Hong Kong 2011

Hellooooooo 2012 !!! Where did 2011 go to ? I haven't blogged for a while so really wanted to catch up on blogging before going back to work. Here's a happy snap of us in Hong Kong, travel dates 14-Oct to 25-Oct 2011. We had a "challenging" start to the trip but it all ended well.

Hubs planned our HK holiday - he booked travel & accomodation, did all the planning on getting around. All I did was put in leave for October & next thing I knew, the holiday was just days away. Exactly four days from our departure date, I started being concerned about my passport expiry date. It was current, but with less than 6 months validity, I might not be allowed to travel. I said to Hubs let's risk it, the worse is, he goes to HK with the kids on his own. And I was secretly imagining freedom, home alone for 10 days! Yipee!! But no, the MOTH (Man of the House) says NO WAY. So I renewed my passport quickly by paying priority processing fee of $100 in addition to the normal fee. The next saga was Qantas baggage handlers going on strike the week we were travelling resulting in flights being cancelled. Everyday I was checking their website to see if our flight was affected.

Once we arrived in HK & settled down in the hotel, I emailed my parents this:

We arrived in HK already. I am NOT enjoying this trip so far. The flight was delayed 30 mins, that's nothing. During the flight, Julian's temperature increased. We gave him Neurofen at 5pm before we went to the airport bcos he was showing signs of sickness after childcare. During the flight, we have no Neurofen cos it was checked in. Mama will be saying, "I told you so". (My mum reminded me numerous times to bring the kids' medicine on hand luggage). Qantas only had Panadol for adults, so we broke it into smaller pieces and fed it to Julian with chocolate. During the 9 hr flight, now and again he would throw a tantrum, crying & be unreasonable (eg I want to go home). He couldn't sleep & can't get into a comfortable position to sleep. Passengers were all sleeping, and one stupid passenger behind shushed us. STUPID, u think i like to have an unsettled kid ? Hayley ALSO developed a fever during the flight!! (can you imagine having two kids with fever on an overseas night flight without medicine on hand?!!). Hayley was not as difficult to settle down. She didn't cry loudly or yell out unreasonable things. Julian was just so hard to control. Vincent & I hardly slept. I swear no more overseas holidays until they're 18, they can travel on their own.

The flight arrived HK 6am, and we couldn't check in the hotel till 12pm. So we sat in the hotel foyer for a looooooooong time with two sick kids. We fed them Neurofen after we collected the baggage at the airport but when the medicine started to wear out, they get grumpy and fever returns. They keep complaining. I am so fed up. We haven't done a thing except deal with the kids' sickness. Julian's behaviour is hard to control. Cannot reason with him. Very annoying. Right now he's throwing another tantrum. We are better off staying at home.

That's a snippet of the initial part of our trip. Things did improve. We all slept for 12 hours as soon as we hit the beds. The kids were only sick to torture us on the plane. The next morning, both woke up with no fever. They were laughing & playing like normal! Our first destination is Disneyland. We toured Disneyland over 2 days. The park isn't very big at all, most adults I reckon will see & do everything in a day but it's suitable for kids under five.

Besides Disneyland, we went to Ocean Park, lunched with my high school friends, breakfast with Disney characters. Lots of eating & shopping, every night was Fa Yuen Market for me as it's closest from the hotel that we were staying. A hundred photos were taken, and really need to go through them to remind myself what else we did.