April 6, 2015

Well, we’re more than a month into our trip and I am amazed how fast time has flown by. I can’t believe that it’s already been almost 5 weeks! So far, we are having the time of our lives. We have only had a few spats (mostly about homework…either Hayden not wanting to do it or Adam and I getting frustrated at each other trying to figure out who is teaching what.) We have had great luck finding our way around the cities and the only thing that has been lost so far was Adam’s Legoland California hat. (He left it on a train). Not too bad!!

We are in Hong Kong right now and it has been a great change from mainland China. After spending four weeks eating local food and having very little English/Western culture around us, Hong Kong has been quite a change! I hate to admit that our first night here we went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. We had cheese fries and steak…it was so good. Lol

The second day in Hong Kong, we went to HK Disneyland. It is the smallest of the Disney parks, but it actually worked out great because we got to see everything in just that one day. They had some rides that were different from the US parks, so that we pretty cool. Hayden (who normally is not a fan of rollercoasters) was super brave and went on Space Mountain as well as the RC Racer ride (goes back and forth on a track straight up and straight backwards). He has now decided that he LOVES Space Mountain and can’t wait to get back to Orlando to spend an entire day going on Space Mountain.

Hayden and Adam were a little bummed because they are currently building the “Iron Man Experience”, but it’s not opening until 2016.

The most awesome part of the day was the very beginning when we were waiting for the park to open and they asked if we wanted to be the honorary first guests for the day…of course we said yes! We got to go in early, welcome everyone to the park and Hayden got to turn the key to open the gates. They took lots of pictures and we got a certificate and everything…it was pretty awesome.

For the past two days, we have been on the Hong Kong Hop-On, Hop-Off bus tour. It’s very touristy, but Hong Kong is so huge that this was really the best (and cheapest) way to see the city in the short time that we have here. We were able to see Hong Kong island (which is where we are staying), Kowloon on the other side of Victoria Harbor, and the Aberdeen/Stanley beach areas. The area really is beautiful, too bad it’s so expensive! This is the first city where we have been over budget and we completely blew it!

Hayden apparently had too much fun at Disneyland the previous day because he pooped out for about an hour of the bus tour.  lol

We also went to the top of Victoria Peak (the highest place in the city). It was an amazing view. It was sunny when we were up there, but there was still some haze over the other side of the bay. The view was fantastic, but we were only up there for a short time…it was pretty hot up in the sunshine.

The last thing we did was go to the Hong Kong skyline laser light show last night. We had high expectations for this because we had heard that it was really cool. I guess we are a little spoiled by the light/fireworks shows at Disneyworld, because the laser show was kind of a letdown. There were a few buildings with the dancing lights and about five buildings with lasers on top, but the skyline is so long that it dwarfed the show and wasn’t all that impressive. It was still cool to see the skyline lit up.

We’re now getting ready to start packing up and we fly out this afternoon.  From here, we are heading to Hanoi, Vietnam.  We are going to spend about a month in SE Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand).  We only have the first city scheduled/planned, so the rest of the month will be a little bit of winging it.  We’re hoping that we can find some good beaches to relax at and get lodging as we go.  We have our tent, so if it comes to it, we can always camp.