1st Family Overseas Trip - Hong Kong (Part 2)

The children enjoyed themselves thoroughly in HK Disneyland. The theme park is a great place for children; also for adults especially during the December period - the entire place was fully decorated for X'mas with a 3 - 4 storey high X'mas Tree at the Main St, Road parades with carols and artificial snow, princess ball, brilliantly lit Castle with spectacular fireworks nightly, just to name a few. We were fully immersed in the X'mas mood :-)

This trip to Disneyland was meant to be "slow paced" i.e. we just want to let the children take their time to enjoy the place. Even though we spent 4 days there, we didn't really manage to walk and see all the highlights in the entire park. We were pretty much stuck at Fantasyland where Joann tried the carousel, musical tea cups and flying dumbo rides for numerous times. Fantasyland is also the place where you can catch Disney princesses such as Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Belle (remember Beauty and the Beast?), Alice, etc (see, I've been educated well by my daughter ;-)) We spent half a day with Joann, chasing to take pictures with the princesses :-P


As for Jayden, he was mesmerised from day 1 by the "bubble machine" and would spend his daily routine, catching his bubbles :-) He loved catching up with his favourite Disney characters and taking photos with them. He also enjoyed the daily road parades where he could see all his Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy all at one go.

The nightly fireworks is also a highlight not to be missed. The crowd was wooed by the spectacular fireworks and songs! All of us except Jayden enjoyed the fireworks. He was afraid of the fireworks :-( I didn't manage to capture the fireworks using my video cam as I was carrying Joann but you can check it out at the youtube video provided below.

We thoroughly enjoyed our short stay at HK Disneyland and this trip provided a great bonding time for us as a family :-) Looking forward to come back next year if possible!




P/S: More photos at my facebook :-)

1st Family Overseas Trip - Hong Kong (Part 1)

Two weeks ago, we had our first family overseas trip :-) Aileen and I decided to bring the kids to Hong Kong Disneyland for four days.

Jayden had been asking for a trip to Disneyland since June 08 (Aileen and I made a trip to HK with Joann in June 08; we brought back lots of photo from Disneyland that got him excited). Thus in August, we started planning for a second trip back to HK Disneyland - this time, specially for him :-)

We had been talking to the children about this trip and they were all geared up for it - longing to meet their favourite characters from the Mickey Clubhouse in person.

We started our trip by trying out the new Crowne Plaza Hotel (at Changi Airport Terminal 3). We stayed there for a night prior to our flight. We thought that it might be more convenient for both of us and the children to check in for the early morning flight by staying near to Terminal 3.

The resort-style hotel boosts private gardens of tropical shrubs and is eco-friendly (the design of the hotel maximises the use of natural light to save energy). The hotel room was cosy and the children were excited to be able to see airplanes take off from a short distance away.

This is Jayden's first overseas trip by air. Apart from some slight fear during takeoff and landing, he generally enjoyed the 3.5 hours flight.

Back from Vancouver

Finally! Touched down in Singapore at 12.30am last night after 22 hours of flight! Have a fruitful conference and a wonderful short tour of downtown Vancouver - city which I would be glad to return in future :-)

Seeing Star....Bucks!!!

Have been in Vancouver for almost 4 days & everywhere I go in downtown Vancouver, I see Starbucks Coffee Cafes! Think almost one every 400m :-P Think the people here really love coffee! But... I have the privilege of drinking Starbucks coffee for free everyday :-) B'cos Starbucks coffee is being offered to participants of the conference! So I make sure that I have a cuppa every session break :-P

3rd Day in Vancouver: Early Morning "Call"

It was 4.30am... My sleep was suddenly interrupted by a "familiar" alarm. The fire alarm had gone off in my hotel!!! I was totally thrown off guard as I slept at about 2am. My colleagues and I quickly took our personal belongings and make our way to the ground floor. I was so anxious to get to safety that I wore my colleague's leather shoes by mistake :-P This is the first time we experienced a fire alarm in a hotel.

The fire engines came about 15 min later and verified that the fire alarm was falsely triggered by some faulty mechanism. Some of the hotel guests were clearly angry over the false alarm. Many beautiful dreams were interrupted, ha.

We decided not to get back to sleep but prepared ourselves for the day conference. The conference starts at Sheraton Wall Centre, 8am daily and is a short distance walk from our hotel. I have started to enjoy the sandwiches at Subway as we took our breakfast there daily. There are quite a number of Subway branches at downtown Vancouver.

Today is the 2nd day of Int'l System Safety conference (ISSC 08) and it started with a "opening ceremony". This annual conference is organised by Int'l System Safety Society which comprises of System Safety professionals, who come together for an exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences. We were sent by our company to learn about this discipline from int'l practitioners. 5 full days of programmes; packed from 8am to 5pm.


Nevertheless, still able to squeeze in some time to experience downtown Vancouver slowly :-)

Finally! Arrival @ Vancouver

I have arrived @ Vancouver! Waited 6 hours @ Portland Int'l Airport & finally took the plane from Horizon Air (on the picture below). The weather was turning bad as you can see and the ride was real bumpy! Will never take a light aircraft again.

Upon touch-down, we quickly travel to our hotel and settle in. It was a simple and comfortable place, right at the heart of downtown Vancouver.

Went for our dinner after settling in quickly and managed to take a 2 hours walk at downtown Vancouver. Nice and cosy temperature @ 14 Degree Celsius. The sky was still quite bright until about 8pm.

We came across an interesting shop (see below) that sells Apples & Mash Mellows, dipped in chocolate & with a variety of toppings! Yumpy! One bite will definitely give me enough Calories for one whole day! Better watch my waistline :-P

Heading for Vancouver

Just touched down at Portland International Airport (now 10am, Sun morning) - after 16 hours of flight from Singapore via Narita Airport, Japan. Quite tired now... Didn't really sleep during the journey. Now, waiting for the next flight to Vancouver in 4 hours time (1 hour flight).

Will be at Vancouver for a week till 29 Aug, for a conference. This is my first trip to the States and Canada. Hope that this will be a fruitful trip :-)

Taking a good rest now....