HKM Day 1: Take Off!

We left for the airport at around 7am. We arrived at the wrong airport at around past 8. It was both embarrassing and hilarious because we went to NAIA only to find out that we were supposed to go to the Centennial version of NAIA where Philippine Airlines have long moved since 2003. I was disappointed that I'm not going to be able to enter the same airport that we've been sending countless of relatives to. The Centennial version was smaller than its big brother with bright luminescent lights not complexion friendly. Haha. Anyways, after a bunch of lines, we finally made it through the aircraft. I was sitting at near the aisle at first and was not happy about it. My sister, who was in the window seat was not even looking out of it. Halfway through the flight though, I convinced my sister to switch seats which she happily agreed.

The first photo was from my aisle seat (yes, 3 seats from the window and I'm still taking pictures of the scenery). The second one was a happy moment for me as I got to the vibe of endless snapping of the clouds and the plane's wings.

Initial photos of Hong Kong as we were landing.

Upon landing, Hong Kong airport was a whole different story. It was huge. Like, Mall of Asia huge but I don't have the figures to back it up. All I know is that it's a mall and airport all in one. There are tons of shops around and there's even a terminal to the MTR (the LRT version of HK). We easily identified our travel agent amongst the crowd and we were told to wait for the transfer to the hotel. There we got a taste of my sister's first tantrum sessions. We had no idea she was going to have one every 2 hours.

We reached Mexan Harbour Hotel past lunch time. We all were both hungry and exhausted from sitting all day. Me and my mom wanted to go out and explore the city but the prima dona of the trip felt otherwise so we ended up buying food from the hotel cafe and eating in our room.

Thankfully, our afternoon didn't go to waste. After asking hotel clerks who can half-understand us, readying out coins for the bus fare, walking a great distance to the bus stop and figuring out how to use their drop-coin-here way of paying for the fare, we managed to reach a nearby mall located in front of Kwai Fong MTR station. There, we went grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping in a foreign country was a fun treat, as I expected. You see tons of products you've never tried and it's fun getting stuff you don't know what it is exactly you're buying. I also enjoyed taking pictures of the rich items they have in store including soda bottles in pretty colors and ready to eat delicacies like shushi and other recipes I cannot pronounce.

We didn't know we were supposed to have a bag with us ready. It turned out that people there don't use plastic bags for groceries anymore. All the customers have their own bags to put their groceries into and if you don't have one you have to pay for a (very thin) plastic bag for HK $.50 (roughly Php3.50). So we paid for 2 bags and went to find a money changer.

After getting our US dollars changed to HK dollars, we headed home because the bags we were carrying were getting heavier by the second. I would have liked to stay and explore the place a little more but, like I said, we have a prima dona with us who needed sleep and rest every hour (and no she's not an infant) so we headed back to our hotel, ate our food and enjoyed our hotel room's view.

We slept early because we'll be having a big day tomorrow. Our Hong Kong day tour will start at 7:45 am then we'll be heading to Disneyland till closing. Read about the yayness on my next HKM post...