Day Seven - Noahs Ark and a Not Well Zach

Believe it or not the rascals have now been here seven days.  We have had a blast and Zach has spent the last three days trying to work out how he could stay on an extra week.  Not sure he has fully comprehended that I do not spend all my time checking out the theme parks of Hong Kong!  He would however fit right into the local culture with his fixation with shopping :-)

Today we went to the Noah's Ark park for a look around.  It is an odd place - kind of full of good intentions but stuck in the 1970's.  The gardens are fantastic.  The indoor exhibits - not so fantastic.  We ha a nice wander and sat through a couple of little presentations in Cantonese with English sub-titles.  The first was a rendition of what it would have felt like in the Ark - complete with strobe lighting lightening and a shaking floor.  All very dramatic!  The second was a little attempt at giving us a little Christian message on the back of 'we are destroying the earth with our bad conservation ethos" while trying to appeal to the secular Chinese population with cool 3-D images. Did not really work - the lasting images in our minds were that there was smoke for some inexplicable reason, the floor shook again and that Noah had a rainbow coloured beard.  Probably not what they wanted us to come away remembering!

We had planned to come back home, cleanup and then head back into town to meet Andrew for a good-bye dinner and viewing of the nightly night show on the HK harbour.  Unfortunately poor old Zach's tummy had other ideas, and he got off the ferry from the Noahs Ark Island just in time to lose his lunch to the fish (great aim over the side of the gangplank leading from the boat!).  He proceeded to feel unwell and show us so in the taxi on the way home, so was put to bed for a rest and recovery - we really thought he was just sea sick.  After the poor kid had to use the bowl again an hour later we cancelled dinner plans and let him go to sleep - hopefully he will stay that way until morning and then all will be well!  Please pray for Sandra's sake that both kids are well for the flight home tomorrow night.

So Jayna and I sorted a movie night and we settled down for Nachos and a Movie.  Uncle Andrew provided the sound effects to the movie - he sings along so well to Disney, and entertained Jayna with his 'burp-along'.  Rude boy.

Tomorrow Zach really wants to go 'last minute shopping' and Jayna wants to go up The Peak.  Hopefully we will manage both activities without anymore throwing up!

Photos for the day.

Zach feeling photogenic

 Now you see me.....

Now you don't!!!

The animals of Noahs's Ark

And just for Kyla

The New and Improved Disneyland HK - oops ours days are out of order and I do not know how to fix!

With much excitement we got ourselves into a taxi good and early this morning to being our adventure into 'A Whole New World'.  Believe it or not, Disney has introduced two new worlds since I visited with the boys - Toyland and Grizzly Grulch were both very popular and had some great new rides.

Jayna has some excellent photos from Disney on her blog (jaynapalmer.blogspot.com and I left my camera behind....so suffice to say, Disneyland still plays inane music, I am still very grateful that I do not work there, and we had a great day!

Oh Darn - It is Tuesday....and so the Wetlands are closed!

Well we made it all the way to the New Territories this morning to visit the Wetlands.  But they were closed. Darn - if only I had had Jordan here to - he would have checked out the website in advance and known important things like which days of the week they were closed!


So...we headed back into Kowloon and hung out at the Science museum.  I even got an admission that the museum was actually cool and not boring at all.  Quite and achievement I thought!

In the afternoon we headed to Dialogue in the Dark.  This is an incredible 75 minute, totally black adventure.  You cannot see a thing - not even your hand put right in front of your face.

A blind guide then talks you through a set of everyday HK experiences - going to the park, the market, onto the star ferry, to a concert and finally to a cafe.  It is incredible to feel how your other senses kick in - the sounds and smells of HK are very distinctive and you really could tell where you were 'supposed' to be from what was going on around you.  We came away feeling grateful that for us, blindness was a short experience that we could emerge from back into the light - and a new appreciation of how people who are totally blind perceive the world.

Ocean Park tomorrow - what fun!

It is Wednesday - must be the day for Ocean Park

Much excitement again this morning as we got ready to pop just down the road to Ocean Park.   After the long trips to Disney and the (closed!) Wetlands we were grateful for our quick taxi ride.

Ocean Park is a fantastic mix of thrill rides and educational animal exhibits.  The warm HK weather makes the indoor exhibits very welcome breaks.

We'll let the pictures tell the story today.......

On the way up to the Thrill Zone in the cable car

The Mine Train - yep they really are going sideways!

Space Ship anyone?

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

We let Sandra come to Ocean Park with us.  She was pretty smiley all day - except when she was screaming! 

 Pirate Boat

"Smelling" the Penguins!  They really are stinky little fellows and Jayna was not impressed :-)

He does not know I got this photo - great job Aunty Sonia!!!!

Can you believe they went on the Dragon - FIVE TIMES!!!!!!  Sandra managed once, Sonia managed twice, but then it was just the kids....

Zach avoiding the camera.... a common pose

Saluting  "General Trash". 

That was us for another day..... well almost - first we had to SHOP AGAIN!!!!!!  That boy has far too much money and not nearly enough ideas as to what he wants to spend it on :-)

Off to see Noah's Ark and then flash dinner with Uncle Andrew tonight.  Hard to believe the week has gone by so fast - we are running out of time for 'Last Minute Shopping' :-)

- Sonia

Off to Macau (this feels familiar!)

Saturday saw us packing up the kids for a couple of days in Macau.  Cirque de Soleil are no longer playing there, so we had to find a different show to keep us amused.

To prove that we do learn from our past mistakes, we decided not to attempt to come back to HK straight after the show - little people are too tired and they snore on the ferry!  So... we used Hilton Honors points and booked a couple of rooms at the Conrad Macao.  The hotel was absolutely fantastic - huge connecting rooms with a lounge area in between.  The head concierge had emailed me before we arrived to say that he had noticed I had booked two rooms, and was that because we were bringing children..the result of some further email communication was these waiting for us in the room

After grabbing lunch at the local food court (where both kids managed to find Butter Chicken amongst the predominately Asian offerings we wandered around the Venice themed mall so that Zach could do some more shopping - he sure loves to shop that one  - and then headed off to our 5pm show.

The House of the Dancing Water was amazing.  Very talented acrobatic troop with the added interest of a huge pool that that the stage rose up out of - some of the show was completely in water, some on a floating stage.  It was incredible how fast they could 'empty' or 'refill' the set - really just the time it took for them to transition from one scene to another.  Jayna had some scary moments at the beginning with the scary pirate people, but we all loved it by the end.

Zach's favourite was the Motor Bike stunt men!








Dinner Saturday was the Hard Rock Cafe and we have the pictures to prove we were there.  We even got the Motley Crew on camera for Craig...

We happily went off to our hotel room and agreed to meet in the middle room to go down to breakfast at 8. Andrew and I knew we would never wake up that early in a great pitch black hotel room with a comfy bed so we set the alarm.  Sandra was pretty sure she had two alarm clocks so did not bother.  Andrew and I were on time.... Sandra, Jayna and Zach not so much!  Jetlag had finally been overcome and the kids did not wake at 3 or 4 or 6...they were still all asleep when we knocked on their door just after 8!  That must have been 11 straight hours for the rascals and was a great start to the day.

Hotel breakfast buffet, morning by the fantastic pool, 2pm ferry back to HK had us back home around 4pm.  Andrew offered to make dinner (yeah Andrew!) but first we needed to walk to the supermarket to get ingredients.  We made a quick detour to the dog park to attempt to count the dogs - so many that it was impossible - they kept moving and being double-counted!  Andrews fried rice was delicious and an early night was order of the day to get us all ready for Disneyland on Monday.  Not sure who needs the early nights more - Zach and Jayna or Sandra and Sonia! 

Let the fun begin!

Hard to believe that the much awaited visit with Zach and Jayna has arrived!  I managed to win the "let's fly to Hong Kong" race by just an hour or so thanks to their slightly misfunctioning A380 that required them to return to the Sydney terminal for an hour or so to have some mysterious message on the cockpit monitors resolved.

After collecting our combined luggage and only just fitting it into the boot of the taxi we were on our way to find Andrew, Jenny and two rascal cats.  Andrew and Jenny were just find and seemed happy to see Sandra and the kids.  Miyako was curious at who we had dragged home this time, and Sachi was plain unimpressed!  She is definitely never going to be our most social cat - even when one of us is away a few days it takes her a while to warm back up to us when we return.  It took her all of Friday before she was prepared to even be in the same room as our illustrious guests, and until Saturday morning until Zach could entice her to let him pat her.  

Anyways, we needed to decide what to do on Friday so out came the thinking caps and we started through the list.  Zach was quick off the mark.  He wanted to go shopping.  He wanted to go to every place in Hong Kong that sold Lego.  And so we did... Some of them we even went to twice! Believe it or not we spent the whole day shopping.  We came home to make piza for dinner and then packed everyone off to bed for a nice early night before heading to Macao on Saturday

Zach is still waking early - Jayna not so much!  Sandra had a lot of fun convincing him that 3.30, 4.00, 4.30, 5.00 and 5.30 were all way to early to get up.  6.00 was deemed just acceptable, and out came the Captain Crunch cereal.  Amazing how much that kid can eat!!

We left home at about 9.00 to catch the ferry to Macao. The first order of the day for Zach was some more shopping - money sure burns holes in his pockets!   At five we headed to the theatre for the House of the Dancing Water Show.  Jayna will tell you that it had some scary loud moments!  All in all though I think we al/l enjoyed ourselves. Hard Rock Cafe for dinner was the end of our day. Very yumm! Photos tomorrow when we are back homed