Hong Kong with Julie & Becca

As part of their visit, Julie and Becca wanted to go to Hong Kong! We packed our bags…

I let each of the kids bring a backpack with a couple of toys and their ipad. I knew I needed to check Arabella’s backpack before we left the house and just as I suspected…she is my little hoarder.

Naha airport.

Just a short flight later, we were there!

We just love how considerate Asian countries are when it comes to moms and their littles.

It got a little crowded.

Hong Kong is so drastically different than Okinawa in just about every way. The city is huge and hectic and the people are not nearly as nice as Okinawan’s but it’s always fun to experience another country.

We found our hotel!

Nice, right? Check out our gorgeous view.

Julie and Becca didn’t seem to be super adventurous when it came to food so we tried to stay as “american” as we could when it came to food. Of all of these options can you guess what we chose?

Outback it was! It’s been 2 years so it was a treat.

Apparently, I was a little hungrier than Rich…just a little.

After dinner we went to Victoria Harbour to see The Symphony of Lights. It was over crowded and it was pretty hard to see anything so that wasn’t super impressive but it was a pretty cool atmosphere after the light show. There was a boy band playing and people were just kind of hanging out.

The next day we were in for it. After a quick breakfast

we went to see the 10,000 Buddahs. It was HOT!

The buddah’s started out pretty normal but got quite strange as we got further up.

 

Stretchy arms like Luffy!

This is where it got really weird…

We made it to the top and nobody collapsed from heat exhaustion!

At the very top there were…more buddahs, but there was also this beautiful white female buddah that I looked up and found out she is called Guan Yin, the buddah of compassion.

 

Aunt Becca, always humoring Eva with her “pose” haha!

Then there’s this nut.

It was really pretty up there and then there was the view of the city.

Time to make our way back down.

 

After the 10,000 Buddahs, we went to a mall for lunch. That was an interesting experience. We were all so thirsty but all they would serve us was hot water for tea. When we kept asking for ice water they looked at us like we were nuts but eventually the server brought us each a glass of ice but no water. We had to use the hot water they had given us for tea and pour it in our ice water.

After that meal we definitely needed to treat ourselves to donuts and melon pan. We were all a little jealous of Eva’s choice.

 

We went to the Nan Lian Garden which we had been to last time we were in Hong Kong but loved it so much we had to take Becca and Julie.

 

These are my favorite pictures. Siblings!

 

Even though this garden was right in the middle of the city, it was quiet and peaceful.

 

Everyone doing Eva’s pose, lol!

We trekked across town to ride the Peak Tram up to Victoria’s Peak. When we got there, the line was ridiculous so we opted for the taxi up to the peak and then we would ride the tram down. The way the taxi drivers drove on that windy road, we were all grateful to make it there alive.

In the taxi

Aidan said, “Mom, I know what this is for! This is one of those things that you turn to put the window down like in the olden days.” Yup, I’m old!

Victoria’s Peak

 

We shopped around and then took the tram back down.

We had to go to a night market to see what treasures we could find.

This is Rich trying to get a good deal on a chess set for Julie.

Even Eva walked away with a night market find!

To say we were exhausted at the end of that day would be an understatement. If someone would have offered to carry me this would have been me too, but nobody offered, lol!

I think we were 2 days in at this point. The next day we went to Big Buddah. That took a super nauseating bus ride where, again, we feared for our lives but survived it.

Eva started feeling sick while we were at Big Buddah. I thought it was from the bus ride but she started feeling hot and actually threw up. I was worried but not surprised as I saw her lick her hands while we were on the subway the day before. She ended up being pretty sick which was a huge bummer because the next day, our last day in Hong Kong, was Disney day.

I’ve got some serious editing and videos to add to this post but I’m gonna go ahead and post it for now. Much more to come on Hong Kong and Hong Kong Disney!