In print...

I finally got my hands on the Nicholas & Bears catalogue! She's also on the website, but it's very slow loading. Here are some of the pictures:



(Look at that boy and his bulldog, hey?)
A very poor picture of the girls and the dresses that I bought with Leila's store credit earnings. Wasn't Leila kind to share with Annika? Although that dress will become hers in roughly 2 years...Leila also got this cute little red number. And that's all I could get for $1500 HKD! Anyway, all in all, I think it was a good experience. You can ask Leila for her autograph this summer and she may or may not oblige.

Tai O Fishing Village

The final thing I hoped we could do during our spring break was head to an area of Hong Kong that we hadn't yet ventured out to. Tai O is known as a "village on stilts" and is a little fishing village on the west part of Lantau Island. The houses are all built on stilts, and so it's also called "Venice of the East". Apparently. The other thing you can do at Tai O is go on a boat ride on search of pink dolphins.

All I really know about pink dolphins, I know from Annika. She was the one who first told me about them, and I thought maybe she was referring to a cartoon or something that she'd heard about. But no, she really was on to something and she knew about it because someone in her class had actually seen these rare pink dolphins. Later she learned more about them at the science fair and told us that they are pink because they are living in water that isn't good for them. They should actually be white. So you can take a boat ride, but there's no guarantee that you'll actually see them.
On our boat ride we passed through all the houses on stilts. Leila slept through the whole thing.

It was scenic and fun (and hot and windy), but we didn't see any dolphins, and the driver didn't seem to concerned with making sure we did. Maybe they're only out at a certain time but they don't tell you that because they want your business. Who knows. It was a really inexpensive boat ride, and it was cool to see the stilt houses up close.
After we were in a little museum display and these people asked to have their picture taken with us. We obliged and then we gave them our camera, because why not have a picture of ourselves standing with strangers for our own records?!

Yum?

Always a temple to check out.

The girls don't really care what we do, as long as there's a playground involved. When we told them that this is what we planned on doing for the day, the first thing Annika said was "will there be a playground?". Amazingly we always stumble upon them without even trying. Hong Kong does have a lot of playgrounds, and I'm a big fan of the rubber surface instead of sand or gravel.
This playground had a great view of the water, but then Mike took a picture from the other way, because the mountains in the background were pretty too.

This sweaty girl needed a bit of a break!

Our day trips all seem to have the same elements... there is always ice cream at some point! We seem to be back to the hot Hong Kong weather!

It can be a bit disheartening that when we get ourselves out to these places (this one was a taxi to the train, followed by a 45 minute bus ride), it seems we barely even scratch the surface of all there is to see and do when you're doing it with two young children. We always debate whether or not to bring the stroller. If we do, it means lugging it through all the public transportation, and looking for elevators and trying to squeeze through crowds and terrain that isn't stroller friendly. It's much easier to leave it at home, like we did yesterday. But then the girls get tired of walking, and of course when you have a stroller, there's a place to put all our stuff.

Oh well... it's just the season of life that we're in right now. But for those that are able, there is always lots of hiking and even more things to see at places like in Hong Kong like this one.

Chimelong, China

"I'm in Chim-a-long, China!". That's what Leila kept announcing when we were on our little trip to the mainland. Although I think we've been saying it wrong, and it's actually Chime- Long. But Chimalong has a better ring to it, doesn't it? Well, our trip was busy and overstimulating, and not so much relaxing, but it was a great little excursion out of Hong Kong. Mike and I commented to each other that for as many things that went wrong on our day at Disneyland, they went right on this trip. The weather cooperated and all the traveling, border crossing and hotel arrangements went so smoothly. The girls were all great little travelers, napping when they needed to so they could handle being up late and then still being happy the next day despite being short on sleep. I was expecting gong shows... or "adventures" is maybe a more optimistic way of looking at it, and ... and there weren't any at all. Yay!

We met Kylie, Jocelyn and Rachel bright and early at 7:30 on Tuesday morning and took a taxi to a hotel in Mong Kok, which is a short drive away. The bus, the hotel with breakfast, and tickets to the circus was all part of a package we had booked with China Travel, so we just had to get there and find our bus. The bus left at 8:30, and it took about four hours to get there, but the border crossing took at least half an hour and we had to switch buses. I had forgotten that in China they drive on the right side of the road and it looked funny to me after so many months of being in vehicles driving on the left. Incredibly, Annika, Leila and Rachel all slept on the bus, even though we were driving in the morning. It made for an easy bus trip, and then they all had energy for the rest of the day.

Chimelong Resort is this big place in Guangzhou, China that is basically a really big hotel with a circus, zoo safari, amusement park and waterpark. We thought the hotel was way nicer than we expected. It is also famous for its white tigers that are in an enclosure that the lobby looks out onto. There were enough of them that they weren't always all sleeping, so of course the girls loved checking them out when we would go by. There were flamingos in another part too.

After we had checked in and settled into our rooms, we headed out to do the zoo safari. My thinking had been that we would just hang out and then see the circus that evening, and do the zoo the next day before heading home. But Kylie's parents and brother's family had been last year, and they had said that you don't need that much time for it, so he thought we could fit it in before the circus and then have time to go to the amusement park the next day. The waterpark is only open in the summer when it's hot (ha! It WAS hot- at least to us!)
The first part of the zoo you walk through, and the second part is a safari train ride. We discovered a little monkey show that was happening and sat down to watch some of it. It was all in Mandarin, so we didn't stay for long, but at one point this chimpanzee carries this Chinese dragon, and boy oh boy, Leila thought that was funny. Highlight of the trip. She's still talking about it.
There was nothing in between us and these birds. It kind of threw me off, but then I realized that's how it would be if we were in the amazon. Still... kind of scary.

(duly noted)

So after walking and walking and walking (the zoo was huge! And so spread out!), we finally got on board the safari train. We saw many cool animals, but there was nothing in between us and them! No cages, wire, electric fence... nothing! Apparently there was a pit between the lions, tigers, bears and cheetahs and us, but that doesn't seem like much.
Did I trust this zoo, and the fact that all these tigers were not that far from us all unprotected in our little zoo train? Not at all! It seemed like a Yahoo headline to me, and I kept picturing in my head: "Cheetah jumps onto safari train at zoo in Guangzhou, China, attacking passengers. Canadian woman mauled." Fortunately we survived.

There must have been at least thirty giraffes and probably thirty zebras as well. They had so many animals it was crazy. Sort of puts the Edmonton Storyland zoo to shame!



And koalas! They had about eight or ten. This one had a baby on her back. By this point we were done the safari and were worried that we wouldn't have enough time to have supper before the circus, so we rushed through the pandas and the koalas.


Here's a picture of a tightrope walker, but I didn't really take pictures of the circus, instead I put the camera down and just enjoyed it. It certainly was spectacular! It had all the "traditional" elements of a circus and was very entertaining. There were profiles of the performers that flashed onto a screen before it started, and it looked like most are from Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, but some from USA and China as well. We have never been to a Cirque show to compare it too, but Kylie and Jocelyn have and thought it did compare. It felt like a very large-scale production, not a home-job. Annika's favorite part was the act with the divers (there was water surrounding the stage), and Leila's favorite part was the tricks that the bears did. Rachel enjoyed it too, but didn't last until the end, and it was impressive that she could sleep through a human cannonball!


The girls would not have been happy if we stayed in this hotel and didn't make use of the pool. So after a big buffet breakfast with the white tigers (btw this is what Annika ate: a bowl of cereal, yogurt, bacon, a croissant, a danish, a mini-muffin, watermelon, a pear, and a hash brown. Maybe even more, I can't remember. Growing much??), they got their swimsuits on and headed to the pool. I know it probably looks really nice, but it was COLD! There's a reason why we were the only ones there! I didn't even go in. The rest of them didn't last long, but at least they got to swim!

And... then we went to "Chimelong Paradise" aka the amusement park. This really ended up being the highlight for the girls, even though they had liked the zoo and the circus. What a contrast from Disneyland the week before- we basically had the place to ourselves!

It was huge and there were so many rides for the girls to go on. They would run rides for them even if they were the only ones on. For bigger rides, you had to wait for enough people to come fill it up and then they would run it. And Annika and Leila LOVE rides. Annika even went on a real roller coaster, first with me and then with Mike. It didn't go upside-down, but it was fast and scary and she loved it!

Since Minnie Mouse, Leila is no longer scared of mascots and instead runs up and embraces them. They attracted a little crowd when they posed with this guy (don't even know his name! Just the Chimelong white tiger).

Leila rode this train again... and again... and again... switching from the conductor seat to the back, to the middle. It was her idea of a great time!
When we booked our tickets, we were indecisive about when we should return home. Jocelyn thought they should take the 3:40 bus so they could be home for Rachel's bedtime, but I ended up deciding that we should take the 6:40 bus so the girls could just sleep and we could make the most of our time there. I had been regretting that decision thinking that since we check out early we'd be killing time until we left. But we all enjoyed the amusement park so much that we were happy to spend the whole afternoon there. That's when it was relaxing and Mike and i could sip our coffee while the girls went on ride after ride. We also each took a turn going on the scariest roller coaster I've ever been on. Your feet just dangle, so I had to put my flip flops in a cubby or they would fall off. This roller coasted boasted the longest, steepest drop in the world. It was so scary, but so great.

A few more observations about this trip:

- it was really strange that it wasn't busy. We think that's because the rest of China wasn't on holidays, and clearly the day that we were at Disneyland must have been a holiday for a lot of people.

- We saw barely anyone the whole time who wasn't Chinese. Usually when we go do touristy things there are lots of Caucasions and people from all over the world. We were surprised by this.

- And then considering that everyone in the hotel was Chinese, we were never accosted and asked for pictures. Also surprising. Other than that time when the girls were posing with the mascot. But it is such a common occurrence when we do touristy things that it was really unusual. Kylie's theory was that maybe the hotel was filled with people who were from more affluent backgrounds and have traveled more, so seeing blond girls just wasn't that unusual for them.

- Even though China is crowded, there is clearly a lot more space than Hong Kong because this place was huge and so spread out!

All in all, I'd say that Chimelong exceeded our expectations and I would recommend it to other families with young kids.