Family Vacation: Hong Kong (Part 1)

I have no idea how to make kwento our family vacation in Hong Kong. I don't know where to start! I can't do a day-by-day kwento like what I did for our Baguio trip because it would be to cumbersome. We stayed there for 6 days and there was a day or two that what we did was so blah, it'll bore you. Weird naman if I do just the days we actually did something kwento-worthy right? My OC-ness will not allow entries for days 1,2, and 4, and none for the other days. It would bother me to no end.

So, back to my original problem, how do I tell you of our Hong Kong trip? My solution is to distract you with nonsense rambling as an intro, then jump straight to the juicy parts. Did it work? Aren't I sneaky-clever? Wahaha!

The whole point of going to Hong Kong is to bring our daughters to Disneyland. We brought Ally there once before but she was only 14 months old then. While she had a fab time, she hardly remembers the experience. Now that she's older and more vocal of her wants, she has been wanting to go back for a while now. We originally wanted to time the travel on my birthday, like what we did for our Boracay trip last year. Kaya lang the airfare was on the expensive side because it was too close to the holidays. It was still peak season kasi . We chose to postpone the trip to the last weekend of January. By doing so, I saved us about 50% of the total airfare. My kind of deal!

We flew on Air Asia via Clark Airport to save another couple of thousand pesos, even with the additional cost of toll and gas to and from Pampanga as well as the airport parking fee. And I was pleasantly satisfied with Clark Airport and Air Asia.

The airport personnel (the porters, people manning the x-ray machines, immigration people) were all so attentive and accommodating. They greeted us with smiles, which I appreciated a lot given that we were at the airport before 5am. They helped and assisted us in even the littlest things like looking for a vacant chair to seat on while waiting to be checked in. The queues for check in, travel tax payment and immigration were not bad at all! I also like that the airport was much smaller than the ones in Manila so there was less walking. The airport still had some parts under renovation, and they still haven't used the second floor departure area, which looked a lot like the Centennial Airport (NAIA 2). I think when they finally use this area, there won't be any need to walk to the airplanes on the ground anymore. There would be tubes connecting the terminal to the airplanes! Bongga!

The first and only time I flew on Air Asia was way back in 2008 from Jakarta to Bali. It was a much shorter flight and not memorable enough. This time however, I noticed that the airplane was new and the flight attendants were attentive and friendly. The food wasn't so bad and were priced reasonably enough. We were seated on red (premium) seats, even though I did not pay for that when I booked our ticket. Our Clark-Hong Kong flight left on time, and we arrived 30 minutes ahead of the scheduled arrival time. Not bad, right?  

Watch out for more kwentos and blog entries about our Hong Kong trip soon! :)