New year in HongKong

It was the time to visit India when me and my cousin thought of planning a family vacation in Dubai or HongKong. The plan was to extend the layover period in some other country for 3-4 days and bring the family there. The first preference was Dubai but due to few logistics issues we had to drop Dubai and fix on HongKong. Once the country is finalized we had to decide on the dates. Since we were going in December we decided to celebrate New year in HongKong and schedule the vacation accordingly. So we narrowed down the place and the dates. It was HongKong and between 28^th Dec till 2^nd Jan.

The plan was to bring family to HongKong directly from Bangalore and me and my cousin to extend the layover period in hongkong for 4 days. We were going one day prior to Hongkong than the family, hence we booked a single room for the first day and then a 3bhk apartment for next 3 days when family is there. HongKong is basically an Island and we arranged our stay in neighboring island called Kowloon.

28^th December

We started from US and landed in Hongkong on 28^th morning, the first challenge I faced was the food, I was so hungry and we roamed around in the airport looking from suitable restaurant. We couldn’t find anything interesting (since I am a vegetarian), we settled down to McD, even in McD there was nothing vegetarian except hashbrowns and pancake. This was the first challenge to start with. We took train and went to the room. The view was beautiful through out the journey. The room was so small, but that was the standard in HongKong. It was the same size as my bathroom. It had one Queen bed and a bathroom. We took shower and went out for exploring, the room was actually in the center of Kowloon, so the main street was just 50 yards from the room. We roamed around the street and got some currency exchanged to HKD, while going back we went to a french restaurant and a german restaurant as we were pretty sure when family comes we will never get a chance to visit these restaurants. Later in the evening we went to an Indian restaurant but unfortunately in the middle of the dinner we found a big fly in the food which came as a shocker and was the show stopper for our dinner. we went back to the room and dozed off. By that time the schedule was prepared.

29th December

It was around 10 in the morning when the family arrived, we waited for a long time for them to come out of immigration. Since it was their first time outside the country me and Ani were actually thinking all possibilities for their delay. When we went back it was already post afternoon, we reached the apartment, it was a 3bed room apartment which we had reserved. When we reached the owner requested for some more time before handing over the keys, we decided to go to Saravana Bhavan which was nearby. We ordered some food and in the middle of the lunch again we found a big fly in white rice. This was second bad experience in 2 days. We had to stop eating again and to get out of that restaurant. The manager requested us not to put it in any of social media as we started making an issue out of it by taking photo. Later in the evening we had planned to go to SKY100. sky100 is an observation deck located at the 100th floor, similar to Sears towers in Chicago. The only difference between chicago one and this was the 360 degree view this was offering. This was a new experience to our parents, to view the complete city from 100th floor. This was the only activity planned for the day, after spending good amount of time viewing the city, taking photos, we left to apartment where we had again home food and slept.

30th December

The plan was simple, one activity/place per day. This day we had planned peak tram. Its basically a tram which will take us to a peak point where the city view is available. They have shopping malls and some attractions in the peak, like Madam tussads, illusion center, and roof top view. We had bought tickets to all of them, Madame Tussads was the highlight of the day since our parents have heard about it before and had some idea on what it is. They took lots of photos beside the wax statues, they were basically excited to see Modi's statue and Amitabh Bhachchan's status. Once this was done we went to illusion center and took some photos, and went to roof top. We planned in such a way that we will reach roof top at just about the sunset, so that we will see both the day view and the night view of the city. This was amazing again. We were done for the day after these things.

31st December

On this day the actual plan was to visit the Buddha Statue, but in the morning while having breakfast simply we though of visiting the Disney world instead of Buddha Statue. But we had already bought the tickets to Buddha Statue and hence we could not cancel, instead we could only postpone it to the next day. Immediately we bought the tickets to Disney World and headed there. Disney world is amazing for kids, it has got lots to offer to the kids. We were the only family who visited without a kid accompanying us. Although we were adults and never into Cartoons we did enjoy the park. We finished off the park well within the time and headed back to the apartment. Since it was 31st night we wanted to go to Kowloon's Ocean center to see the new year fire works. We went there around 10:45 in the night and it was flooded with people. There were huge number of people may be more than 10000. We saw the fireworks, took photos and welcomed 2017 and walked back to the apartment as the roads were closed for cabs. Finally the plan to celebrate new year was accomplished.

1st January

The flight was in the night and we had to visit Buddha Statue and we had to vacate the apartment also. Hence we vacated the apartment in the morning, headed to airport and stored all the luggage in the airport and went to Ngong Ping. This was the starting point of aireal tramway. We had actually booked a transparent bottom tram. So when we were going on top of sea, mountain we were actually seeing the bottom. This was an amazing experience. The last day with memorable experience. Buddha Statue is actually around 5.7 km from the starting point, so we had to travel 5.7 km in an aireal tramway with transparent bottom. There were monasteries. From that point we had to climb around 250 steps to actually go near the statue.

It is a very big bronze statue of Buddha, again we took lots of photos and headed back in the same transparent tram back to the Ngong Ping. We headed back to the airport well in time and relaxed for sometime in the airport before the actual boarding.

We executed whatever we planned. Since we had our parents with us we commuted everywhere using Uber only, and we did not eat anything outside except a pretzal once. Klook is a great app using which we booked all the tickets. Overall, the HongKong trip was an awesome vacation, well executed.