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The good news is that in spite of deluding myself into complacency, I had stocked up at the grocery store, anticipating that this would happen. Lots of instant coffee and cereal for me (imported Life Brand cereal this time....paid about a million dollars for it, but it actually tastes good!!), hotdog buns and instant noodles for Danny. Combine that foresight with PSP’s full of movies and that’s about as good as it gets being awake in the middle of the night, in a city that doesn’t get moving before 10:00 am on weekends.

Ok, so what do you do to kill time? Give the kids long baths. Yeah, I’m that desperate. Actually, they both enjoyed lazing around in a warm bath, so that was pleasant for everyone. And no, you aren’t getting any photos of that! Geez! 

After that, we decided to head down into the city by the outdoor escalator. See the happy smiles on all of us as we got out and into the fresh air. It was about 19 degrees in the morning, heading up to 22 later, so we were in t-shirts and light windbreakers. Oh yeah I have to rub that in. If I have to be up in the middle of the night, you have to read about our warm weather while you freeze your butts off at home! It’s only fair.

We went back to a dim sum restaurant we’ve been to before, and had a nice breakfast. Can I still call it breakfast, even though we’d already had breakfast at 2:00am? Not sure, but it wasn’t late enough to be lunch, so I guess it still qualifies. The food was pretty good, and other than a bad washroom experience (think really dirty and nasty) we headed back out happy.

The kids wanted to walk around some more, and I didn’t want to be cooped up in the hotel so early in the day, so we walked around, even though the stores weren’t open yet. See the empty streets? You never, ever get to see that in Hong Kong, so I had to take a pic to show you! We hopped a cheap, quick taxi ride back to the hotel, because we were starting to hear “I’m tired”, “my legs are hurting”. 

We weren’t back at the hotel long before Stephy was showing signs of collapse. I had sent Emily upstairs with Danny to try to rest, and Stephy watched a bit of PSP, then said “good night mommy” and went down for the count. Upstairs was another situation entirely, as Emily got rattier and rattier, because she was tired but determined not to nap. So, I decided that we needed to get out, and Emily and I set out for a walk downtown. 

One of our goals this trip is to find dancing ribbons for Emily. They are fancy ribbons, attached to bamboo sticks, for Chinese dancing. We looked and looked in some of the alley shops without success. We walked around for quite a while and then I heard the dreaded phrase “mommy, I need to pee, BADLY”. With Emily that translates roughly to “I’m about to pee my pants if you don’t find a bathroom fast”. Freakin marvellous as we walk the streets of Hong Kong, where washrooms are only for customers and generally disgusting. The only thing nearby that I recognized was a small wonton soup restaurant, so in we went. Emily didn’t actually want food, and was quickly fading towards napping, but the pee situation took precedence. The washroom was every bit as disgusting and nasty as I remembered, with only a half-size door, but who cares. She peed, and not in her pants, so I was happy. The tiny bowls of soup and dumplings were like a reward for making it before an accident happened. 

We gave up on finding ribbons and headed back to the hotel. Stephanie was till comatose on the couch, and now Emily was tired too. Emily went upstairs, so did I, and we both napped for about 2 hours. An afternoon nap never felt so GOOD!

We were supposed to call Danny’s cousin back, in response to his dinner invite, but since we all fell asleep we didn’t call. It was nearly 5:30pm when we called back, but amazingly they still wanted to see us, so we agreed to head over for about 6:15. Sounds easy enough, but we still had to wake both kids. Stephanie had been asleep for over 5 hours by now, and woke up really happy. Emily had slept about 2 hours and was less than cheery. We hopped a cab and went to Pok Hei’s house. He and his family have seen my kids ratty before, so I wasn’t too worried. As expected, Emily was tired and cranky, and Stephy was happy enough, but still clinging to me like Velcro.

Although we thought we were eating at their place, turns out they had plans to go to a restaurant. Off we went. We went to a Hak Ka style restaurant really close to their apartment, so it was easy enough. The food wasn’t great, but having a meal with their family is always a really nice experience, so the time passed easily enough. 

Emily, as you can see in the photo, slept through the entire meal, and ate nothing, but I didn’t care. Mother of the Year? Why yes, I am. Thanks. I don’t care. She was quiet and not whining, and Stephanie ate, so I had a 50% success rate. Aim low and I won’t be disappointed, right?

It was nearly 10pm by the time we got back to the hotel after dinner, and Emily and I called it a night right away. Stephy stayed up for a while with Danny since she’d had a 6 hour nap, and that ended our first whole day in Hong Kong.