By bedtime was mostly back to normal. Hoping she'll be able to go to school tomorrow. 17 hours ago
I was off line today because poor E was sick. Vomited every 20-25 minutes from 7 until noon. Pedi gave her anti nausea Med which helped. 17 hours ago
RT @feministtswift: You go talk to your friends / Talk to my friends / Talk to me / But you are never ever ever / Going to shame me for my … 17 hours ago
Sign by the motor coach drop off. We got into Hong Kong around 2/3pm, ate food, got sims for our cell phones, got a cab to the hotel, checked in, spent some time in the room (as Ellie had birthday surprises set up by the staff), and then headed over to the park around 6.
Fountain by the Main Gate. Pretty during the day, but spectacular at night, when they use lights and the water choreography to music is spectacular. Ellie could’ve stayed here all night and been equally happy.
The park was doing Halloween related evening stuff. This was taken over in the Adventureland section of the park on our walk toward the Jungle Cruise. Adventureland was the creepiest of the set-ups. Ellie, however doesn’t scare easily, and Rhi apparently will sleep through anything.
Princess Ellie sitting in a throne of bones, as one does. Also from Adventureland. This was taken after the Jungle Cruise. I’d only ever taken the Jungle Cruise during the day in the California Park (which is my only point of reference for Disney-never been to Florida), so I can’t speak to how the differences at night might be night time related versus Halloween related (there was something on the map about the ride being a bit different, but I don’t still have it, so I’m unsure). Ellie thought the Jungle Cruise was awesome–it ended up being one of only two rides we went on multiple times during the trip.
She spent the entire first night, and some chunk of the second day in her Ariel costume. Because really, if an Ariel costume isn’t appropriate Disneyland-wear, I don’t know what is.
Ellie and Daddy on the Dumbo ride in Fantasyland (which is where, over the course of the three days we spent the most time).
Throughout Fantasyland there were trick or treat stops (although sadly the candy was the same all over the park, and was a marshmallow thing with jelly in the middle that Ellie hated–I’m told by someone who was just in the Florida park, it’s different candy and everything from chocolate to skittles–kind of bummed that didn’t hold true here). During certain hours, characters were there for photo ops. But we got there late enough that kids were just taking turns getting their pictures taken with the decorations at the stop.
Ellie was mesmerized by the fireworks over Sleeping Beauty Castle. We ended up watching them both nights because she was so in love with them.
Another fireworks shot
We wandered around a bit after the fireworks and then headed back to the hotel. Ellie whined about going to bed, but was predictably asleep within minutes.
We are going to Disney HK in 3 weeks to celebrate various birthdays (primarily E’s). I’ve booked the birthday add ons for the room (streamers, balloons and such), the meals with characters, the birthday cake to be given at a meal, and a princess makeover for E
Staying at the Disneyland HK Hotel, 3 days 2 nights.
Also worth noting-the halloween thing will be happening
Apart from that—lay it on me–tips, tricks, advice, warnings–GO!
Finally! An entry where I’m not embarrassed to be doing something I could/will do with my 2 year old in Hong Kong!
Of the things I wanted to see in Hong Kong that were local, the markets were high up on my list. I loved the street markets in India and Phuket, and I learned to haggle from the Master–my mother-in-law, Suchita. However, the guidebooks said they weren’t easily navigable.
Screw it, I said to Ravi…let’s take my crutch out for a spin. At 7 weeks out from the break, I had permission to put “some” weight on my foot, but I had fairly poor stamina. However, we decided that I could probably handle the markets if we got close enough…and if not, we’d do what we could and then we’d find a cab to get back to the hotel with plenty of time before the evening’s Taylor Swift concert.
I’m so glad we did.
Not showable…the smell that assaults your nose as these signs assault your vision
It’s not an open air market in the same fashion that I found in India or Thailand…or would later find two blocks away selling clothes, toys, and food, but rather a concentration of stores all selling fish, turtles, and aquarium supplies along the same chunk of road.
Which one of a billion different types of goldfish and other fish do you need?
Shops sprawl out onto the sidewalk, creating the “market” feel. Bags of fish are tied to stands on the sidewalk, and other goods spill out onto the pedestrian way as well. The street between the two sides of the market was choked with parked cars on either side and traffic lurching its way up the street as pedestrians played chicken crossing from side to side.
Pick me! Pick me!
I immediately thought of my friend Brandy’s husband, Steve, whose hobbies include a giant aquarium in their home. This sort of place seems like a mecca for home aquarium enthusiasts, albeit only really for the locals. According to the quick googling I did, live fish are not allowed in most airline cabins, and at least in the US, are not allowed in at all by immigration. Sorry, Steve….but if you ever had the chance, I bet you’d love it.
Cue parental guilt
We also saw many stores carried turtles. It’s a long story, but Elanor’s baby nickname was Turtle (and still is, no matter that it doesn’t fit her even remotely)…seeing the little turtles made us miss her like crazy.
There were also some more generic pet stores sprinkled throughout the market, and we did pop into one of those to get some guilt gifts for the kittens. Because we’re suckers…let’s move on.
A few blocks away as we were looking for an MTR station (as it could take us directly back to the hotel) we stumbled upon an open air market that sold everything from underwear to fruit.
Thought I was using hyperbole when I said underwear, didn’t you?
I was getting tired, so we didn’t spend as much time there as I would have liked. However, I got to see a range of goods on offer (although I never heard the “realfakes” the guides books promised I would be offered). The experience deeply reminded me of going to flea markets when I was a kid, and the markets I’ve experienced in Asia. Loud, packed (which occasionally made using my crutch tricky), and full of random and amusing thing.
The best part, unquestionably was when we stumbled across what was effectively a life infomercial. See the video below to watch the woman demonstrating knives she was selling.
Buy the knives!
We ended needing a cab to get home…the subway had an entrance in the market, but it involved walking through what felt like endless overpass walkways, and after 10 minutes of pain, we went down the nearest set of stairs and hailed a cab. I’m looking forward to the next visit…nearby there is a flower market and I would have loved far more time/energy to explore the markets we were in.
On Sunday, we continued our theme of “things we could have done had we brought the toddler” and hit Ocean Park Amusement Park. According to Wikipedia, Forbes says that Ocean Park is the world’s 7th most popular amusement park, and 33rd most visited tourist attraction in the world. It is far more popular than its rival, Hong Kong Disneyland, attracting more visitors per year.
One explanation for this is that Ocean Park costs $32 USD for entry, while HK Disney is $45. Another is that Ocean Park has been around for almost 35 years (thus people our age remember going as kids and now want to bring their kids) while Disney has only been in HK for 5 years.
We decided to spend a day at an amusement park because of accessibility issues. Ocean Park (and Disney, which was our back-up plan) advertises that they have wheelchair friendly facilities and that guests in wheelchairs can get onto rides without a lot of trouble.
What wasn’t clear to us is that while Ocean Park is technically quite accessible, it’s a nightmare for anyone pushing someone else in a wheelchair….because it’s built into both sides of a mountain. There is very little in the way of flat ground..it’s all pushing someone up a hill or down a hill, which gets exhausting. Sadly, unlike places like the zoo here in Singapore, they don’t have electric carts to rent to remove the burden from the person who is otherwise pushing the chair.
For us, though, the big draw was that Ocean Park has Pandas. While Singapore is supposed to be getting a Panda for the upcoming River Safari attraction (which will be our fourth zoo after the main Zoo, the Night Safari, and Jurong Bird Park) opening sometime next year, we don’t currently have one…and Ravi and I love Panda bears (well, we’re big fans of bears in general).
Nom Nom Nom
After some panda watching, we got on the cable cars, which go up over the top of the mountain and down the other side to reach the second half of the park. There is a special car that is made to be wheelchair accessible, but it is a tight fit with the wheelchair and a second person. The trip took maybe 5-15 minutes (I wasn’t paying attention) and the views are INCREDIBLE, even with the heavy fog we say on the day we visited.
If you embiggen, you’ll see the dragon carved out of shrubbery on the right…
Looking back at the bay (not sure what part of HK this is) from the cable car
Once on the other side, we found the McDonalds (what? it’s tradition to eat a McDonald’s in every country we visit!) and had a quick lunch. We wandered toward some of the rides I really wanted to visit, bypassing the Yangtze River Sturgeon exhibit, and accidentally missing the dolphin show. I was pretty sad that I had to pass up the big roller coaster (which also goes upside down) because of stairs…and the secondary consideration that a rollercoaster like that probably wasn’t the best thing for my foot, even if I *am* almost 6 weeks out from the break. We did hit a few rides…and the staff were very nice…in a wheelchair you often enter through the exit gate, and by-pass the line.
WANT
From the back end of the second half of the park, there are two ways to reach the rides back to the first half…up a series of escalators or by hiking back up a steep hill. Rather than force Ravi to push me back up the hills, I got out of the chair and rode the escalators, while he folded the chair and pushed it in front of him on the escalator behind me (in the same way we take the stroller on the escalators here in Singapore). This saved us a great deal of time, and allowed us to reach the funicular (the other transport option between the two parts of the park) for the ride back. On the funicular, there is an attempt using blacklight and music to give you the experience of being on a submarine passing through deep water…it was okay, but either due to lack of Cantonese or because it’s just genuinely not made clear, Ravi and I both felt like we’d missed the real “point” of the experience (other than transportation).
We arrived just in time to catch the big show of the day…Symbio. Shown each day at close of day, Symbio tells the story of the fight between the water and fire dragons for supremacy and how they learned to work together. The show is done with music, projections on the main fountain, pyrotechnics and other special effects. The video is just over six minutes, and sadly there is someone blocking part of the view on the left because I was shooting it from my chair, but it’s worth watching at least some of…at one point a few minutes in, they light the lake on fire.
Having spent the day there, I am a bit surprised that HK Disney isn’t more popular than Ocean Park. While they’re trying, Ocean Park is difficult to navigate with a wheelchair (and wouldn’t be a picnic with a stroller, either), the park is showing it’s age (it’s a bit run-down and dirty), and while it does have some big attractions (Pandas, dolphins, giant aquarium), I think Disney would probably give more bang for the tourist buck.
On the other hand, it’s not just admission that’s cheaper. I haven’t been to HK Disney, but I’ve been to Disneyland, and I know that food in the park isn’t cheap, while it seemed reasonable at Ocean Park. I HAVE been to an HK Disney hotel gift shop (guilt gifts…E has recently gotten into Mickey Mouse, and we wanted to get her an authentic one) and the merchandise is priced MUCH higher at Disney. Like I noted, Ocean Park has been around for over 30 years, so I can see how for people nearby, it’s somewhere you went as a kid, so you want to take your kids (much as I wish Whalom Park were still open, so I could take E and how we’ll likely take E to Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire at some point…both were/are fairly lame, but they have nostalgic value for us).
Sign by the motor coach drop off. We got into Hong Kong around 2/3pm, ate food, got sims for our cell phones, got a cab to the hotel, checked in, spent some time in the room (as Ellie had birthday surprises set up by the staff), and then headed over to the park around 6.
Fountain by the Main Gate. Pretty during the day, but spectacular at night, when they use lights and the water choreography to music is spectacular. Ellie could’ve stayed here all night and been equally happy.
The park was doing Halloween related evening stuff. This was taken over in the Adventureland section of the park on our walk toward the Jungle Cruise. Adventureland was the creepiest of the set-ups. Ellie, however doesn’t scare easily, and Rhi apparently will sleep through anything.
Princess Ellie sitting in a throne of bones, as one does. Also from Adventureland. This was taken after the Jungle Cruise. I’d only ever taken the Jungle Cruise during the day in the California Park (which is my only point of reference for Disney-never been to Florida), so I can’t speak to how the differences at night might be night time related versus Halloween related (there was something on the map about the ride being a bit different, but I don’t still have it, so I’m unsure). Ellie thought the Jungle Cruise was awesome–it ended up being one of only two rides we went on multiple times during the trip.
Throughout Fantasyland there were trick or treat stops (although sadly the candy was the same all over the park, and was a marshmallow thing with jelly in the middle that Ellie hated–I’m told by someone who was just in the Florida park, it’s different candy and everything from chocolate to skittles–kind of bummed that didn’t hold true here). During certain hours, characters were there for photo ops. But we got there late enough that kids were just taking turns getting their pictures taken with the decorations at the stop.
Ellie was mesmerized by the fireworks over Sleeping Beauty Castle. We ended up watching them both nights because she was so in love with them.
Another fireworks shot
Not showable…the smell that assaults your nose as these signs assault your vision
Thought I was using hyperbole when I said underwear, didn’t you?
WANT
