Hong Kong!

Michael had a work trip that brought him to Hong Kong while the kids were out of school, so Elizabeth and the monkeys tagged along!   Hong Kong was an incredibly vibrant and dense city.  It feels a lot like a New York City but packed into a fraction of the space.  It has taken the top spot in Michaels "Blade Runner" rankings of Asian cities (having displaced Jakarta)

 

There is still a strong streak of colonial history and culture that runs through Hong Kong.  Just like in Singapore, the upper echelons of local Chinese families embraced British traditions seeking opportunity and favor, and now it is hard to separate the "foreign" influence from the hybrid adoption.  Examples inlcude the noonday gun that fires every day at precisely 12:00, the street names (and driving on the left, unlike mainland China), high tea and British-made narrow-gauge double-decker trams.

Photo credit Se Meyer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm54y-6CEBk

Another tradition that has endured is horse racing.  The first Hong Kong horse races were held in 1841 as entertainment for the upper class, but over time has become more accessible to the general populace.  Now, the Happy Valley Racecourse, located in the middle of the city, has races every Wednesday evening for a $10HKD (~$2USD) entry and attracts a huge crowd of locals with some tourists thrown in.  Although there's some serious gambling that goes on, it's also a pretty great party with beer, hot dogs, and live music between races.

Not pictured - synchronized dance routines performed between races.

Horse Racing!  Cheap beer!  Is this what Canterbury Park is like?

Meanwhile, Elizabeth took a later flight with the monkeys - who were as helpful and well behaved as can be expected. By this time, they are quite the experienced travelers, but they are still kids. They were disappointed that our flight did not feature screens, and Elizabeth let slip a short "when I was your age" lecture.

We all want to push the cart!

To keep it simple on a full solo-parenting day in a new city, Elizabeth took the kids to Hong Kong Disneyland. It's accessible by public transit, and even has it's own MTR line (you can tell by the Mickey-shaped windows), where Eldest showed Elizabeth how to add crazy filters to photos (not pictured here).

We arrived just in time for a parade, which really set the mood. Once the music started, Elizabeth (the Disney skeptic) got swept up in the magic.

We explored the various lands, with Middle Child getting excited by a Spider-Man sighting (the place has been overrun with Marvel characters!), and Elizabeth really enjoying the immersive themeing of Toy Story Land.

Honey, I shrunk the kids!

As for rides...they're not really set up for a single adult with three widely-spaced kids, but we made it work. Eldest loved the roller coasters. Middle child pushed his boundaries, but really enjoyed the classic carnival style rides. And Danger Monkey got dragged along under protest, but learned to tolerate the gentlest of rides by the end.

Dumbo the flying elephant: ho hum, terrifying, or juuust right?

Once the rides closed, 30 minutes before the advertised closing of the park (Boo! We missed Small World!), Elizabeth treated the kids to light-up toys, and the four stuck around for the night parade - and light-up toy duels afterward while the crowd cleared. Happy and exhausted, we rode the MTR back to the hotel and collapsed. Success!

Danger Monkey loves her bubble wand. See? I told you Eldest got me playing with overlays.

Overall review of Hong Kong Disney: It is totally a Disney park, with all the associated pros and cons, but a much more manageable size than its Orlando counterpart. Elizabeth thought one day was enough, but Eldest campaigned hard to go back for a second day. A higher adult-to-kid ratio is strongly recommended.

While Elizabeth and the kids were touristing it up, Michael was being wined and dined by his local colleagues, which on Thursday meant descending on a hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant on the 4th floor of a wet market.  Michael finally ate chicken feet, it was not obvious how one stopped more beer from appearing in your bowl, and the waiters would sometimes spontaneously break-dance.

He is doing the splits while wearing bright white cowboy boots.

The baking soda was the payoff of a complex song-and-dance gag.

The next morning, while Mike finished up at work, Elizabeth and the kids recovered in the hotel room until mid-morning, then headed to the park across the street (very convenient!), which boasted at least 5 playgrounds. The elder kids quickly made friends and drew the Hong Kong schoolchildren into a game of cops & robbers.

That afternoon, the family reunited, we took the ferry across the harbor to the Kowloon side.  Our time-to-boat for this trip was very high, especially considering how many different islands were involved between airport, Disneyland, and downtown itself.

Somehow these ferries were bi--directional.  The seat backs flipped over to face the other direction.

In Kowloon we explored the harborfront boardwalk and got a view of the Hong Kong Island skyline.  The haze is a thick blanket of air pollution, about half of which is from local automobile traffic and the coal-burning power plants that supply the city's electricity.  The rest blows in on the prevailing winds from mainland China.  Some days were sunnier than this, but there was always a thick haze in the air.

Hazy Hong Kong

If you look closely you can see a surly teenager starting to shed its chrysalis.

After taking in the view we wandered past a fashion show that was setting up (that appeared to consist entirely of tasteless Native American headdresses), and hiked up towards the Temple Street night market for dinner. First: more snacks, while trying not to think about gutter oil.

The day we learned Danger Monkey will eat a full pint of fish balls if left to her own devices.

The night market was lively, and we eventually gave up trying to optimize our restaurant selection and sat down at the closest table to where we were standing.  It was delicious, and the kids got to watch the seafood trying to climb out of its plastic buckets.  Alongside the fried duck, dumplings, and sweet-and-sour pork we had some amazing fried noodles.  For anyone reading this that remembers the old "Hong Kong Noodles" in dinkytown, it turns out that place was crazy authentic.

Bustling, but not absolutely insanely crowded.  Yet.

We skipped the spicy crab.  Maybe next time.

The next day was a hiking day, so we decided to start with a hearty breakfast of authentic Hong Kong dim sum.

<peek!>

Fancy restaurants are the best for making funny faces in.

Then we took the MTR to the end of the line to where we could pick up a relatively short hike over the ridge of mountains that occupied the southeastern region of the island.  There is a longer (and more famous) trail called the Dragon's Back that we decided was a little too long for our short-leggers, but even with the more forgiving 4km trail we still had our work cut out for us.  The first stretch was a 45-degree staircase through a cemetary.

The whole place smelled like burning paper and incense.

Such steps.

...then up another two equally long staircases, finally leading to a park at the pass where we rested while the kids played with caterpillars.

Skeptical.  Her siblings wanted to know how many they could bring home as pets.

On the other side of the ridge we were suddenly in a fundamentally different ecosystem and climate.  Jungle plants and shrieking insects were replaced by pines,  leafy trees, and short scrub filled with chirping birds.  We hiked down the (much gentler!) slope to Big Wave Bay, and watched a surprisingly large number of intrepid surfers fight for space on the larger waves while the kids played on the beach.  The water was impressively cold, though Eldest was still upset that we hadn't brought swimsuits, towels, changes of clothes, and beach toys over the ridge with us.

Believe it or not, the stairs down were harder than the ones up.

Victory!

Some lunatics were doing this without wetsuits.

Ocean!  Somehow we don't get to saltwater very often, even living surrounded by it.

After lunch at a beach-side snack bar we walked about 20 minutes to the next proper town, named Shek O where we had ice-cream and hopped a bus back to the nearest MTR stop.  The bus system in Hong Kong was surprising great (and appeared to be bi-modally populated with either full-length double-decker buses or 16-passenger minibusses).  We had pretty good luck wandering up to a bus stop, seeing a bus that had the name of where we wanted to go on it, hopping on, swiping our Octopus cards, and getting to exactly where we wanted to go in a pretty timely fashion.

We decided to pop out of the MTR at the city center and explore around to find dinner, but when we emerged the sky was clear and we decided to follow our family trip motto of "Just One More Thing..." and scoot up to the top Victoria Peak to take in the skyline at night.  We crammed into a taxi to avoid the 1+ hour line for the tram, and got dinner at a noodle shop on the peak before heading out on the tiny public road that circles the peak and affords amazing views of downtown and the harbor.  It was dark and we were tired so we don't have any worthwhile photos from our phones, but the wee road is actually on google streetview if you want to see the daytime view, and the nighttime view looked something like this:

Photo credit shiroang - https://shiroang.deviantart.com/

The next morning, our last in Hong Kong, we grabbed breakfast in a back-alley cafe that was decorated with (not "like"... "with") the interiors of 1950's streetcars.  Michael had a pretty passable full English breakfast, and the kids had french toast slices the size of their heads.  Afterwards we checked our luggage at the central train station (which is a downright civilized arrangement that other cities could definitely learn from) and took the Airport Express/MTR out to Lantau Island to see the world's largest outdoor bronze Buddha.  From the MTR stop we took a cable car over the ridge to Ngong Ping, the home of the Tian Tan Buddha.  Though all of the signs just called it "Big Buddha".  From the cable car we got a great view of the airport, rolling forested hillsides, and pilgrims who chose to do the trek on foot, taking the path and epic staircases that followed the cable car line.

*Someone* has discovered the magic of funny faces during photos.

Danger Monkey is surprisingly nervous about heights, but only if they're safe.

The Po Lin Monastery, surrounded by hills and clouds.

Thassa Big Buddha.

The upper station was at the mouth of a tourist gauntlet of souvenir shops and gelato and coffee stalls.  In addition to hawkers, there were also a population of sacred cows that roamed around.  After a bovine photo op it was one last enormous staircase for the trip!  At the top we had some good views, and loaned Danger Monkey's shoes to a couple that forgot their baby shoes that they were going to use for a pregnancy announcement photo.  Someone, somewhere, has those shoes in a photo album that they'll treasure forever.

The Gauntlet.  We did not escape unscathed.

"Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows." - Tyler Durden

It will probably be a decade before we get a good photo of Middle Child again.

Enlightenment Selfie!

After paying our respects to the Big Buddha it was time to catch a bus to the airport.  The gate had a great view of the sun setting over the South China Sea and the armada of construction barges currently reclaiming enough new land to build runway three (and possibly wipe out the White Dolphin). Eldest and Danger Monkey made friends with other kids at the airport using Eldest's increasing Mandarin fluency and the universal language of Duplos.  Casual interactions with locals remains a highlight of our travels, and the more different and amazing places we see, the more we make sure to leave room in our plans for chance encounters and the more eager we are to take advantage of those opportunities!

Saying Farewell to Hong Kong

From Michael:  All in all, I had an amazing time in Hong Kong.  A lot of that can be chalked up to being in town for a relatively low-stress work event that meant I had a built-in network of locals eager to show off their city, but it is also just an amazing city full of genuinely interesting things going on, historical curiosities, amazing food, and incredible landscapes and architecture.  It was not originally on our must-visit list for our time in Singapore, but it might be one of the few places we go back to.

Name that 8-bit Karate Game!