Being stuck on a relatively remote, foreign island can leave you yearning for a lot of things – the bliss you feel while eating a gourmet meal, the sense of excitement one gets when looking at a lit up city skycape, or the convenience of having everything spoken and written in your native language, to name a few. I was happy to discover that all of these things could be found in Hong Kong. Seriously, going to Hong Kong made me feel like a normal human being again, which is sometimes hard to feel while cooped up on a military base wedged between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
We flew Hong Kong Airlines direct from Okinawa to Hong Kong, and it was perfect. The offspring decided that he wanted (!!) to take a nap early on in the flight, so the majority of our time in the air was quiet and peaceful, and we had a well-rested toddler at the end of the air time – seriously, a first. After going through customs (pretty quick) and getting to the taxi queue, we ended up waiting about 30 minutes to get a cab. I, unfortunately, had to admit to the spouse that he had been right – we should have used the subway.
Once we arrived at the Disney Explorer’s Lodge, the magic began. Let me preface this part by saying this – I was never super into Disney, I was always a little creeped/weirded out by adults who were super into Disney, and I never saw myself getting super geeked over a Disney-centered vacation. However, all of that has changed now that I have a character- and costume-obsessed child. For him, Disneyland truly is the happiest place on Earth, so I can’t help but absorb some of that unbridled enthusiasm and joy by osmosis.
The offspring was tunnel visioned for two things: seeing characters and getting a Star Wars costume. He settled for being Iron Man upon arrival, since we weren’t going to the park until the next day, and there isn’t a “downtown Disney” area with shops like there is in Florida and California. He was pretty heartbroken about not being able to see characters until the following day, but then we found someone in our lobby:
The Disney Explorer’s Lodge is the newest of the three on-property hotels (opened in April 2017), and it is priced somewhere between the other two – the Disney Hollywood Hotel (kind of Art Deco style) and the Disneyland Hong Kong Hotel (very Hotel Del Coronado-esque). The rooms and decor are all travel themed, and each wing of the hotel represents a different part of the world. We were in the Africa/South America wing. Each wing also has a corresponding outdoor area that reflects that part of the world – ours had iron impala cutouts prancing through a savanna-like landscape. There is an outdoor pool that was closed until the last day of our visit, which luckily wasn’t an issue because the offspring never wanted to take a dip. The hotel rooms were spacious, definitely big enough for a family of four. The only downside was that all the rooms had showers instead of bathtubs, which seemed kind of an odd design choice for a Disney hotel.
The first evening there we decided to ditch our hotel restaurant dinner reservation and head downtown instead. We took the MTR, and I can’t say enough good things about the subway system here. It is clean, safe (gates in front the rail so no one can fall in), and smells good (no food or drink allowed probably contributes to this. Plus, it’s cheap, about $8 for an all-day pass. We saw the downtown “light show”, which was honestly a big disappointment, but we did get to eat at the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan, and check out the central station mall – a mall above the main downtown subway station, which is awesome and super high end. We even found something that the offspring would eat there.
Our first full day in Hong Kong, we did an entire Disney day. We went to a character buffet breakfast at Dragon Wind, one of our hotel’s restaurants, where Minnie and Mickey took photos with the kids. Mickey also patted the spouse’s belly as he went up for thirds, hehe.
The park doesn’t open until 10:30 AM. There’s a bus from the Disney hotels to the park entrance, and there’s also a subway stop right in front of the park. You could also walk from our hotel, which would take 15 minutes for a fit adult, or 45 minutes with a meandering toddler. The park is significantly smaller than the U.S. Disney parks, and it was blissfully uncrowded on a Friday. We saw lots of characters, two parades including the nighttime light parade, and went on a few rides. The offspring was NOT a fan of the Jungle Cruise, but the carousel and the Orbitron (sitting in a little rocket ship and going around in a circle) were hits – we tried not to think about the fact that we could have done those rides at a county fair for a tenth of the price. We took a two hour break in the afternoon to recuperate and cool off at the hotel, and it was definitely worth mustering our reserves and going back in the evening to see the park all lit up.
The next day we checked out central Hong Kong, rode the peak tram (http://www.thepeak.com.hk/en/5_5_1.asp) after an hour-long wait in line (not recommended for a 3-year-old), and then hit up the Hong Kong Science Museum (http://hk.science.museum/en_US/web/scm/index.html), which was awesome. I love having a kid who’s as much of a science museum aficionado and I am :o)
That night, we used an awesome, Western-style babysitting service (http://www.rent-a-mum.com) and had an adult evening out. We had an amazing dinner at Caprice, the French restaurant in the Four Seasons, which has two Michelin stars. It was hands-down the best food I’ve ever fed my face, and the spouse basically had to roll me out of there. We considered doing a dine-and-ditch after seeing the check, but decided Chinese prison was enough of a deterrent. We then roamed around the crowded, narrow, steep streets nearby that are chock full of bars and clubs. If we hadn’t felt so dog-tired at 10 PM, we would have almost felt like we were 22 again.
For our last full day in Hong Kong, we decided to hit up Disney for another day in lieu of more site seeing. We missed out on the Big Buddha and the fishing village, which we had originally planned to see, but no one was excited about dragging the offspring through another “boring” tourist attraction. Instead, we met Cinderella, rode It’s a Small World, and got rained on at Disney. But hey, what better place to get soaked than the happiest place on Earth?
We all decided we wanted to live in Hong Kong, preferably as expats with a serviced apartment at the Four Seasons, so hit us up if you know of any job opportunities ;o)
Traveling Doctor Mom 