Today is a holiday in Hong Kong in celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival. There is a story to the origin of this festival, but I never paid attention to the details. Anyway, I was told by Dona last night that there would be dragon boat races at the Harbour starting at 7:30 AM and would go on till the afternoon.
Jaja and her team had started their planning session last night, and they decided to just continue it today. They hoped to finish their "to do" list by lunch time so that they could still have time to go out shopping or touring the city.
My videocamera unfortunately started malfunctioning this morning. When I put it on record the "Cleaning Cassette" message would show on the viewfinder, signifying that the tape head was probably dirty. Unfortunately too, I didn't have my cleaning cassette in my camera case. So, I had to rely on my Canon digicam to record both stills and video. Luckily, I had brought an extra memory card along.
We went to the McDonald's at Cameron Street for our breakfast. We occupied a corner of the McCafe so that they could start meeting immediately after finishing breakfast. The store had a free wi-fi access so they chose to meet there.
While they were meeting I decided to just take a walk around the area. I saw the entrance to Kowloon Park so I went in and explored the area.
There were fountains all over the place, and a lot of park benches and definitely a lot of trees. Since it was a holiday, it seemed that the Pinay DH's went on day-off because as I passed by groups of women having picnics around the park I could hear a lot of Tagalog or Visayan being spoken.
The heat was sweltering so I had to take a rest now and then and have a drink of water. I took video clips of a totem pole and some scenes I thought looked interesting. When I had had enough, I went back to the McDonald's store to see if they had finished. It was around 10:30 AM by then.
They still had 3 items in their agenda when I checked on them, so I bought another bottle of mineral water and headed for the direction of the Victoria Harbour. I decided to look for a Dymock's bookstore where I could browse around just to kill time.
On the way, I got a call from Gil Abesa,who was in the seminary with me and was now a Hong Kong resident. He wanted to fetch me so we could meet but I had to explain to him my predicament and just said it was okay that we were able to talk.
When I reached the Harbour, I took some photos and video then decided I'd explore the side of the city that I hadn't seen yet. I walked over to the Soho (a high-end mall) and the Avenue of the Stars. I also walked around one of the malls before heading back to Cameron.
Since my Hong Kong dollars were in low supply I had a $20 bill changed by a dealer who was offering HK$ 7.06. I used another HK$16 to buy another bottle of water.
Jaja's team had finally completed their planning session when I got back. Now, they were talking about what each one would do. Jaja and I decided to go to Disneyland while the rest said they'd check out the bargain shops at Central, where Dona and I had gone last night.
After changing $200 more, Jaja and I went to the Tsim Sha Tsui station for our MTR ride to Disney.
Since Dona and I had made a dry run of how to get tickets to the place it was easy for us now to get our train ride to the place. The route would take us to Lai King station where we would transfer to they yellow line to Sunny Hill,the station that was linked to Disney.
It was really hot when we finally reached the Disney station and by this time (around 1:30 PM) Jaja was feeling hungry. She had brought along her McMuffin Sausage sandwich from breakfast this morning and that's what we had for lunch before we entered the park.
Since it was a holiday we spent HK$ 350 each for our tickets. It was good we had finished our food before entering the park because the cast members at the entrance gate checked Jaja's bag for food before we entered.
Once inside the park we became kids again!
We rode the carousel, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party,the Buzz Lightyear ride, Winnie the Pooh's Blustery day ride, the Jungle Cruise and Space Mountain. We also watched the Lilo and Stich show and Mickey's Philarmagic, a 3D show that Jaja enjoyed.
We managed to catch only the tailend of the 3 o'clock parade because we had gone to the Buzz Lightyear ride. There were also very few Disney characters coming out for photos because of the terrible heat. Jaja and I managed to have photos taken with Goofy and Pluto because the lines for the other characters were very long.
We decided to head back for the hotel at around 5:30 PM since we were feeling tired already and Jaja figured that Sieg might want to go to the Wan Chai district this evening.
Sieg had just stayed at the hotel after their shopping spree in the afternoon. After we freshened up we went to the KFC branch at Cameron and had dinner there. The food there was terrible. The chicken served was beyond holding times and were improperly breaded. Had I been a Mystery Shopper, that branch would have failed an audit!
Since my feet were really tired from all the walking I had done I begged off from anymore sightseeing for the evening. Sieg decided to just go back to the hotel,but since Jaja still wanted to go around and have coffee at the Pacific Place I had to accompany her.
We had an after dinner chocolate drink then went back to Kowloon Hotel and turned in.
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