It was a leisurely morning to get up. Both Anastasia and I had been awake since 4am local time, and I finally rolled out of bed at 7:30am and fixed myself some scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. The girls followed suit and we left the apartment around 8:45am to walk to a couple of the local shopping malls and then on to the History museum.
The first mall, Hunghom Square is a three story mall with lots of little shops, but there were lots of vacancies. Unfortunately we were there about an hour too early so many were closed. At the nearby Chatham mall, it was a ghost town with lots of vacancies in this new building.
We then walked about 2 miles to the History museum. It wasn't a straightforward walk as many sidewalks would just end, so I had to use my dead reckoning skills to get us there. By this time, Anastasia was pretty tired and hungry, so we treated her to a McD's meal which lifted her spirits. I also got some more cash and purchased a blood pressure monitor as I had left mine at home. The instructions are all in Chinese, but no problemo as I know how to use one. We toured both the Toy Exhibit at the History Museum and the Science museum (you have to love the concession rates for seniors!). Anastasia was pretty tired so we attempted to take one of the PLB (Private Local Bus) buses, but could not figure out where to catch it. In the end we found a #26 Bus right by the Museum on Chatham Street which brought us right back to our apartment. I should note that navigating the bus system is a challenge as there is no one agency running the system. There are trains, busses, and 16 passenger PLB's. fares are difficult to ascertain until the bus pulls up and the fare is displayed on the cash box. Our fares were $6.70HK or $0.86 each way per person which was certainly a great deal! The buses are clean and neat and stops are announced in Chinese and English.
Tonight we headed out to find some dinner. We stumbled upon a local restaurant that had some reasonably priced Sechin dishes and it was really busy. They spoke no English, but a translator app on the server's phone helped bridge the language gap. In the end we ordered soup (really good) and spicy chicken (really spicy and we couldn't count the number of peppers in the dish). Afterwards our mouths were really tingling. The meal for three cost $148HK or about $19US.
Tomorrow we board our ship, the MS Volendam at Kai Tak, the former international airport which has been repurposed as a mega cruise terminal. It's located across the harbor from Hunghom where we are staying. The ship arrived this afternoon and is docked there overnight. We'll use a taxi to get there so we don't have to wrangle our luggage on public transportation. Since our ship doesn't leave until 11pm, after we check in and drop off our luggage, we'll focus our adventures tomorrow near the cruise terminal.
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