Our time in Hong Kong started with a very smooth travel day from Taiwan. We took the train to the airport, checked in (both very efficient) found our gate, sat around, loaded onto a plane, ate lunch (thanks Cathay Pacific!) arrived into Hong Kong, processed through customs, got cash, got a SIM card, found a bus that was express into the city, got dropped on the side of the road (got to love those times when we land on the side of the road with all our gear), walked 4 mins to our hostel, the receptionist/owner gushed over our kids and gave them Chinese New Year ‘lucky money’ each (HK$20 = NZ$3.50), were shown to our room and wondered how the day had been so simple!

 

So, still having energy and with dinner time approaching, we went for a walk, and found a park with a lovely aviary. Then we kept walking and found the ocean! It had been 6 weeks since we’d seen the ocean so we just stood and smelt it. Ha!

 

The following day we spent the morning resting while BK worked across the road at Starbucks. We were staying next to a school so we spent a lot of time peering out the window at it. Turns out a school is a school is a school. School Mums stand at the gate with their Mum friends chatting, little boys come up with crazy silly games and there are after school activities galore.

 

One thing I noticed about this school that kiwi schools don’t do (as far as I’m aware), is take all the kids temperature (by zapping their foreheads with no touching of the child) as they enter the gate, then gave them all a squirt of hand sanitiser. It’s winter in Hong Kong at the moment so every second person is coughing or sniffing. Anyway they processed the kids really fast and I think it would be an excellent way to attempt to keep the school as bug free as possible, catching out those ‘she’ll be right’ parents.

 

**I know you’re reading this Marcus, I thought it was an excellent idea for terms 2 & 3! Difficult to manage the 3 entry points to our school though.**

 

That afternoon we did some more exploring and I got distracted at the Sketchers shoe store…Budget? What budget? 😛 New shoes for me and little R ✔ My runners were falling apart and her feet are growing! Funnily enough R is able to walk much further in her new shoes without complaining so maybe I was a bit slow in realising she was growing.

 

Wednesday was spent waiting for BK to finish off some work and calls in the morning then it was off to Hong Kong Island. We crossed on the star ferry which had been operating for 100+ years, cheap too! 50 cents for each adult and 30 cents for each kid (NZD). It was fun to get out on the water and see the city from a different angle. We then found the central mid levels escalators, which are 800m of escalators! No, not all one escalator, wouldn’t that be an engineering feat if it was. Lots of separate ones that all joined together by 2-5 metre gaps. Fun times!

Up up up we went!

 

Then along to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanic Gardens, which were beautifully maintained and free! I saw my fave scarlet ibis birds again, they had a lovely enclosure there. Also there were very active monkeys! Then it was onto the Peak Tram, us Kiwis would call it a Cable Car, it works exactly the same as the one in Wellington, but it is twice as long, and much steeper. (If you’ve been to the Blue Mountains and seen that tram/cable car it was almost that gradient!) We were propelled up the hill to ‘the peak’ which had magnificent views of the whole city. We found a playground and had a nice sit in the sun.

 

Back down the cable car and MRT’d back to our hostel but not before stopping off at a ‘Mammys Pancake’ for a bubble waffle. Yum is all I have to say, I’ll put a photo up on Facebook to show you what it looked like, but let’s just say I didn’t share very much of mine with the fam.

 

On our last full day in Hong Kong we took a ferry (Kiwis – think those fast/comfortable/look like an aeroplane inside ferries to Waiheke) to another country, Macau. It was meant to be a 50 minute dash but due to very thick fog it was more like 90 mins, which obviously we were fine with, preferring to be alive and not in a ferry crash!

 

Once we got advice on which bus to take from the ferry terminal we were off to the Main Street, it had beautiful Portuguese architecture which was lovely to see. Also there were a lot of Catholic Churches rather than temples, a nice change! We went up to the fortress, where I had read there was meant to be 32 cannons, but we only found 23 so that was a fail! We also saw China mainland. I couldn’t quite believe it so asked a security guard and yep that was definitely China. We would have popped across if it wasn’t for the NZ$160 visa cost, each! Under the fortress we went to the Museum of Macau which had free WiFi (our HK sim didn’t roam in Macau) and aircon…oh and some interesting things to look at. We also attempted to go to the Grand Prix museum, only to turn up to find it’s closed and has been since July 2017. That’s the second time this year we’ve tried to go to a museum only to find out its shut indefinitely! (The King’s residence in Bangkok being the other one)

 

I had also read that egg tarts were a must try in Macau so we scouted out the best price and got a couple to share, very nice, it had something like baked custard on the inside and lovely fresh flakey pastry on the outside, it wasn’t sickly sweet either.

Then it was back to Hong Kong, we caught the ferry with a minute to spare. This time it took about 70 minutes as the fog had lifted on the Macau side but still a bit low in Hong Kong.

 

So Hong Kong, you’re expensive but a great stop over, you’ve got some good free things to enjoy. I enjoyed Macau a lot, it was $221 for all 4 of us (return), not cheap but worth it I think 🙂

But we managed to scrape in just under budget! Whoop!

 

Till next time!

 

Claire

 

 

Budget – $11 under!

Total budget – $219 under

• Disclaimer – Does not include $160 spent on shoes 😎