HK Day 2: Shopping

I have to preface this post with the comment that this trip of ours to Hong Kong was very different from our usual trips, which usually comprise a whole lot of eating and shopping, and quite a bit of sightseeing. This time round, we decided to give visiting the usual touristy haunts a miss and didn’t get to eat as much of the great Hong Kong food as we would have liked. The latter not entirely by choice. Still, we managed to squeeze some shopping in despite Noey’s best efforts to thwart us in that respect.

We had originally thought of going to Disneyland on Day 2 of our trip but the Met service forecasted cloudy weather with a chance of rain so we decided to hit the shops instead. Indeed, it was a grey day that greeted us in the morning.

After messing around a bit and getting ready, we decided to get out and take a walk over to Harbour City for some breakfast and shopping. It was a leisurely 15-20 min walk from our hotel as we stopped to grab some pictures along the way by the waterfront:

and along the Avenue of Stars.

“Errr, guys, what are we doing here again? And surely you can find me a cooler star to pose next to than Eric Tsang??”

Along the way we also spied this building under renovation and noticed, to our surprise, that the scaffolding looked to be constructed entirely out of bamboo! How cool (and chinese) is that!

By the way, one thing we’ve discovered about Hong Kong now that we’re part of the stroller brigade is that the city really isn’t stroller friendly AT ALL. Even away from the narrow walkways and cobbled streets on the island side, the streets of Kowloon just had steps everywhere. You walk to the skybridges and there are 4-5 steps up from your level to the bridge level. You walk to the MTR station and there are 2-3 steps to the station entrance (followed immediately by an escalator leading downwards, after you’ve climbed those couple of steps). Even within the malls you are not spared from the irritating split-level that pops out of nowhere. We ended up having to hoist Noey’s stroller up and down sedan-chair style between us cos it was just too much hassle getting him out of it and back in again after.

And another problem we encountered was getting a high chair that did its job of keeping Noey in. Half the time we were given high chairs which were essentially booster seats, with no straps or restraints or dining trays. We therefore had to physically hold him in the chair and pull him close to the table to keep him in, much to Noey’s delight. Even so, we were usually unsuccessful at getting Noey to sit down and eat.

“I prefer to squat, thank you very much.”

“Though standing up is not too bad either.”

So parents thinking of coming to Hong Kong, be warned!

While I was determined to try to shop, unfortunately, my son was equally determined to thwart me. The sales assistants who smiled at him were soon trying to fend him off as he tried to get his grubby fingers on their nicely displayed goods. His patience (and theirs) wore thin quickly. It also didn’t help matters that we had to trek back in the middle of the day for his nap.

My guilty indulgence — room service. I just LOVE room service and always try to order something wherever I am. This time, both my crabmeat tagliatelle and DD’s massive plate of ee-fu mee were really good.

“Hurray, I escaped the shopping!

We went back to Tsim Sha Tsui after the mid-afternoon break but sadly all we emerged with were clothes for Noey and a Loewe wallet for me (which we had to pick up the next day). Ugh. What a failure of a shopping day!

Ah well, at least we got to see the Christmas decorations.

With Noey’s favourite tree in the hotel. It got “joo-joo”-ed alot.