Hong Kong & Macau - Nov 2008

---

Australia had decided to play one of its Bledisloe Cup matches in Hong Kong so that was the perfect reason to return to the amazing city and show off my new little boy to one of my bestest friends who lived there.

So off we took on our 10 hour flight.... the flight left perth at 10am and it was actually quite successful with our just starting to walk 11 month old. The flight back on the other hand...disastourous 😞 It has left us scared for a long time...but a quick summary is the little man was asleep at the airport and then when we got on the plane (11pm) however a baby right beside us in the baby capsule aisle screamed the whole time and started waking him up. So he got crankier and crankier and then he began to scream so they both screamed for a good 5 hours or so and we arrived back in australia at 6am, dropped him at daycare and hubby and i slept! So lessons learnt, dont do night flights and dont go in the baby aisle as there might be another baby that keeps yours awake.

We decided to stay on Hong Kong Island and booked in to the Charterhouse hotel in WanChai as it was very close to the Rugby Stadium and easy to get to my friends house in the mid-levels. The hotel was quite nice with a lovely foyer area but the room was tiny! They had given us two single beds and with a cot between us there was literally no where to open the suitcase. And...when he went to sleep at 7pm what where we to do, also learnt from that to get rooms with a balcony so we can at least sit outside! So instead we all went to bed at 7pm and we all woke at 6am 😊

We had a lovely time in HK and were out and about each day. We headed to the food markets very close to the hotel that has a very strange and 'raw' range of food. Live chickens etc ready to be bought and chopped up and heaps of amazing seafood still alive and ready for cooking. We did some tourist stuff and went up to the peak and checked out the amazing views of HK versus the mountains on the other side, and caught a bus over to the beaches on the west coast of the Island (i think its called sandy bay) which looked very beautiful and seemed so different to the phsychoness of the city and its skyscrapers. Great to let the little man have some space and get out and about. We also went out for dinner one night up in the midlevels on a street i cant remember that is full of swanky restaraunts - it was fabulous and great food. We then headed back to Wan Chai as it is full of bars and pubs and although it is supposed to be the redlight district we didnt notice anything too abnormal. We hired a babysitter to look after the little man for $3/hr and all she had to do was read a book and watch a sleeping baby - handy!

We went in search of some local food and had some excellent chinese and dimsum food over our week. My friend had a heartattack as we went to what turned out a very local and very chinese yumcha restaraunt. We can speak a bit of dimsum chinese though so managed to order and apart from all the locals being very curious of a strange blonde family amongst them our only mistake was it turns out you should wash your own bowls and cups in a large bowl of water they give you at the start...good to know 😊

One day we headed out by ferry to Discovery bay which is a lovely community of alfresco restaraunts and 'larger' houses for families. It has a great family feel and if we moved there we would definitly look at living there with kids. We also went out to Macau one day on the ferry. I was really keen to try the portugese food and see the architecture and history left by previous inhabitants... it instead was a bit touristy but we did get to eat and see both so that was lovely compared to the big city side of HK. We only saw the foyers of one of the casinos due to having our bub with us but we could see the seriousness of some of the gamblers so probably wasnt really a loss.

And of course we went to the rugby....Australia actually lost the game that night to New Zealand but it was a great atmostphere and the ground is in an amazing location surrounded by very tall mountains. And of course it was wonderful to see my bestfriend again who i hadnt seen for about 2 years!

---

Photos

Rugby Stadium
Great view of mountains and skyscrapers in the background

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Looks like the boys really enjoyed the game.
Nice photos.