It's been a month since my last post.....it always feels strange to take stock.
I'm now in a room in Hong Kong Disneyland Resort's Hollywood Hotel with my family. Bringing the kids on an overseas trip was as much as the challenge that we thought it would be. The easiest part of the holiday was making the booking. I called up the resort for room availability, made a reservation and paid for it. That took all of 20 minutes. Then I went online to redeem tickets on Singapore Airlines for 5 of us. That took all of 10 minutes. Easy peasy. From then till yesterday, the kids were always thinking of going to HK Disneyland. It was a good tool to illicit good behaviour for that month!
I came home from China on Friday night after 2 weeks of intensive meetings and discussions. The flight on the way into Shanghai was on time for once. But the flight out from Shanghai was delayed by an hour. I reached Singapore at about 9pm. The family came out to fetch me at the airport. Once we reached home, I immediately set out to get the kids to bed - shower and sleep. For Ryan, he had to drink his milk first. That boy is a milk addict. Both Keane and Ryan fell asleep very quickly because I said that whoever didn't close his eyes and sleep would not be able to go to HK Disneyland with us.
We packed 2 suitcases for the entire family. It was a bit of a struggle because we wished we could pack the entire wardrobe. Xavier was pretty brilliant about that. He said, "4 days and 2 sets per day means we need to bring 8 sets for each of us!". But that would have been a bit too much so we settled on 7 T-shirts and 4 pairs of pants each. Xavier was very excited and couldn't sleep. We all went to bed at about 1am.
The next day, everyone woke up early to get ready. We had to take the taxi at 7.15am. The taxi driver was very amusing. After we settled into the cab, he said he had 4 questions for me.
1) Passports? Check.
2) Tickets? E-tickets, so check.
3) Wallets? Check.
4) Terminal? T3, so check.
Fortunately this maxi-cab had a TV screen. So it was a smooth ride filled with Tom and Jerry. After checking our luggage, we went for breakfast at Kopitiam. Then headed for customs clearance. It was tough to keep the group together because Ryan kept exploring. 3 of them were very excited about getting on a plane. We made our way to the gate and it was a smooth transit to the plane.
The flight was delayed so it was a bit tough to get the kids in their seats. Krisworld was switched on but the experience was quite disappointing without the headsets. Fortunately the crew distributed the headsets and all was pretty well for a while. Throughout the flight, everyone was interested in different things. Keane flitted between games and food. Xavier was very keen on the food and exclaimed that everything was good except the raisins. Ryan fell asleep and woke up when we were halfway to Hong Kong. He was pretty easy to handle when there was food. Food and a movie kept him in his seat, but not for long. He kept wanting to change places. He refused to remain in his seat during landing. Keane dozed off during landing. We had to wake him up and he remained grumpy for the rest of the day. I'm sure I don't need to go into details.
We took a taxi to the hotel and it was a pretty easy check in process. The room was average. The toilet was tiny. But we were able to get 2 queen sized beds so it was still a good fit. The kids were very happy. I had a brilliant idea to bring them to Tung Chung where there was a Citygate factory outlet mall. I thought we could fit in some shopping and dinner. That turned out to be not very brilliant. The kids were tired, we definitely couldn't shop. So we ended up going to the supermarket. We ended up with 2 boxes of Tamago maki, 4 waffles, some snacks and a lot of bread. Then it was back to the hotel before any more complaining could throw both of us into a temper.
At the hotel, the kids finished up a lot of the food. Xavier was very excited about taking a bath. So we went down for dinner after a short rest. Dinner was not nice. The food wasn't good and Ryan kept running off. The evening looked like it was headed for disaster. We went back to the room and put out a bath for the kids. It was very fun for them and after splashing around for some time, we rushed to get them ready for the fireworks. Our room gave us a fantastic view of the fireworks and it was pretty amazing.
After that, it was pretty easy to get everyone to sleep......and it is now morning.
Wish me luck for the rest of the trip!
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