Our family vacation, this year, was to Hong Kong. We spent 8 days, two weeks ago, taking our time to visit the things that tourists visit. The two kids came along. This is the second overseas vacation for Ian. We didn’t bring him on our trip to Japan last year, because we thought it would be too difficult to manage him then. They’re one year older now, and so, okay, we’ll try this year. Overall it was a really fun trip, but it was also exhausting at the same time… at least for the adults.
Looking back at our Hawaii trip in 2009, I could write a blog post for every day we spent there. I thought I would do the same for Japan, but in the end, I just did a single post… and that was long after we came back. It looks like it’skthe same for Hong Kong. Each day we returned to the hotel, I was just too tired and only wanted to sleep. Okay, I spent some time looking through photos and clearing some email, but there was no creative juices left to think about what to write.
The vacation was, in actual fact, a rather leisurely one. We only did a couple of things. We went to Disneyland, we went to Ocean Park, we went to The Peak one of the nights, we shopped a little here and there… and it doesn’t seem like all these should have taken up 8 days. We had earlier been considering following a guided tour to Korea, and I’m glad we didn’t. I don’t think we could have kept pace with the tour group. No way we could have woken up and gotten the kids ready fo2 the first meet-up each morning.
I remember some of the guided tours I went with my parents when I was little… they were too hectic. You just follow the programme, and I thought there was little time to enjoy yourselves. Your have to constantly watch the time. When you’re shepherding little kids around, you are not going to keep pace.
Sometimes I wonder are the kids going to remember their vacations. Vanessa might, this time, since after all she’s already four. Ian, perhaps not. But for the moment, they definitely enjoyed themselves. Like how, for example, Ian was overwhelmed with excitement at the aquarium in Ocean Park. I think he is totally nuts over fishes. Or how Vanessa was willing to put up with a very long queue under the hot sun to ride on the ferris wheel, again at Ocean Park.
The kids didn’t take too well to Universal Studios in Singapore. They were scared. Vanessa wasn’t too keen on Disneyland and Disney Sea in Japan last year either. Fortunately this year, the park tickets were much better utilized. Ian had become more brave this year, wanting to try many more rides than we had time for. Vanessa was more selective, still afraid of some rides, but certainly an improvement from the Disney parks in Japan. While in Japan last year, I had thought to myself that we could have saved ourselves a lot of money skipping the Disney parks and just confined ourselves to the Disney hotels.
We left Singapore on a very early Saturday morning, and returned back evening the next Saturday. The kids fell asleep on the taxi ride back from the airport. Family holidays are fun. But really, really, exhausting, and everything moves too slowly. I hope to get to the stage where holiday time could be ultra productive and we could get plenty of things done. Perhaps when they are at least 6 years old? Then they would already be schooling, and holidays would have to be during peak holiday seasons.
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