Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 5

After Ocean Park we headed towards the Avenue of Stars at Tsim Sha Tshui to experience the Symphony of Lights. The show starts at 8 pm every night. At HK Island there are at least ten major buildings wired up with lights to 'dance' to the music. Below is a 4 min. video clip to show how it's done. Enjoy!

And finally after the Symphony of Lights we headed down to Ladies Market at Mongkok .... Tung Choi Street. Actually by then I was already dead tired and didn't want to go there. But on dh's insistence ... he said ... how could I not visit Ladies Market when I'm in HK ????
Everybody visits Ladies Market when in HK .... OK ... I got what he meant .... no regrets ! LOL

So here ends our stay in HK. We flew back to Singapore on day 5 morning 11.30 am.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 4

Day 4 found us heading towards Admiralty Station to take Bus 629 to Ocean Park. We took a 20 minute ride during off peak to Ocean Park and reached there about the time the Park opened.

We sat in a double decker air-conditioned bus .... a familiar bus to us :-)

Here's letting the pics do the talking ....

At this place we did a lot of walking and the only thing lacking are water coolers. The unique thing this year at this place were the live panda mascots on display. They had a huge display enclosure built for them for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. So the pandas are named ....
Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying, Nin Nin .... from the sentence Beijing Huan Ying Nin.

Below here is a 1 min. video clip of part of the Dolphin Show at the Ocean Theatre. To reach this place you need to take the cable car to the hill part of the park. There's also a bus shuttle from the lower main entrance too. Due to the popularity of the show, the theatre was already 90%
filled to capacity at 3 pm when the show was to start at 3.30 pm.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 3

Day 3 found us transfered from Lantau Island to Kowloon. We stayed at the YMCA International House at Yau Ma Tei. The hotel is about a 3 minutes walk to the nearest MTR entrance. With 4 people in tow, we were upgraded to a Junior suit when we checked in. It's very basic in amenities and it's clean. This place has a history of more than 30 years :-)

Refreshed and all ready to go after a simple sandwich lunch. Took a slow walk to Shanghai Street where the bakeware shops are. Then we headed towards the MTR to Central to get to the Peak Tram Station. Visited the Peak.

In the early evening, we headed back to Lantau Island to experience the ride on the MTR Disneyland train cabin. It definetly has the luxurious feel of being transported to fantasy land. Then we headed towards Citygate at Tung Chung Station where the world of factory outlets are. Over at Citygate we dined at Food Republic. The name familiar to you? Even the concept is familiar :-)

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 2

Here are the snippets of what we did at HKDisneyland. There were at least nine must dos at the resort .....

At Adventure Land .... Take the Boat Ride; Visit Tarzen Treehouse;
Watch The Festival Of The Lion King
At Fantasy Land .... Watch The Philhar Magic Show; Watch The Golden Mickeys Show
At Tomorrow Land ... Do the Astroblaster; Do Stitch Encounter; Do Space Mountain
Watch the Fireworks and The Parade

However during our time there the Parade was suspended. We did see some of the parade characters walking around though. We didn't do space mountain cos' dh chickened out and ds J refused it flatly.

The video below shows the finale of the fireworks display in front of the castle. It began at 7 pm but the whole area was already packed by 6.30pm. We had a good 15 minutes show. It was really captivating with the lights, sounds and pyrotechnics. The video here shows the last 30 secs of the finale.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 1

Booked a trip in mid October 2007 with Focal travel to Hong Kong for the period of
20th Nov(tuesday) to 24th Nov(saturday) 2007. Did a 5 days 4 nights free and easy there. The agency helped us to book the Cathay Pacific flights, Hotel acoommodations and the transfers to and from airport and also the hotel transfer to Kowloon from Disneyland resort. The rest of the time we used the HK MTR to reach all our other destinations for sight seeing. We bought the MTR day pass for tourist for the family of 2adults and 2 children.

Day 1
Reached HK at about 2.30 pm and took the airport transfer to HK Disneyland Resort.
We reached the hotel about 4.30 pm, freshened up and was at the Disneyland resort
by 5 pm.

Here's sharing with you snippets of the Hollywood Hotel were stayed in.

Rosemary Red Wine Chicken

Thanks to Jo who directed this recipe to me when I was looking for a red wine chicken recipe.
Thanks also to Ginny who shared this recipe in her blog.
http://mycookingescapades.blogspot.com/2006/08/coq-au-vin.html

The recipe looked quite simple to follow and the only change I did was to use rosemary herb instead if the bouquet garni of thyme and bay leaves. As for the marinating , I did allow the meat to season for about 5 hours instead of overnight.
The family gave the dish a thumbs up and I found out that it's even more flavourful if kept overnight.

Dried Lavender Flowers

This is what dried lavender flowers look like. They smell heavenly fragrant.

Here's the website that tells you quite a bit of information on using these fragrant dried flowers.
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Lavender.htm

My Gifts for the Happy Holidays Party.

On the last day of the kindy school term, dd had her class party. I just did something simple for her to give to her teachers and also to share with her class. Here they are ... the brownie muffins and rolled oats cookies.