Hong Kong: The Not-So China

If you can imagine, this is the final city post in our Epic China Aventure.  But first I just need to say this:  The girls were real troopers throughout our 16 17 day trip.  Our kids travel incredibly well.  We are blessed that they can sleep just about anywhere, aren't picky eaters, and are generally curious enough to hang with us when we are trying to find something.  Not that we didn't have our share of I don't want to's on the trip, but a well placed snack, quick diversion, or letting them pick the next thing to see goes a long way to keep the girls happy. 

Our last leg of the trip brought us to Hong Kong.  As with the Tibet conversation, I was looking our our days and trip plan and found a few extra days.  "So, Ronnie what about Hong Kong?" "Sure - why not!"  and it was added.  Just like Shanghai, Hong Kong had a different vibe than some of the other cities in China.  But what do you expect from a former British colony. 

We landed from Shanghai early in the afternoon and set off for Victoria's Peak for the night view and some dinner.  Ronnie treated me to a little taste of home by the name of Bubba Gump's.  The view during the day was pretty hazy, but we enjoyed riding the tram to the top and decided to get dinner first and enjoy the night view.  The view at night was spectacular.  You could see the harbor, to Kolwoon, and even off to some of the further points in.  We stayed up there a little and enjoyed the night breeze and the scenery.  It was getting late and we had a big day planned for the next day (when do we ever not...), so we headed back down on the tram and back to our hotel for the night. 

Going back to what I was bragging on my kids about earlier, a lot of this vacation has been about what Ronnie and I wanted to see and do, and not necessarily what the kids wanted.  They earned a day of fun for being such good travel companions...  So, for our last day in China, we went to Hong Kong Disneyland.

We let the girls in on our plan a few weeks before starting our travels and let them plan out what they wanted to do in the park.  We explored every nook and cranny on the Disney site and then some more.  Then we found some really exciting info - Holly was going to be tall enough to go on Space Mountain!   We planned to get there when they opened and stay through the fireworks, though I was a bit concerned that there wouldn't be enough for us seasoned-Disney-goers to do. 

We hopped the Metro on Saturday and 45 minutes later we arrived at the main gate.  We even got to ride the special "Mickey" subway train.  First up was a stroll down Main Street and then we made a beeline for Space Mountain.  I could barely keep Holly still to take some pictures along the way; she was so excited to ride the coaster! 

The Disney Line on the Hong Kong Metro

 When we were looking at the website, I had told Holly all about how Space Mountain was one of my first roller coasters and I had ridden it with my mom when I was 6 as well.  Well, Sarah also happens to be the right height to ride the coaster.  Sarah isn't so sure about the whole roller coaster thing yet; she barely likes to go on the teacups with Ronnie as it is.  But she decided to brave it and go.  The whole time we were in line (a total of 5 minutes), Holly was just pumped; Sarah looked like she wanted to crawl inside of a hole and disappear.  I kept reassuring her that she didn't have to go, that daddy or mommy would stay with her while Holly went on the ride, but she didn't want to miss out.  So our time came to get in the seats and Holly settled right in with me; Sarah was on edge as soon as they lowered the bar.  Then...  the ride started.  Holly laughed and screamed and cheered her way through; Sarah cried and cried and cried.  Poor thing - she tried to be brave but it just didn't work for her.  Holly got off the ride begging to go again so she and Ronnie went while I stayed with Sarah and we planned out our next stop. 

The park wasn't crowded at all for a Saturday.  I think the longest we waited for anything was the Tomorrowland Raceway, and it was all of 15 minutes.  We walked right on to most rides, got a seat for all the shows, and didn't have all our friends on top of us.  After lunch, the girls were begging to find the Princesses.    And so off we went to find them.  The girls were so excited to see Snow White and Cinderella.  We visited and took pictures, then headed over to the Festival of the Lion Kingdom.  After the show, we went princess spotting some more and found Rapunzel.  She was really chatty - I think she was just as excited to see the girls as they were to see her.  We headed on down and found Aurora and Belle.  Sarah was so excited to meet Belle and even got a kiss from her.

After dinner, it had started getting dark and was nearing time for the fireworks.  So we did a theme park blitz - about five rides on Space Mountain, the Tea Cups about three times, It's a Small World, and Winnie the Pooh.  We settled in for the fireworks and enjoyed a fantastic show.  Sadly, we bid DisneyLand goodbye - it was nice to get a taste of home this far away.  Even more sad was this was the ending to our China vacation (or so we thought). 

We slept in the next morning and ate a late breakfast, as our flight back to Korea was a mid-day flight.  We caught the bus to the airport and boarded the plane, but someone wasn't as courteous to do the same.  They had to delay our plane as they searched for the no-show passenger's baggage and find more airspace for us to fly in.  About an hour later we were off, but we had a connecting flight through Beijing.  The flight attendants didn't have a lot of information for us, as they really couldn't tell us what was going to happen until we got on the ground...  which was 2 minutes too late.  At the transit desk they informed us that we had been rebooked on a flight out the next morning.  At first, we were irked because we were just ready to get home and the lady who was giving us our info couldn't speak a lick of English (though she had an "I speak English" nametag on).  But other than that, we decided to head to the hotel because it was going to be an early morning flight the next day. 

In the flight delay debacle, we got to chatting with some French exchange students, who had gone to Hong Kong for a long weekend.  They are studying civil engineering at a university near Suwon.  It was fun to talk with them, they didn't mind our kids asking all sorts of questions about why they had different accents, where they were from, and what their favorite thing was about Korea.  They also seemed entertained by the Oliver girl's antics as they were getting a bit impatient with all the hurry up and wait, and even joined in on some of the hide and seek and I Spy. 

Finally, about 12 hours later than originally planned, we landed safely back on Korean soil and made our way back to the house.  Our trip of a lifetime that took months to plan, had us travelling thousands of miles, and meeting the most interesting people had finally come to an end.   We've talked about it and we can't say that there was just one experience that was our favorite, it was too varied and different to even compare.  Suffice to say, I am already planning what will happen on our "next" trip to China.