My youngest sister, Joanne, won a raffle in one of those Chinese gatherings.  The prize was a roundtrip airfare to Hong Kong via Philippine Airlines.  She gave it to me since she just took a trip to HK (and I was left behind… boo-hoo!)  The time they went to Hong Kong was my trip to Malaysia with Bubba.  Too bad that I wasn’t able to go with them, but I guess good karma finds its way and now my missed HK trip got around the bend. 

At first, I was not too excited to go since I’ve been to HK and I’m not really that excited to shop.  The initial plan was to backpack alone.  Then that got me excited.  The idea of traveling alone (A Lone) was thrilling.  I was ready to do a Lost in Translation reenactment.  Schedule meetings with our channel affiliates there.  And do my damn best to AVOID a Hostel scenario or at least save my liver.  But when I had to move my flight from March to June, because of the Nokia event, Bubba and I decided to travel together.

Friday at work was super stressful.  I didn’t even have time to get excited about the trip.  My mind was still running 120mph about work even at 12 midnight and I had to wake up at 5am to make it to our 8am flight.  Bubba and his dad picked me around 530am and we were just in time to check in at 6am.  Of course, Bubba had to scold me for bringing my old favorite pink luggage.  You see the only airline carrier that flies to Baguio ruined this favorite luggage of mine.  I had an event to manage in Baguio (2006) and the company had to fly me in to save time.  I saw a huge crack on the hard case during the airport-hotel transfer.  I taped the crack and insisted on strutting the same stroller.  The cracks only got bigger as my travels piled on.  (Later on, I’d find out that Bubba was right.  I should have bought another luggage or borrowed my mom’s instead)  

While waiting for boarding at the lounge, Bubba and I had Lay’s Kettle Chips Mesquite Barbeque for breakfast and did a catch-up on any work-related stories we might have missed out on.

Boarding was right on schedule.  I started getting excited that this is another voyage with Bubbaroo.  I was able to catch a few winks during the flight while Bubba watched The Adventures of Christine.  I woke up as breakfast was served. 

Celebrity spotting: Former Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos and Dong Puno on the same flight. 

Scheduled arrival was delayed by 10minutes because of the heavy rain.  When I got my luggage, another part of the hard case chipped off.  Bubba shook his head several times and before he can say “I told you so” the 5^th time, I gave him THE EYE.  We saw photographer Rosah Lee at the airport too with her colleagues.  Somehow, we always manage to bump into her.

At the airport, we went to counter B13 for our airport transfer to the hotel via shuttle.  Unfortunately, the shuttle can’t bring us to the hotel since some of the roads are blocked.  Panic in the disco room.  We have to take the MTR.

After staring at the map for the longest time and debating which stop to take, Bubba finally followed my lead of getting off at Kowloon stop.  Hahaha, I really have to mention that, don’t I?  Instead of MTR, we decided to use the Airport Express Train.  We got our tickets at the Customer Service booth for 70 HKD per head.  At Kowloon, a cab took us to our hotel, YMCA International.  The cab fare was 30 HKD plus an additional 11 HKD for I don’t know what (I think there’s an extra 5 HKD for each luggage, but who knows why it’s 11).  We made the reservation at YMCA online about a month ago.  Check-in time is at 2pm but when we got there at 11am, they said they can have the room ready by an hour.  We walked a few blocks and checked out some stores within the area.  We decided to have lunch at Yoshinoya (yea, yea how boring) since we were so famished and we didn’t want to test anything first.

After 1 hr and 15 mins, we returned to the hotel to find out that they upgraded us to a suite at no extra charge!  Sweet!  We went to our room and settled first.  Bubba brought bug spray for the bed sheets (I was just discussing it with him 2 weeks ago that with all of our travels, it’s best that we bring bed bug spray?  It’s always safe to be preventive!  Sigh, isn’t he so dependable?)  We took an afternoon nappy since we were up so early.  At 4pm, we were headed to the electronics haven via the MTR.  The rain was on and off.  At 6pm, we headed to Tung Chung Station to check out the mall there that was like a factory outlet.  Adidas, Nike, Ralph Lauren, Segue, Armani Exchange, Calvin Klein are some of the stores distributed within the 5 levels of the mall.  I stopped by Roxy and stayed for an hour.  I didn’t go to Hong Kong with shopping as the end in mind.  I came out buying 6 items since the board shorts cost only PHP 1,200!  Cheap!  I bought two board shorts and some shirts.  I bought one tank top for Jaymie.  I hope she likes pink as much as I do *cross fingers*  I ended up spending PHP 6,000++ for the 6 items, which rounds it to about 1K per item.  Not.  Bad.  At.  All!  Although I still have several parfums, I decided to buy another bottle of Kenzo.  I only buy my perfumes either abroad or at Rustan’s –safest place to get an original.

At 930pm, we finally agreed to have dinner at the food arena inside the mall.  Bubba ordered duck and assorted meat, while I got a curry seafood bowl.  Be careful in ordering iced tea because it tastes just like hot tea (bitter/herbal) but cold.  We instantly remembered that the MTR might be closing soon, so we hurried to the station.  

By 10pm, we were lounging at the den of our room watching Bloomberg.  Bubba had to watch from the TV in the bedroom since he wanted to watch the Discovery channel.  But after a while, relented and sat in one of the chairs beside me.  He fell asleep while I was computing the day’s expenses.  Part of the itinerary was to check out some bars and get some drinks.  But based from his snoring, I know he is dreaming way past lala land so after cleaning up and preparing our luggage for tomorrow (since we were transferring to Marco Polo hotel for the second night), I carried his 190 lb mass to the bedroom.  Okay, I know I would have broken all the bones in my body doing that so instead of carrying, I assisted him with his one arm around my shoulder. 

To be continued… Hong Kong Day 2

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