The best Christmas I've ever had.

On Christmas Eve we checked into the Disney resort and spend Christmas and Boxing day at Disneyland. And it was magic. 

Hong Kong

Zoo and botanical gardens

I can't say that I've ever really had the thought "I really want to go check out Hong Kong." My main motive for booking us flights to Hong Kong was to ticket of my fifth Disney park. This blog will be about our pre-Disney stay in Hong Kong.

It's spinning!!

I enjoyed it, but MAN DID WE GET LOST A LOT. But that became part of the fun of it. We just walked and saw where we ended up. On our first day we "planned" to go up the peak, but ended up at the Zoological and Botanical gardens instead. Arch loved it so much he didn't want to leave. I had promised Immy that Hong Kong would be the home of fidget spinners (based on nothing) and I got lucky, the first cute shop we walked into had the cutest novelty fidget spinners.

I loved the Harbour and our trips across it.




One the second day, when we did make it up the peak, we ended up spending 6 hours up at the top, eating, shopping and going for a walk. The food was great, the shopping was interesting and the view was amazing.

We did eventually find our way up the peak <3 td="">

Durian ice-cream.... 

I wish we'd had some more time in Hong Kong! But it was time to escape to another world for Christmas. It was time to go Disney.

It was a little cool in Hong Kong in the lead up to Christmas 

How beautiful is Singapore?

Let us finish off Singapore. It's only taken me three months to get back to it. Here are some photos of our day walking around the Garden's by the bay, we went there to check out the Christmas set up (which was such a rip off!) They had dodgy little rides, that you had to by tokens for (I think each token was $2-3, and each ride was 2-3 tokens, some were 4. So we left the Christmas section pretty quickly. I really enjoyed the rest of the Gardens by the bay set up, and we walked under the MBS and watched the laser show that night.

I think that I would happily holiday in Singapore again! I need my sting-ray fix! (Yum!)

Magic

Singapore continues

Toys R us VIVO city 

So.much.lego.

 Singapore surprised me. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I, I wasn't expecting to be so busy, honestly the only thing I had planned to do in Singapore was eat... and yes we ate so much I could probably do a blog on the food alone.
Here are some of the things we enjoyed doing in Singapore:

Shopping for toys 

The kids loved shopping in Singapore

It was the week before Christmas, so the kids were allowed  to buy a few more toys than they would have if we'd been travelling at a different time (I lie to myself). Staying in Sentosa we made our way over to VIVO city with the intention of catching the MRT to the city to go shopping, but we ended up distracted and spending hours at the set of shops. We also had a taxi driver drop us off at shops near Orchard road, but we never found our way to the road with all the shops we can't afford/the kids aren't allowed in. We just ended up lost in these shopping centres. We probably spent a couple of hours in Toys R Us alone, they had ice cream/popcorn for when you got hungry and entertainers with balloons. I generally avoid going to the shops here the week before Christmas, but I don't think our shops are this extra at Christmas time.

 Staying on Sentosa 
 Our hotel (W hotel) was my sons favourite part of the trip and while I felt like it was a bit far from the CBD, the kids loved Sentosa and everything about it. It felt like a little bit of a tourist trap to me, and next time I would like to stay 'on the mainland'.

So what did they enjoy on Sentosa.

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A smile from Arch!

The Cable Cars 

They run from the Harbour/VIVO city to Sentosa. The kids enjoyed this as a means of heading back to our hotel.

Madagascar the ride 

Universal Studios

Immy's favourite place in Singapore was universal studios. 10/10 would recommend. Especially with younger kids, although with our kids being tall, especially Archie, I wouldn't base your judgement on whether your child should go on a ride or not by height alone. He found the Transformers one a little bit intense (it was awesome, definitely go on it), it was like no other ride I've been on. But I've been out of the going-on-rides thing since Immy was born in 2011.  The only thing Arch was too short for was the water rapids in Jurassic park and I felt so much guilt, as I had only checked to make sure he was tall enough for the transformers ride (at the time I booked the holiday Transformers were his thing, but since then he'd developed an obsession with dinosaurs). So of the three rides in the dinosaur area he could only go on one. 

She made me wait until Australia was in view

 We completed Elf training at Universal Studios, and this is one of three attempted Santa photos

The least "worth it" thing on Sentosa Island, I think, was the butterfly and insect house. For starters they have a free butterfly house at the airport, which is better and has more butterflies. Holding a Macaw was cool, but it was another $5 on top of an entry fee that was already too high.

The butterfly and insect house 

  

The zoo

magic

 Let's leave Sentosa
Singapore Zoo
Was my favourite place by far, but also the most annoyed I got in Singapore.

We wanted to do the Orangutan Breakfast, and so using TripAdvisor I bought what I thought was just zoo tickets, breakfast and transfer direct from the hotel to the zoo.


The pick up was 30 minutes late, in a nice little shuttle bus, unbeknownst to us this little bus took us to a central point where we had to get into a giant bus (not easy for me)... where we waited for an additional  30 minutes.

DO NOT BOOK TOURS. This has always been my hard and fast rule and I regret it every time I break it.

>I felt a little bad for the "tour" guide (I say "tour" guide because there isn't any tour involved, they pick you up -late- have you wait in a bus - give you a ticket for the zoo and the breakfast and then say 'meet back at the bus in two hours')... by the time we got to the breakfast I'd reach demanding better seats so I can actually see the orangutans level of annoyed. I'm not usually like that. But I had not had breakfast yet, I get so hangry, and our second set of seats were great. I'd recommend buying the tickets straight from the zoo website (Ri did a search after our day and found that when you looked it up on Google there are at least five tour sites that come up before the zoos site, so I didn't feel completely like a muppet). Get get a taxi there.

feeding rhinos!

The rest of our day was magical, the animals were kept in amazing spaces. As the tour only included two hours at the zoo after the breakfast, we left the tour as soon as breakfast was done. I don't know how anyone could be happy with only two hours at this beautiful zoo. 

It's one of those magical zoos were you feel like your children and getting an appreciation of animals. 10/10 would recommend.

feeding giraffes

look up!

Immy reminds me of a young disney princess 

 I'm getting tired and I still haven't finished Singapore!! Who knows when I'll have 'time' (I didn't really have time to do this now).

Immy's favourite ride at universal studios 

 Above is Imogen's highlight - a ride in the Mummy section of universal studios that gave her the change to drive a car (along a track) she had an accelerator and a steering wheel. I love how seriously they are taking their mapped out road trip.

Singapore - first two days

At the start of this year I raised an idea with Ri, let's leave the country for Christmas,  we've never left the country for Christmas before! His Nan's birthday was just before Christmas, so we would usually stay in Brisbane, especially after the kids were born. Nan, sadly, passed away at the tender age of 100 last year (we've missed her a lot this year). So before everything went so wrong for us this year, before our new home flooded, before we needed to live in an airbnb for 3 months, before my RA/liver went out of control, before two contracts on our house failed. I booked a two week holiday to Singapore and Hong Kong. AND I AM SO GLAD THAT I DID.

photo from booking.com

We left on the 13th and arrived on the 14th of December. Our flight left at 11:35pm and I honestly ended up wishing that the flight had been longer. By the time we had our first meal and switched off the lights that only left 4 hours to sleep before they switched the morning meal lights on.
We arrived in Singapore drunk from sleep deprivation - I'd slept for about half during an iron man movie, and Ri had had a blanket over his head for about 2 hours. We arrived at our hotel - W hotel Sentosa Cove, at around 6am, check in wasn't until 3pm, but they were sure they'd get us early check in. They offered us coffee and we followed the offer into their breakfast area, which had access to the pool. So after breakfast we went into the pool area... about fifteen minutes later (because our togs were somewhere between the door to the hotel and the room and there was no guarantee that if Ri left the pool area to try and find said togs, that he'd be able to get back in again without a swipe card) we just got into the pool in the clothes that we'd been wearing on the plane. It was an effective way to wake up. In interesting move in a dress.
We were able to get our hands on our key at around 10:30am, so we headed up to get our room sorted and then decided to stay awake by going for a walk around Sentosa Cove, we found a place called big fat mama's - we ate here at least three times. We spent the afternoon zombiefied by the pool. We ended up ordering room service and curled up in bed by 7pm.

On our first full day in Singapore we ventured to resort world to visit the aquarium, which was very impressive. I liked how they had education stations pushing the 3 r's, reduce, reuse, recycle plastics. The kids found some fish stamps and put one of their fists, Immi held out her fist to Arch saying "fish bump!"

When asked Immi reports her favourite animal was the jelly fish and Arch says the lobster. We had lunch at Slappy Cakes, which we'd been to before on Maui.
After lunch we made our way to the rainbow candy store. After the kids went mental in the candy store, which is where we bought their stuffed merlion that they named Reece's pieces, we decided it was time to leave Sentosa. We hoped on the monorail to vivocity and then tried our hand at the MRT, after staring at the map for a minute I confidently said to Ri "we need to get on the circle line" Ri asked "in which direction" I replied "we're at the end of the end" Ri: "wait... what?" (Singapore we need to discuss the definition of 'Circle'.) We managed to get on the wrong circle train, so we decided to abandon ship at the botanical gardens (just in time for the rains). We waited out the rain at the gardens,received some great advice on where to grab dinner from a guy who worked at the gardens. After the rains we checked out the children's garden then went straight back to the MRT to try again. Our destination was satay club lau pa sat. We managed to get on and off the right trains, but crossing a main road in Singapore city - you need to either go over the road, under the road or walk a mile to a crossing. The food at Lau Pa Sat was soooo good. We were a bit conservative in our selections when we we on our own...

New blog

Write every day. Is the advice I have been given during an academic writing class.
I'm currently chasing my PhD part time, while working part time, raising two kids and dealing with 30+ years of rheumatoid arthritis drama. This next blog is just going to be whatever is on my mind that night...

https://wordfindingdifficulties.blogspot.com.au/

New Caledonia

So it is almost a year since of cruise, I can't sleep due to dramas relating to the recent purchase of a new home. So here I am, I am going to conclude the tale of our most recent overseas trip, and promise myself that next time (December, when we head to Singapore and Hong Kong), I am going to blog as we go. Why do I lie to myself so often?

Hop on Hop off bus

 I highly recommend getting tickets for the hop on/hop off bus. It took us to all the places we wanted to see and I don't remember having to wait very long for a bus to arrive, each time we rocked up to a bus stop a bus was just around the corner.

Markets!

Second breakfast of champions

The first stop we made was to the markets for some after breakfast pastries, which were delicious. We look at the markets. Marvelled at the extremely expensive hats (I think there was a $60-$70 hat Imogen has her eye on.) I think we ended up distracted her with a slinky or bouncy ball. 

The entrance to the aquarium

The second stop was to the aquarium, which really impressed me, so such a small little place, they had a lovely selection of sea creatures including on of these:

The nautilus 

 I hadn't seen a nautilus before. Fossil records indicate that nautiloids have not evolved much during the last 500 million years. Nautiluses are much closer to the first cephalopods that appeared about 500 million years ago than the early modern cephalopods that appeared maybe 100 million years later (ammonoids and coleoids). They have a seemingly simple brain, not the large complex brains of octopus, cuttlefish and squid, and had long been assumed to lack intelligence. But the cephalopod nervous system is quite different from that of other animals, and recent experiments have shown not only memory, but a changing response to the same event over time.

In a study in 2008, a group of nautiluses (N. pompilius) were given food as a bright blue light flashed until they began to associate the light with food, extending their tentacles every time the blue light was flashed. The blue light was again flashed without the food 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours later. The nautiluses continued to respond excitedly to the blue light for up to 30 minutes after the experiment. An hour later they showed no reaction to the blue light. However, between 6 and 12 hours after the training, they again responded to the blue light, but more tentatively. The researchers concluded that nautiluses had memory capabilities similar to the "short-term" and "long-term memories" of the more advanced cephalopods, despite having different brain structures.^[17][18][19] However the long-term memory capability of nautiluses was much shorter than that of other cephalopods. The nautiluses completely forgot the earlier training 24 hours later, in contrast to octopuses, for example, which can remember conditioning for weeks afterwards. However, this may be simply the result of the conditioning procedure being suboptimal for sustaining long-term memories in nautiluses. Nevertheless, the study showed that scientists had previously underestimated the memory capabilities of nautiluses. (Wikipedia). 

Glow in the dark

 I wasn't a big fan of the glow in the dark, dark room. We managed to enter at the same time as a group of school kids, and it was noisy. Our kids started to have a bit of a freak out. So we left and came back when it was quieter. It was quite pretty.

Don't eat here

 The worst part about cruising is that at each given destination you are under a time crunch and unfortunately in Noumea the place we went to for lunch LA BARCA decided that our time wasn't really that valuable. An hour after we'd ordered that hadn't even started to cook the kids meals (which were like hotdogs or chicken nuggets, they would have taken minutes to cook) the worst part was the waiter kept coming passed, at LA BARCA, and telling us that our food was "five minutes" away. So like chumps we waited. In the end we left, after paying for our drinks but refusing to pay for the food that was "on its way to the table" - yeah right.

AVOID

 So after the complete bust that was LA BARCA we had crepes at a place near the dock. They were devine, the salted caramel was so good. 10/10 would recommend.


So that's our adventure at sea. Our next holiday is going to be on land. But I'm glad our friends convinced us to go on this adventure, and I think I wouldn't mind going with them next year. If we can.

x T