did I expect to see one of my kids from BMSS at Disneyland while I was on holiday. Haha.
With the entire day for us today, we took our time strolling around the park taking pictures and trying out the rides. We caught up with Chip & Dale for some pictures when we got in.
After lunch we headed over for "The Golden Mickeys" show. There has been some rearrangement since the last I came. There is now a scene from Toy Story while a scene from Hercules has been dropped. It was still good nonetheless and the Little Mermaid segment had the jellyfish going into the crowd and "disturbing" them with their "tentacles". Haha. Up next was the "Small World" ride. I was a bit sad to hear Christmas songs being injected among the "It's A Small Small World" song. Although festive, I still preferred the original in its entirety. At least the ice-cream we shared outside the ride was wonderful. Yummy!
We tried the Winnie The Pooh ride as well as the Mickey Philharmonic Orchestra which were normal and good respectively. We also took the Mad Hatter's Tea Cup ride and I was feeling woozy after a ride in it. Haha. There was a lot of queuing and our feet were getting tired. While heading to Tomorrowland for the Stitch Encounter show, we saw a line forming and joined it. Moments later, Belle & Sleeping Beauty came out for a photo taking session. Disney's Belle & My Belle plus me & Sleeping Beauty.
I guess some people were just joining queues and not realising what they are queuing for. At the Stitch Encounter, it was an interactive show which involved audience participation. However, one of the audiences chosen was Japanese and she was attending the Mandarin session and she could not understand it?! Haha. I then managed to get Sunshine to try out the Space Mountain ride and she was kind of worried. All that twisting and turning in the mini indoor roller coaster ride made her abit excited and scared at the same time. Heez.
We ended our visit to Disneyland with a ride in the Jungle River Ride. It was fun but I felt it was a bit rushed. I guess they were trying to get as many people through the ride before the day was over. With that, we bade farewell to Disneyland, picked up our luggage and headed to our next hotel.
I had made a reservation at L-Hotel at Tseun Wan. It is not exactly downtown, about 25 minutes by MTR to town, but it had the best view and room rates. We were given a room on the 73rd floor!!! The view was great as we had the harbour view. People with height phobia would best stay away from the windows.
30 Dec 2010
All that queuing from the day before had us exhausted and we slept in till almost 10am before we headed out for 2 days of shopping and sightseeing. Today's plan was to head to the Elements mall at Kowloon MTR Station. It was big but I would term it as an equivalent of our Paragon shopping center. Not for us normal folks. LV, Coach, Hermes, Burberry, Cartier, Ashley Westwood, H&M, etc. Basically, all high-end branded stuff. Ouch ouch ouch. Even the display they had in the middle of the mall was a Mercedes SLK covered in Swarovski Crystals!!!
The place basically scared my wallet, ALOT! Haha. After she had done some of her shopping, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out to Victoria's Peak. Due to renovation works going on at the Star Ferry pier at Central side, the bus stop for the bus leading to the Peak Tram station was relocated to another pier. Thankfully I had checked the posted signs else we would have been liked the other ignorant tourists and waited at the wrong bus stop. When we reached the Tram station, we wasted some time in the queue for tickets as we did not realise that we too had the same offer price if we used our Octopus card. Argggg! We even had one idiotic PRC/DLL (People's Repuclic of China Citizen / Dai Luk Lo) lighting up in the queue. He totally ignored the death stares everyone around him gave him and he even had the audacity to just spit on the floor. When he finally moved out of the queue, everybody cheered. When the tram stopped and we were boarding, some of the PRC/DLL again tried to jump queue. I just stuck out my hand, placed my body near the tram and blocked their path. Who says being big-sized is bad? Haha.
By the time we reached the Peak, we were famished and decided to head to Bubba-Gump for some dinner. They had a great view in the restaurant but the prices were really cut-throat. Haha. Given that even the restaurants in Disneyland price their meals cheaper, the food here better at least match the standards. Well, I can say they did. Run Forrest, RUN!
Due to the long queuing and overcrowding, we only had 5 minutes at the observatory level. The wind was gusting and we quickly took our shots before rushing downstairs to get on the tram.
In the end, we missed the connecting train to the West Rail heading to Tuen Mun and had to take a cab at Nam Cheong back to our hotel. Phew! Thankfully we got a cab and it was already 1am by the time we got back into our room. One thing I discovered about cabs in HK, they got no midnight charge and all the other frivolous charges our taxis have in SG. They only charge for bridge toll fees, reasonable, and baggage fee for baggage in the boot compartment, reasonable too given there are no other surcharges.
31 Dec 2010
Last day of the year and our last full day in HK. Today I wanted to go for Dim Sum and had planned to head to City Hall. However, I had taken too long in the washroom and we set off slightly later than planned. As I was worried that we may not get to City Hall in time or the queue might be too long, we headed to my tried and trusted Dim Sum restaurant. Serenade. When we reached there, I saw the company placard and realised that Serenade was one of the restaurant of the Maxim group which also owned the Maxim Palace at City Hall. Hmmm......next time I really got to go try Maxim Palace. Once again, the Dim Sum at Serenade did not fail to meet my standards and it was really great. They had changed their pricing structure but it was still good food nonetheless.
After lunch we took a stroll along Victoria's Harbour towards the Avenue of the Stars. Sunshine told me that both times she was here previously, it was night time. At least now, she can actually see the names clearly. What is a walkthrough the Avenue of Stars without a seat in the Director's chair? Haha.
We headed over to a couple of the shopping centers in the Tsim Sha Tsui area and I guess I did not do my homework well enough. It seems that the shopping centers we went to were all of the same clientele as those heading to Paragon. Well, at least she got herself a nice bag at Kate Spade. It was a great deal too given that it was a non-sale item yet was $200 cheaper than in SG.
Before heading back to our hotel to avoid the crush of the crowd heading to both sides of Victoria Harbour for the NYE countdown, we quickly took the train over to Central and went to Lan Kwai Fong. No, we were not there for the pubbing but rather for the Roast Goose of Yung Kee. Thankfully we managed to order our goose and collected it barely an hour after we had arrived. To kill time, we headed to a nearby Watson's to get some relief for the heatiness we have been feeling; Pei Pa Go drink and candy. Our final stop was to head to Nathan to get porridge from my favourite porridge store. Their porridge has been the best I have ever taken. I ordered 3 bowls of porridge as takeaways as Sunshine was getting tired and we could enjoy the porridge in the comfort of our hotel room. A short hop was made to the nearby Temple street were I got some funny magnets and also to consume some Gui Lin Gao. Really needed it. Soothed my throat.
By the time we reached our hotel, it was about 3 hours till midnight. After our 4 days here, we began packing up our stuff for our return the following day. Sunshine called me a "cheaterbug" when I made her take the herbal jelly before allowing her to have her porridge, while I myself started consuming my porridge first. Guilty as charged. I quickly took up my herbal jelly and consumed it to show parity. Haha. When midnight came, fireworks were released from the building of IFC. I was hoping for some fireworks being shot up into the sky but it was not to be. Ah well. At least it has been a great couple of days in HK with Sunshine. At around that time we had a conversation and I await her answer.
01 Jan 2011
New Year! We are heading home today. Our flight is at ll:35am as I could not get a later flight as they were all booked. After a quick checkout, we took a cab to the airport from our hotel and it cost us less than HKD200. Check-in was quick and we were soon on our flight home. Here are some of my spoils of war from my trip.
These 5 days has been the happiest I have had for a long time and I can only wish that I can have Sunshine's company always.
28 Dec 2010
Did not really get much sleep in. Too excited about the trip. Woke up really early to go pick her up from her home. At least our flight was not too early but the timing was good enough. 8:15am flight out of Changi Airport. We slept most of the flight there, I guess we were both exhausted by our lack of sleep. One thing about Cathay Pacific's Boeing 777 planes, the seats are too small! Fat or not, I am not supposed to keep triggering the remote control on the side panels. At least I got us the front aisle seats, so it was some relief for us.
We touched down in Hong Kong shortly after 12pm feeling excited and happy. Well at least I was. Just the two of us without any "tourmates" kids to take away her attention. Haha. After picking up some much needed shampoo, we quickly headed to the Disneyland Hollywood Hotel via taxi. The Disney hotels had really good service as I had sent an equiry 2 days ago and they actually called me the day before our flight (from HK!!!) to provide me directions from the airport. That is what I call service! For those of you who are unsure, although both the airport and Disneyland are on Lantau Island, they have no direct rail connection. Taking the Airport Express will cost more and result in 4 transfers (Airport Express → Tsing Yi MTR station → Sunny Bay MTR station → Disneyland Resort Line → Disneyland Hotel Shuttle Bus) and cost more. Taxi cost only around HKD110 and it was much faster with less hassle. The Disneyland hotels provided a drop-off service at the hotel as the rooms were not ready for check-in till 3pm. You can drop off all your luggage and go enjoy the park but you got to perform your check-in first. It was a cool 17ºC, a great temperature to visit the park.
By the time we reached the park itself it was 15 minutes after 2pm. It was her first trip to Hong Kong Disneyland while it was my second. As we had gotten the Stay2Day offer for those who stayed at either of the Disneyland hotel, we took out time strolling through the park. Although Christmas has passed, the park was still celebrating it and the spirit of Christmas is still very much in the air, what with the giant Christmas tree just at the entrance of the park.
We quickly headed over to the Adventureland for the Lion King show. It can be considered a preview of the musical we are going to see at Marina Bay Sands come March. After the show, we went to Corner Cafe for some early dinner as we were feeling hungry due to our lack of breakfast/lunch. The food on the plane was only palatable and not much to shout about. While having our "Tea-ner", the Christmas parade floats came by and we had a great view from our seats as nobody seemed to be standing up in front of our window. Yeah! Haha.
By the time we had finished our meal, I introduced her to the "crazyness" of the shops. She had heard how people can go "ga-ga" once stepping into the shops and she could understand why. All the merchandise were so adorable and I got myself "Big Stitch". By now, we were both feeling abit exhausted and decided to head back to the hotel to collect our room key and take a shower.
We were assigned a room on the top floor of the hotel and we had "sea-view". Well, the room was great. It was decked out with Disney images and even the shower curtain had them. Haha. Each of these rooms seem to be prepared for two adults and a child as we found the slippers and toiletries prepared in sets of 2 big + 1 small. After a quick shower, we headed back to the park. By now, it was getting chilly with the temperature dropping to 8ºC. I quickly took out the winter jacket for Sunshine as I was afraid that it may be too cold for her and I was right. When we reached the park entrance, her palms were feeling cold.
The displays at the entrance to the park was really beautiful with the combinations of lights. Even the Mickey statue and the christmas tree looked so much better.
We had returned for the fireworks show and it did not disappoint. Maybe it was the chilly weather, the crowd response was less enthusiastic then my previous trip. Hmmm.... After a great day out, we were feeling tired and returned to our room to rest for the night.
29 Dec 2010
Waking up only at around 10am, after a brief washing up, we headed back to the park. But not before checking out and leaving our baggage at the baggage services to look after our stuff while we headed to the park for the day. Great service! When we reached the park, we saw a very large contingent of scouts from various countries. Apparently, there is some Jamboree going on in HK and the activity for the day for them was a visit to Disneyland park. It was no surprise too when I saw some Singaporean scouts. What surprised me though was while I was queuing up to get our lunch at the Starlight Diner was to hear a, "Mr. Ho!". The world is really small. Never did I expect to see one of my kids from BMSS at Disneyland while I was on holiday. Haha.
With the entire day for us today, we took our time strolling around the park taking pictures and trying out the rides. We caught up with Chip & Dale for some pictures when we got in.
After lunch we headed over for "The Golden Mickeys" show. There has been some rearrangement since the last I came. There is now a scene from Toy Story while a scene from Hercules has been dropped. It was still good nonetheless and the Little Mermaid segment had the jellyfish going into the crowd and "disturbing" them with their "tentacles". Haha. Up next was the "Small World" ride. I was a bit sad to hear Christmas songs being injected among the "It's A Small Small World" song. Although festive, I still preferred the original in its entirety. At least the ice-cream we shared outside the ride was wonderful. Yummy!
We tried the Winnie The Pooh ride as well as the Mickey Philharmonic Orchestra which were normal and good respectively. We also took the Mad Hatter's Tea Cup ride and I was feeling woozy after a ride in it. Haha. There was a lot of queuing and our feet were getting tired. While heading to Tomorrowland for the Stitch Encounter show, we saw a line forming and joined it. Moments later, Belle & Sleeping Beauty came out for a photo taking session. Disney's Belle & My Belle plus me & Sleeping Beauty.
I guess some people were just joining queues and not realising what they are queuing for. At the Stitch Encounter, it was an interactive show which involved audience participation. However, one of the audiences chosen was Japanese and she was attending the Mandarin session and she could not understand it?! Haha. I then managed to get Sunshine to try out the Space Mountain ride and she was kind of worried. All that twisting and turning in the mini indoor roller coaster ride made her abit excited and scared at the same time. Heez.
We ended our visit to Disneyland with a ride in the Jungle River Ride. It was fun but I felt it was a bit rushed. I guess they were trying to get as many people through the ride before the day was over. With that, we bade farewell to Disneyland, picked up our luggage and headed to our next hotel.
I had made a reservation at L-Hotel at Tseun Wan. It is not exactly downtown, about 25 minutes by MTR to town, but it had the best view and room rates. We were given a room on the 73rd floor!!! The view was great as we had the harbour view. People with height phobia would best stay away from the windows.
30 Dec 2010
All that queuing from the day before had us exhausted and we slept in till almost 10am before we headed out for 2 days of shopping and sightseeing. Today's plan was to head to the Elements mall at Kowloon MTR Station. It was big but I would term it as an equivalent of our Paragon shopping center. Not for us normal folks. LV, Coach, Hermes, Burberry, Cartier, Ashley Westwood, H&M, etc. Basically, all high-end branded stuff. Ouch ouch ouch. Even the display they had in the middle of the mall was a Mercedes SLK covered in Swarovski Crystals!!!
The place basically scared my wallet, ALOT! Haha. After she had done some of her shopping, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out to Victoria's Peak. Due to renovation works going on at the Star Ferry pier at Central side, the bus stop for the bus leading to the Peak Tram station was relocated to another pier. Thankfully I had checked the posted signs else we would have been liked the other ignorant tourists and waited at the wrong bus stop. When we reached the Tram station, we wasted some time in the queue for tickets as we did not realise that we too had the same offer price if we used our Octopus card. Argggg! We even had one idiotic PRC/DLL (People's Repuclic of China Citizen / Dai Luk Lo) lighting up in the queue. He totally ignored the death stares everyone around him gave him and he even had the audacity to just spit on the floor. When he finally moved out of the queue, everybody cheered. When the tram stopped and we were boarding, some of the PRC/DLL again tried to jump queue. I just stuck out my hand, placed my body near the tram and blocked their path. Who says being big-sized is bad? Haha.
By the time we reached the Peak, we were famished and decided to head to Bubba-Gump for some dinner. They had a great view in the restaurant but the prices were really cut-throat. Haha. Given that even the restaurants in Disneyland price their meals cheaper, the food here better at least match the standards. Well, I can say they did. Run Forrest, RUN!
Due to the long queuing and overcrowding, we only had 5 minutes at the observatory level. The wind was gusting and we quickly took our shots before rushing downstairs to get on the tram.
In the end, we missed the connecting train to the West Rail heading to Tuen Mun and had to take a cab at Nam Cheong back to our hotel. Phew! Thankfully we got a cab and it was already 1am by the time we got back into our room. One thing I discovered about cabs in HK, they got no midnight charge and all the other frivolous charges our taxis have in SG. They only charge for bridge toll fees, reasonable, and baggage fee for baggage in the boot compartment, reasonable too given there are no other surcharges.
31 Dec 2010
Last day of the year and our last full day in HK. Today I wanted to go for Dim Sum and had planned to head to City Hall. However, I had taken too long in the washroom and we set off slightly later than planned. As I was worried that we may not get to City Hall in time or the queue might be too long, we headed to my tried and trusted Dim Sum restaurant. Serenade. When we reached there, I saw the company placard and realised that Serenade was one of the restaurant of the Maxim group which also owned the Maxim Palace at City Hall. Hmmm......next time I really got to go try Maxim Palace. Once again, the Dim Sum at Serenade did not fail to meet my standards and it was really great. They had changed their pricing structure but it was still good food nonetheless.
After lunch we took a stroll along Victoria's Harbour towards the Avenue of the Stars. Sunshine told me that both times she was here previously, it was night time. At least now, she can actually see the names clearly. What is a walkthrough the Avenue of Stars without a seat in the Director's chair? Haha.
We headed over to a couple of the shopping centers in the Tsim Sha Tsui area and I guess I did not do my homework well enough. It seems that the shopping centers we went to were all of the same clientele as those heading to Paragon. Well, at least she got herself a nice bag at Kate Spade. It was a great deal too given that it was a non-sale item yet was $200 cheaper than in SG.
Before heading back to our hotel to avoid the crush of the crowd heading to both sides of Victoria Harbour for the NYE countdown, we quickly took the train over to Central and went to Lan Kwai Fong. No, we were not there for the pubbing but rather for the Roast Goose of Yung Kee. Thankfully we managed to order our goose and collected it barely an hour after we had arrived. To kill time, we headed to a nearby Watson's to get some relief for the heatiness we have been feeling; Pei Pa Go drink and candy. Our final stop was to head to Nathan to get porridge from my favourite porridge store. Their porridge has been the best I have ever taken. I ordered 3 bowls of porridge as takeaways as Sunshine was getting tired and we could enjoy the porridge in the comfort of our hotel room. A short hop was made to the nearby Temple street were I got some funny magnets and also to consume some Gui Lin Gao. Really needed it. Soothed my throat.
By the time we reached our hotel, it was about 3 hours till midnight. After our 4 days here, we began packing up our stuff for our return the following day. Sunshine called me a "cheaterbug" when I made her take the herbal jelly before allowing her to have her porridge, while I myself started consuming my porridge first. Guilty as charged. I quickly took up my herbal jelly and consumed it to show parity. Haha. When midnight came, fireworks were released from the building of IFC. I was hoping for some fireworks being shot up into the sky but it was not to be. Ah well. At least it has been a great couple of days in HK with Sunshine. At around that time we had a conversation and I await her answer.
01 Jan 2011
New Year! We are heading home today. Our flight is at ll:35am as I could not get a later flight as they were all booked. After a quick checkout, we took a cab to the airport from our hotel and it cost us less than HKD200. Check-in was quick and we were soon on our flight home. Here are some of my spoils of war from my trip.
These 5 days has been the happiest I have had for a long time and I can only wish that I can have Sunshine's company always.
posted by Prosage at 23:03
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