We had breakfast at the airport, and the plane left for Hong Kong 8 in the morning. We arrived in Hong Kong a little after 10 am. We got MTR cards for everyone except my nephew (he's less than 2 years old so he doesn't need one), and quickly proceeded to the waiting area where our travel agent arranged for our hotel transfer.
Ideally at this time we would have gone straight to the hotel, but we had to wait for some people from OUR flight to arrive so we could take the same bus to our respective hotels. Guess what? The latecomers meandered over at nearly 11:30 am already. I think they must have been hungry and decided to eat first, how else could you explain why it took them so long to find us?It was very inconsiderate of them but we just shrugged it off. I was kind of expecting travel frustrations as part and parcel of ANY trip, and was determined to remain cheerful. It was great that most of my family, particularly my brothers-in-law, had the same attitude.
We checked in at Newton HK in North Point about 45 minutes later. Their rooms are tiny, but quite clean. Here's a snapshot of all my dad's and my stuff scattered about.
We had lunch at nearby Maxim's, and I took everyone's orders and went straight to the cashier while the rest of my family looked for seats. I think I was kind of the default person to get things moving since my sisters were busy with their kids. No matter, they helped out when they could. I had the Hainanese chicken, over the protests of my sis, Chem, since there was a bird flu warning out. Apparently a flock (do we call chickens "flock"?) of chickens dropped dead in a chicken farm in early December for no apparent reason so the government started slaughtering chickens and sent out a warning. No one had died though and the precautionary warning was set to expire in a few days. Also, my dad quipped: "It's not Hong Kong chicken, it's Hainanese chicken!" And that was that. Good chicken. ;)
After lunch, my dad and I hopped on the MTR to get Disneyland tickets at the Tung Chung concourse at the Hong Kong Station. I had paid for them online some weeks before and we wanted to pick up our tickets quickly, since it was peak season in Disneyland and we've heard they sometimes refuse entrance when the park is already full.
We got back to the hotel at about 2:30 pm, and I was raring to go shopping. Our itinerary for the first day was shopping, you see, so that we can pack all our purchases in our luggages and be done with it early. Unfortunately, we had failed to remember that we had kids along, and both my nephew and niece were napping, so we stayed in the hotel until about 4pm. I watched a lotta TV, and thank goodness I brought my Nintendo DS Lite with me!
At 4 pm, the whole lot of us trooped back to the MTR, where we switched trains twice to get to where we wanted to go. Papa had brought us to this giant mall, the name of which already escapes me. It's really huge. We walked only for a little bit before someone called for a timeout. Time for dinner. Here we are waiting around while dad glared at the waitress who kept seating several other people before us.
I wish I remembered the name of the restaurant because despite the unfriendly waiters and waitresses, the food was SUPERB. I miss the noodles already...
We walked for a while afterwards, went into a few stores, but didn't really buy anything. I gravitated towards gadgets and games and books, my sisters liked clothes (they peeked at EVERYTHING -- men, women, and kids' clothes; no wonder marketers want to target moms), and of course toy stores for the kids. Oh, yeah, re: the games -- very limited selection. Better to browse in the local Data Blitz than in that mall. There was a Page One bookstore there, but I went inside for only around five minutes (I was very very tired) before we left to trek back to the MTR, which was was quite a walk from the mall.
I took a quick shower, took out my digicam's batteries (I had forgotten to charge them back in Manila, which is why I didn't have much photos for the first day) for charging, hopped straight to bed and was unconscious before my head hit the pillow. As tired as I was, I probably snored.
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