Hong Kong

The Dean family celebrated Fall Break from school with a long-awaited trip to Hong Kong. Of course, the main attraction with three girls was Hong Kong Disneyland as it was the first Disney experience for Elizabeth and Emily.

Unfortunately when I woke Emily up at the insanely early hour of 4am for our flight, she had a 102° fever. We quickly packed drugs in the luggage and hoped for the best. As it turned out, she kept her fever and added a cough and runny nose to the mix that stayed with her throughout the trip. Thankfully she didn't let it spoil her trip and as long as we kept medicine in her, she was an amazingly happy traveler.

Megan extended her streak of airport injuries when she collided face first into an indoor tree at Changi Airport. Maybe someday we can travel without Megan looking like she has been in a fight. On a positive note, at least Elizabeth was healthy and happy to travel.

Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel

After a 3 ½-hour flight, we arrived in Hong Kong around 10:30am and headed straight to Disneyland. We spent one night at the Disneyland Hotel, a Victorian property that was so pretty it almost made me feel like a princess. It’s the first place I’ve seen child-sized bathrobes hanging in the closet. We hadn’t even checked into our room when we spotted Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland and promptly had pictures taken. Clearly we had arrived in Fairy Tale Land.

Meeting Alice in Wonderland at Check-In

We spent our first day at Disneyland making our way around Fantasy Land and riding the classics like Dumbo and the Mad Hatter Tea Cups. Along the way the girls had photo ops with the main stars – Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Donald Duck, Goofy and the girls were able to meet Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White.

The Deans at Hong Kong Disneyland

Belle and Sleeping Beauty

Donald Duck

Brian and Elizabeth on the Dumbo Ride

Just the Girls

Megan was excited to see Mickey again :)

Brian and I quickly noticed a difference in attending Disneyland in Hong Kong. At every kid’s attraction we were surrounded by Asian adults who had no children with them. Grown men and women were as excited to ride the tea cups as a 5-year old would be in the US. That didn’t surprise me too much because we had experienced the same at Universal Studios in Singapore. What shocked me was that when our girls waited in line to see the princesses, they were sometimes the only children in line. Chinese adults were waiting to have their picture taken with Snow White. That seemed odd to us and it was sweet to see how excited the princesses got when Megan, Elizabeth and Emily approached them. They must have been thrilled to finally meet their target audience! I appreciated how much time each princess spent chatting with the girls and taking pictures with them. We never felt rushed and the girls especially loved it when Snow White gave them kisses on their cheeks with her ruby red lipstick.

Snow White was Charming

Proof that Elizabeth Met Snow White

After a busy day at the park we returned to the hotel to rest a bit and eat dinner before returning to Disney later in the evening with Megan and Elizabeth to watch the Main Street parade and fireworks show. Hong Kong Disneyland was decorated for Halloween and the nighttime events focused on the holiday as well. Sleeping Beauty’s castle appeared to be haunted and the parade was filled with creepy characters. While it was nice to see evidence of Halloween in Asia, it didn’t take much to spook Megan. While walking around she kept spotting zombies in the park and wanted to know why there were scary costumes when Halloween was supposed to be a “joyful holiday.” We couldn’t help but laugh at that comment and explained that Halloween is often a little spooky but it’s all in good fun. Elizabeth didn’t seem to mind the scary characters as long as they didn’t approach her.

Sunset at the Park

Halloween Parade Down Main Street

Sleeping Beauty's Haunted Castle

We followed a late night at the theme park with an early morning breakfast with the Disney characters at our hotel. Prior to the trip, Megan spoke calmly about seeing the characters and princesses at Disneyland because she had been there before. In the end, she was the most anxious about seeing them all and getting pictures and autographs from her favorite characters. It was sweet and sometimes comical to observe. “Where is Mickey? He’s not going to skip our table, is he? Oh! There he is! Oh no, when is he going to visit us?!” Brian and I witnessed first hand what stress looks like on the face of a nearly 8-year old.

M and M

E Girls Liked Pluto

We spent most of Friday at the theme park and we were able to ride the train around the park, do the Jungle River Boat ride and venture into Tomorrow Land where Brian, Megan, Elizabeth and I rode Space Mountain. We didn't expect Elizabeth to be tall enough to ride it and afterwards she calmly said that she would not want to ride it again. Megan, on the other hand, thought it was "awesome" and declared it her favorite ride at Disneyland. The entire family enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear ride where you attempt to shoot at the evil emperor Zurg from a car on rails. Emily found the joystick that made the car turn around in circles and kept us spinning around the entire ride. It was worse than the tea cups!

Megan and Elizabeth Loved the Tea Cups

Sassy Mice on Main Street USA

Enjoying Disneyland

Mid-afternoon we departed the magical world of Disney as we took the train into Hong Kong. Hong Kong is situated over several islands. The airport and Disneyland are located on Lantau Island while the big city is on Hong Kong Island. It took us almost an hour on the subway (MTR) to get to the neighborhood of our hotel and when we finally emerged with all our luggage on the streets on Hong Kong, it was 5pm on a Friday afternoon. It felt like the entire population of 7 million people were visible on the streets around us. 

Brian quickly noticed some of the same annoying behaviors we see here in Singapore, like people standing right in front of an escalator with no intention of using it or piling into the elevator without letting people off first. Singapore's population is 75 percent Chinese. Hong Kong is 95 percent Chinese, so it doesn't take long to figure out that many of those irritating actions are born in China. As Brian noted, "We're getting close to the Motherland now. It's only going to get worse!" He had the same revelation I had already experienced when traveling to Beijing and Hong Kong before. It's amusing to observe and makes me wonder what Chinese people find irritating in the US.

We checked into our Holiday Inn Express in Causeway Bay, which had a great location right across the street from Times Square Mall and the MTR that we used quite a bit during our stay. Of course, it lacked the Victorian charm of Disney but it served its purpose for us quite well. At this point, Emily's cough was still bad so I visited a pharmacy in the mall for cough medicine. First of all, most of the medicine was in Chinese so that wasn't helpful. I asked the pharmacist for recommendations and she told me that Hong Kong didn't sell cough syrup over the counter for children Emily's age and that I should see a doctor for medication. That wasn't an option so I scanned the shelves and found "Aunt Pearl's Cough Syrup." It looked like medicine from the 1950s but it was printed in English so I bought it. It worked remarkably well for Emily's cough and helped her sleep. It probably had bourbon in it.

Hong Kong is famous for dim sum and everyone who has lived there recommends their favorite place for tasty dumplings. We ended up at California Pizza Kitchen for our first dinner in the city because we couldn't find a dim sum place nearby. And to be honest, it tasted very good. After we put the girls to bed, Brian and I went to Lang Kwai Fung, the popular expat area of town. We visited a bar at the top of a hotel and planned to have a drink there before walking around. When we realized it was raining, we decided we really liked that bar and spent the rest of the evening there.

Saturday was our one full day in the city and we made the most of the nice weather to do the typical tourist attractions like riding the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour for views of Hong Kong Island. We also rode the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria's Peak to look out over the entire city and the view confirmed that Hong Kong is a huge, crowded city. From the peak we could also see the south end of the island where there are just a few homes built into the sides of the mountains. I loved the combination of modern skyscrapers surrounded by tree-filled mountains.

Hong Kong Island from the Star Ferry

Riding the Star Ferry

View of Hong Kong Island Across Victoria Harbour

Peak Tram

View of the Big City from Victoria's Peak

Saturday evening we finally ate dim sum for dinner. It's one of the few Asian meals that our entire family likes so it was fun to watch the girls attempt to eat with chopsticks and enjoy their dumplings with fried rice. Later that night Brian and I walked around the Wan Chai district, which was definitely seedier than Lang Kwai Fung but we found a nice bar where we could people watch and wind down from a busy day.

Our flight left for Singapore early Sunday afternoon so we only a few hours that morning to sightsee. While I packed our bags, Brian took the girls on a tram (think trolley car) and ended up going so far on the tram that he couldn't find their location on the map and ended up taking a taxi back to the hotel from some obscure spot in the city. The girls found it to be a great adventure and it's certainly not surprising Brian would venture out in a foreign city solo with 3 children and have a good attitude about getting lost in the process.

After a brief outing to the outlet mall near the airport, we were on our way back to Singapore. I think the trip was a success with the entire family, mostly because we spent two days at Disneyland and I can't imagine a child not enjoying that. If we could do the trip over again, I would choose to spend 2 nights at Disneyland and only 1 night in the city because that's about as long as we needed with small children on the streets of Hong Kong.

I like Hong Kong because it has that big city energy that Singapore lacks and the fact that English is not the primary language gives it a more exotic feel than our clean little island. I came home feeling much the same as I did the last time I went there -- if I didn't have children, I would rather live in Hong Kong. With a family, however, Singapore suits me just fine.