HongKong and Macau

Last January I had my first trip outside the country - or my first trip for the year - Hong Kong!

The Hong Kong trip was planned long ago - tickets were booked waaay in advance - you know it - seat sales. The date was set, but it took as a while to book a hotel. We wanted to make sure that even if we won't be staying for more than 10 hours a day in the hotel it would be a very comfortable stay, but at a reasonable price. Once the hotel was booked and the itinerary created, we just had to wait for the appointed date and time.

Truth be told, there were some apprehensions as the days went by. One of the reasons was that people were telling us to be very careful - apparently there have been a lot of people who experienced rudeness with the locals. Googling about it doesn't help either. But, we still decided to push through with it - we'll just bite back if needed. :P

Our itinerary consisted of visiting theme mostly theme parks - there were a couple of changes in the itinerary as we went along depending on the volume of people in certain areas, but overall we were able to get to most of the original ones. :)

I won't go into much detail of what happened during our trip, but I've put in a summary of what transpired during the day. I've also posted the pictures in the Facebook profile and have set them to public. I've included the links below for your to see HongKong through my eyes (or in this case, through my camera. :P)

Day 1 - Flight to HongKong and check-in to Hotel
No pictures for this day - we got to HongKong pretty late and we were a bit tired from the flight. We just had dinner when we got there (guess where? McDonald's!), then headed off to snoozeville.

Day 2 - Macau

We left the hotel pretty early this day to make sure we would have a lot of time in Macau (we were doing just a day trip after all). After getting through Immigration, we headed to Fisherman's Wharf, then went back to the terminal to get a free ride to Wynn Hotel. From there we headed to Senado Square and the Ruins of St. Paul. Once done we took the shuttle back to the terminal and took another shuttle to Venetian. We had our lunch around 3PM (at McDonald's), then went around the Venetian Mall. I didn't buy anything but my friend did. When we got tired we headed back to the terminal via free shuttle and headed back to HongKong.

Day 3 - Disneyland

We left the hotel around 9 in the morning to take the MTR to Disneyland. As with my usual trips I've been having some back pains from the previous day's trip (I get that from all the standing/walking/carrying my camera), so we rest every now and then. Once getting to Disneyland we took a fast pass to the Space Mountain, then had lunch (maybe it wasn't a good idea to ride after having lunch, but thankfully there weren't any incidents that happened after). After space mountain we rode the Buzz Lightyear ride where you shoot some stuff and get scored for it. I was a Level 5 space ranger (hihi). Afterwards we went around the park - Fantasy Land, Toy Story, Grizzly Gouch, and Adventure land. Around 4 we watched the Lion King show, afterwards we decided to go to CityGate outlet to have dinner there. I had McDonald's (again) and Pepper Lunch - they had a promo for Big Mac - the meal costs 21HKD, compared to the normal price of 34HKD. :3

Day 4 - Ocean Park and Avenue of the Stars

Another theme park for Day 4. Aside from the roller coaster ride, the underground train ride to the other side and the cable car ride, I didn't ride anything else (my friend rode the flash - it's like Enchanted Kingdom's Enterprise ride). I mostly took pictures around the area. Unfortunately we weren't able to cover the entire park - we were a bit pressed for time because we were planning to go to Peak Tram that day as well. Upon getting there, however we decided to skip the Peak Tram because there were a lot of people lined up and we didn't even have tickets yet. We decided to head to the Avenue of the Stars instead and watch the Symphony of the Lights show. We had our dinner at McDonald's (again) - this time I ate the prosperity burger. It was ok but I think the sauce was a little bit too spicy for me - it had too much pepper. Afterwards we walked to TST and eventually to our hotel (that was 2 MTR stops).

Day 5 - NanLian Gardens and Heading Home

As our flight back to Manila wasn't until 7PM, we decided to make a quick stop at NanLian Gardens after checking out of the hotel (we left our stuff at the concierge). I must say that for a garden in the middle of a developed area that is free, it's pretty well maintained. Afterwards we had lunch at Food Republic in Plaza Hollywood (which was a few minutes away from NanLian Gardens and is directly above the Diamond Hill MTR station), then headed back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and head to the airport.

Overall my HongKong experience was pretty enjoyable - we didn't encounter any rude locals during our trip, and the MTR rides were pretty smooth. I know we barely scratched the surface and there are still a lot of places to visit in HongKong. Who knows? Maybe I'll visit it again sometime. :)

Have you been to HongKong? Share your experiences in the comments section below. Hope to hear your thoughts! ^_^