We took our second trip to Hong Kong this year in early November. We have to leave China every 90 days for our visa's so this year we switched between the US and Hong Kong. We took our first trip to Hong Kong back in May and although it turned out to be a great trip it definitely didn't start that way. For some reason at that time I figured that we could fly in and just figure things out as we go. That is not a great idea in a foreign country. Kyle and I are not geared for trips without plans. We just are not 'fly by the seat of our pants' people. So we both got a little flustered when my idea of 'lets just hop on the subway, get over the the island with the city of Hong Kong and get off wherever the spirit leads'. After getting off on a random stop and walking for a few block to who knows where we had a very minor, small disagreement... about life. About what the heck we were doing. About who's idea is this anyway?! HAHA! Again, we salvaged it and it turned out to be so much fun, but we both decided that this time we were going in with a plan...
I decided it would be fun to spend a couple days on the islands because we enjoyed it so much last time and one day just isn't quite enough. So our plan was fly in Thursday evening and fly out late on Saturday, giving us all of Friday and Saturday to explore and cram in everything possible. We stayed in the same hotel this trip, which is airport hotel. It is convenient because it is like a transportation hub, but unless you want to eat airport McDonald's every single day, there is not a lot of places to eat. The hotel itself has 3 restaurants but they are insanely priced and after living in China for over a year I just cannot wrap my mind around Hong Kong prices, which are for the most part similar or a little higher than America prices. The last time we ate at the buffet in the hotel it cost us well over 100.00 US dollars. That is NUTS. So my plan was to hop on the subway, I know this is sounding familiar, get off on the first stop, which has a shopping mall, and try to find food for supper. It was a great plan. So we went, we walked through the mall, checked out 2 restaurants that seemed crazy expensive to me. By this point Kyle was getting slightly irritated because he doesn't like to 'shop' for cheap food when the kids are starving. But I convinced him to try out one more place. We went up this elevator and walked out expecting a normal little restaurant and instead it was a huge food court. Good right? Well, yes, probably if this was a normal food court. This place basically represented every Asian country's food. You could of course get Chinese food, Japanese food, Korean food, Vietnamese food, Korean food, Thai food, Cantonese food and I can't even remember what else. Every little place had plates of food out front that had been waxed or glazed or shellacked, or whatever they do to that stuff so it will last forever. So we started the food tour trying to figure out what the girls would eat. We went through the entire thing and by that time I was useless. I had no idea. I couldn't make a decision to save my life at that point, which is what I needed to do because Kyle had murder on his mind. I was on sensory overload and was like how about we just leave and go find a subway. HAHA! He just looked at me. Ok, I surrender. Pick whatever you think will be best. He picked the place we were standing closest to. He started ordering noodles for the girls, I happened to mention that they don't like noodles anymore. Wrong thing to say. Ok, I'm sure whatever you get will be great! :) I don't even remember what country cuisine we ended up eating, but it was good. And things were bound to get better, now we just had to find the mother some sugar and we would be set. First night was a total success :)
The next morning we at McDonald's for breakfast and then headed out to Hong Kong island to what we thought was a sea world type place. And it was, sort of.
On the bus to the park
Hong Kong traffic from the bus. These buses drive like race cars, I'm always surprised when they don't tip over going around corners.
We took the kids to Ocean Park.
This was the aquarium.
Kenz was so excited. The kid loves to look at fish for some reason, she was loving her life in this place.
Then they have a couple of random Panda bears...
Kaylie liked the Panda's
They also had a building dedicated to goldfish. They had an impressive collection of crazy looking goldfish. Kyle tried to Kaylie to blow out her cheeks like this variety (above) but the best he could get is (2x above). Didn't work out so well, but the fish were super funny looking. Goldfish are really popular in China, especially in the outdoor gardens.
Next was some sort of shopping/eating/carnival game type place that was supposed to look like 'old' Hong Kong. I don't know if it did or not, I wasn't here so I don't know what old Hong Kong looked like. But the gist of it seemed like there were lots of baskets of fruit, which is still going on where I live. Bird cages and lots of signs all over the walls and windows.
It was interesting.
Next up: Our favorite thing to do in Hong Kong, they had cable cars!
Kyle decided next time we would take the stairs. Shorter lines.
Yes, over the hill was a theme park. This place had it all.
The girls all love these rides.
Kyle decided it would be fun to take the girls on a roller coaster and somehow he convinced Kaylie that it would be a blast. This was their first stop. I strongly advised against this, it may scar her for life I warned. Luckily for everyone involved, the people running this beast had better sense and she didn't pass the height test.
This thing even went upside down, I don't think that our 3 year old was quite ready for that.
Next stop.
She passed height but not age. That didn't stop them. They are seated right in front of the tree. Kenz decided it was safer to stay on the ground with her mother :) Kyle said after the first time around she told him she wanted off right now. Then they went down the next hill and she had her hands up and was screaming. By the time she got off she was ready to go again. Crazy child.
After this adventure we took the girls swimming at the hotel, which is mainly the only reason they even wanted to come to Hong Kong. I think they are part fish.
Next up was Victoria's Peak. It is the highest peak on the island, you can hike it, take a bus to the top or take a tram. I thought it would be fun to hike it. Common sense from the mouth of my husband said are you NUTS? So we decided it would be better with the kids to take the tram up. We ended up on the bus. Not intentionally, we thought we were on our way to the tram, but a bit of miscommunication had us on the bus all the way to the top. Now this would have been a great trip, crazy switchbacks, super skinny road with a huge double decker bus, amazing views, but we were traveling with our notoriously motion sick children. I wasn't planning on riding the bus to the top so I hadn't given them any medicine. About half way up they were turning green and I was panicking because this bus was jammed full, in fact their were people standing in the isles, and we had no where for these kids to puke. Luckily we were able to talk to them and distract them enough from what was going on outside the window and they were able to hold it in. I'm pretty sure I had the longest conversation about unicorns with Kenz in our personal history. Whatever it takes. This is the child who just informed me she wanted a Unipeg for Christmas. I naively asked what in the world a Unipeg is. Duh mom, it is a Unicorn and a Pegasus in one. And she wants it to be pink with a girls riding it of course. Where does she get this stuff???
Kyle saw a Lamborghini driving when we were on the bus, he was pretty excited.
This is at the top of Victoria's Peak. The view was amazing.
The wind was a little too intense up there for the girls.
Before the escalators (yes it is super super commercialized now) to get to the top of the peak there is a bunch of restaurants and shopping. This is one of the best waxed/shellacked food examples I've seen yet. Impressive eh? Looks delish. My favorite part is that they stuck a fork in it. So weird.
We got to ride the tram down. It was insane. The tram goes .87 miles and has a height change of 1312ft. Straight up or down depending which way you are going. It was crazy steep. Kyle and I were standing because there were no seats and I thought I was going to fall forward and roll right out the front window.
This is the line to go up, even with the puke threat I was kinda glad we ended up on the bus.
It was a fabulous trip. We all had a lot of fun.
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