Excelsior - Lounge on the 1st

Very quickly, this was the WORST afternoon tea place we have been to yet. First, it was being renovated so there weren't that many seats and then there were a lot of "si lai" (noisy, asian middle-aged housewives) sitting at the next table and then a man on the table near us decides to give himself a manicure and clip his nails at the table (how are you supposed to have a nice relaxing conversation with people when you can't really hear your friend and you also have the sharp "click, click" of the nail clippers.

Ignoring all that for now and go to the food... the team came in one of those glass pots where you put the tea in the metal strainer. The strainer wasn't fine enough (or the tea was too fine) and so you have tea leaves floating in a very weak looking too (the water wasn't hot enough either).

The Tea Pot

So we ordered the afternoon tea set for two... it was very disappointing...



It "looked" ok but the sandwiches were dry, the cakes nothing special - as testament to that we didn't even finish most of it. I think the carrot cake was the only decent thing in the whole set (and i don't really like carrot cake). There was a ham and cheese quiche and that was just foul (no other word for it, it smelled funny and tasted bad).

Thinking we were going to be hungry we ordered their house salad... nothing special about that either. The pre-made salads from the supermarket tasted better than it.

Overall a very disappointing afternoon (and it considering it was our first in quite a few months, it was depressing)

Conrad - Lobby Lounge

Well this one is quite an old one and was a buffet.... the only thing we remembered of this buffet was that it wasn't that good... we were hard pressed to even remember where we had it!

Langham Place Hotel Hong Kong

Stay tuned, we're hitting Langham Place this week! Our first Kowloon afternoon tea (since Intercon)

Mandarin Oriental

Gosh, it feels like it's been a while since i last went to high-tea. have to get back into the mode but the last few months seems to have been flying.

On Sunday Erica and I hit the Mandarin Oriental (the one on Connaught Rd), we accidentally got there a little early so spent some time at Oliver's doing some shopping, i made a mental shopping list to come back AFTER eating - considering how hot and humid it was, definitely not a good idea to be wandering around with raw meat without any cooler bags.

Back to the reason for this post, at 3pm we headed up to the lounge (reservations are recommended as it can get quite busy, it a 'quiet' way - not like the Peninsula which is a bit of a circus).

The menu. In terms of black tea, not much to choose from they have a wide selection of "asian" tea but given this is good old English afternoon tea, definitely should stick to 'english' tea - so i went for English Breakfast tea while Erica went for Earl Grey. Actually thinking about it, none of the places i've been to so far actually serve "afternoon tea" leaves - quite interesting..

Anyway the tea arrived in nice silver tea pots, the strainer wasn't fineenough to get all the tea leaves though but the tea was nice enough.

Well considering we were there for afternoon tea we hardly had to decide what we were going to order. the benefit of going with two or more people is that you don't have to choose what savouries/scones that you'd like - we had to wait quite a while for the set to arrive:

Tier number 1: the sandwiches: they were pretty nice, bread was a tiny little bit dry though
Tier number 2: The savouries. All were delicious (i was in a savour mood though)
Tier number 3: the dessert - i have to say, we didn't actually finish it off, it was too sweet...
The scones! Verry nice and i just realised i didn't get any photos of the jam and cream. The jam was very tasty it was strawberry but also had a hint of something else... neither Erica nor I could place it but it was like strawberry jam made with rosewater or something. the effect was quite pleasant and the scones were pretty good as well - I can't remember all the scones i've eaten so far but these rank on the top of the list.

Atmosphere: it was quite, conversations were kept soft but that could be because the tables are fairly well spaced. Seats were comfortable as well... unfortunately i'd have to say there is something about the Intercontinental - it's still on the top of my list. I will probably have to do Intercon another go, just in case i'm biased because it was the first one we hit on this High Tea of Hong Kong journey...

On a separate note, the problem with the Peninsula is that ... for such a 'high class' hotel, the lounge is too much of a zoo. It lacks the style associated with the name of the hotel - probably because it's now a tourist trap... I'd have to say that so far, the Mandarin Oriental has been the classiest hotel we've been to - probably because it's a little out of the way, it is really an enjoyable place to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Aside from the afternoon tea buffets, i think we've pretty much done all the afternoon teas on the Hong Kong side - we will start hitting the Kowloon ones next albeit a bit reluctantly since we both hate the crowds associated with the Kowloon side...

Revised High Tea list

Sheraton - Sky Lounge
Conrad - Lobby Lounge
The Excelsior - Lounge on the 1st
Grand Hyatt - Tiffin
JW Mariott - The Lounge
Langham Place Hotel Hong Kong
The Landmark Mandarin Oriental - MO Bar

So many places! Not enough weekends!!

High Tea #4 - W Hotel

[I didn't go to this one but my High Tea buddy (Erica) did!]
Verdict: "Don't bother with this one"

From what i gather, there are multiple sets to choose from. Erica chose the Oriental one

I have to say presentation looks good (different to the tea trays that we've had so far)

The experience is best described by Erica herself:

so besides the oriental pastry, you get "scones". It was sooooo not a real scone.. it's the front two in the picture.. yep can be eaten with one bite.. then the cream for the scones were ordinary cream, not the clotted cream style..

We had iced coffee rather than tea, but I saw on other tables that it wasn't the silver teapot style...

Then let's move onto the ambience... well W hotel is a funky retro style hotel so it didn't have the english high tea feeel so I guess for me the food didn't do it and the ambience was way off...

It was the most disapointing high tea ever!!!

High Tea #3 - Shangri La: Lobby Lounge

Good progress on the journey to tasting all of Hong Kong's High/Afternoon tea locations. This time it's at the Shangri La Lobby Lounge (on top of Pacific Place in Admiralty).

This is the first place to offer the choice of three tea sets: Wimbledon, Shangri-La and Traditional.We had a bigger party this afternoon and so managed to order all three sets. The scones came in their own separate basket and i must say these are the best scones out of the ones i've been to so far. Soft and not too big/small. The condiments were also tasty as well.



This is a single serving of the Wimbledon and Shangri-La set:
My friends tried the strawberries and found them a little sour... i guess it's just hit and miss with fruits...
and this is the traditional set - i opted for this one as it was closer to all the other sets that we have eaten so far (best to compare similar things, to be fair)
What an oversight! I just realised i hadn't taken any pictures of the teapots! But they were tea leaves and steel/pewter things. The tea was nice the only gripe is they explicitly say only ONE pot of tea (unlike the other contenders which have replaced the tea leaves/bags upon request)

The sandwiches were a tad small, just a little bit bigger would have been great. The madelines didn't compare to the one at Intercontinental either.

Atmosphere was good though - instead of havint the tea at the lobby lounge, you can opt to have it at the cake shop down one floor (i can't remember the name) but glancing at it on the way it. it's not as relaxing as having it in the lounge.
Verdict: Intercontinental Tsim Sha Tsui is still the winner for me.

Four Seasons - Afternoon Tea

Afternoon tea #2 - Four Seasons
Official Site: http://www.fourseasons.com/hongkong/dining/the_lounge.html

Today i hit the Four Seasons Afternoon Tea in Central, Hong Kong. The occasion was an 'beat the rush' mother's day tea with my mum (and aunt).

The servings are as follows:
The tea set (this is for 3 people so don't get excited by the number of servings)

Here's some close-ups of the savouries (the sandwiches weren't worth photograhing - they were dry and bland)


The first is a prosciuto on toast, 2nd is an egg salad concoction with caviar - both were quite nice.
The third was a little profiterole with something that i found kind of bland inside.

The tea set - not much variety of tea to choose from (they had breakfast/afternoon/earl grey and two others for the 'black' teas), unlike the Intercontinental and inside the teapot was ... a tea bag!!! That was a little disappointing. It's nice that the waiters pour the tea for you when your cup is empty but it would have been nice if they actually asked if you would like another tea bag when the tea coming out of the pot is almost the colour of the water they poured in!


Close-ups of the dessert part of the afternoon tea. I found the chocolate mud slice a little on the heavy side (that said, i've had 'heavier' cakes before) It's just a matter of taste/mood. The things in the little glass was pineapple and coconut jelly. I'm not sure what kind of cream base they used but it was my favourite out of section of the tea. I'm not a fan of maccaroons either so they were wasted on me. the little strawberries biscuits with a bit of gold flakes was nice though.

Atmosphere - seating was comfortable and it was surprisingly not crowded. It'll probably be different tomorrow. Tip: If you arrive well before the 3pm starting time and they take your name down before directing you to wait in the lobby, remember to ask for a window seat (if you would like a view of the Kowloon side) - we didn't know and missed out.
There is live music (grand piano + cello) - the grand piano was nice but at times it was a bit loud. We were the closest table to the piano though so if you're sitting at the back of the lounge it may be better. It was still nice and relaxing though the view isn't as great as the Intercon - because the lounge is in the lobby of the hotel you don't get that great of a view, it'll probably be better if the Lounge was on the next level up or something.

Restrooms - very nice - this was one thing that is better than the Intercon. Neat, spacious, dressing tables, multiple cubicles! (most important considering the amount of tea you can drink)

Verdict - Intercon is still my first choice, if you're doing the afternoon/high tea circuit in Hong Kong. Four Seasons is a must-try but i don't think i'll go back (yet).

The outside of the hotel is nice but you have to walk through all the cars parked around in front to get to the lobby and there's no clear pedestrian path leading from ifc One to the front door. The Peninsula is definitely the winner for grand entrances (though that said, you have to walk up the driveway....) :P

High/Afternoon Tea Spots

Here's the initial list of locations:

Sheraton - Sky Lounge
Conrad - Lobby Lounge
The Excelsior - Lounge on the 1st
Grand Hyatt - Tiffin
Shangri-La - Lobby Lounge
JW Mariott - The Lounge
Langham Place Hotel Hong Kong

The Landmark Mandarin Oriental - MO Bar
Four Seasons - The Lounge

High Tea at the Intercontinental, Hong Kong

A picture is worth a thousand words, if you're reading this you're obviously curious as to what the 'High/Afternoon Tea' at the Intercontinental Hong Kong offers.

You definitely won't be disappointed with the amount of food they provide (as dainty as it looks)

The presentation was lovely, atmosphere was great (especially with a rare, clear view of the Hong Kong side from the lounge area)

Scones and cakes were light, moist and very tasty (i rate these better than the ones at Peninsula which tend to be big but a bit more on the hard side. The madelines were nice as well, not dry or flaky.

The bonus was the little mango pudding that came towards the end - the mango puree was delicious though the mango ball was kinda sour - don't know if that was deliberate but i guess you could say it was a nice kick with all the sweetness but still kinda gave me a shiver.

The service was good, they came around checked your tea pots to see if it needed refilling or even changed the tea leaves when you asked (I found at the Pen you were constantly trying to get someone's attention and they were always busy)

At the same price as the Pen, ($398 for two) it is so far at the top of my list.

They have live music as well and because of the massive windows it's very bright, relaxed and not as noisy at the Peninsula.

The only 'bad' thing is the female toilets... there is only 1 cubicle?! so expect to wait in line...


Not that you would normally do this but Erica and I also felt like some chips (blame the person a few tables over who ordered it) so we ordered it as well:
They were great, nice and crispy - maybe a touch too much salt (but it was still ok). They cost about $75HKD though (though there were tonnes of it - so small price to pay) and if you're worried about too much oil we got to the bottom of it and the paper it was wrapped in didn't have any oil stains so definitely worth points there!

Total Cost: $398 (tea set for 2) + $75 (for the chips) + 10% service charge
= a very nice relaxing afternoon!

New purpose!!

my blog has now got a new purpose! i'm going to blog all the High Tea places in Hong Kong and review them with Erica!!!

So far i've done the Peninsula and Intercontinental. Erica has done the Mandarin Oriental (MO) and will be doing the Four Seasons today.

I've been to the Peninsula twice (obligatory tourist thing...) and only did the Intercontinental once. So far Intercon is the better of the two, Erica says it she prefers to to the MO as well.

I'll put the details into a separate post though...

Dilemma, dilemma

So much to think about all the time, no wonder we get white hair - i was gonna say gray but that's not accurate since gray is just the combination of white and black hair (as Polgara says). My most common dilemmas: what to eat, what to wear, where to go, what to do. It's enough to drive you mad (or to drink :P)!
Dilemma for today: to rent or buy but i have since come to the conclusion. I like my freedom too much to be tied down to anything (especially to banks - interest rates and mortgages, shudder!)

Opportunity cost of owning a place, less holidays, watching your budget, worrying about management fees, refurbishments - ugh no thanks.

The only problem is I make a decision and then have second thoughts - it's such a vicious cycle. My problems would be solved if i just won a jackpot :P arghhhhhhh

alrighty then, onto my next dilemma - what to wear to work tomorrow...

better go to sleep otherwise my first dilemma tomorrow morning is whether to get out of bed or not

A Post!

Oh my gawd, what is this? Bink is actually putting up a post after near 3 months of bludging.
What has happened in this time? I've been to Sydney and back (spent a wonderful 3 weeks back home) but it was gone so fast. What i learnt is NEVER to go back and work from in the local office while you're back home, it is terribly unproductive I was in such a holiday mood and the day seemed to go so fast as well. I didn't fit in half the things i wanted to do (mostly involving, visiting my favourite restaurants). Nothing beats Sydney food, sure Hong Kong has the variety but it just doesn't have the taste. I even prefer Sydney Chinese food to HK though there are definitely things you can't get back in Sydney so it's always worth coming over to HK for a food-orientated holiday.

Ok so that was pretty much February gone. I should make a mention of the little accident that Ben had in Korea the day before i left for Sydney. Ben-Klutzy went skiing with Bev and concussed a girl and did some serious damage to his butt - resulting in spending 3 weeks in the hospital in Korea instead of skiing and getting drunk. (Sympathy for poor Bev who ended up visiting him in the hospital every day, all the while having to do Winter Intensive classes at his school). Anyway, 3 weeks passed and Ben came back and met mum and me at HK airport where he was going to rest a few days before returning home.

Not much happened that week, considering Ben wasn't very mobile on his crutches, and the fact that he didn't have much of an appetite (shock! gasp! Ben saying he was full after a half bowl of rice and a little bit of food) not to mention he looked anorexic from 3 weeks of hospital food (good way to go on a diet people!). Anywayz, Ben returns home for a few weeks before returning to London with the parentals, during this time Bev has finished up his contract and i decide to head to Korea to go for one last round of eating/shopping while i have a free interpreter/guide as well as lend him my baggage allowance for the return trip. That was a fun but extremely tiring weekend, which started with my catching a midnight plane to Korea (after a day of working on Friday) - trying to sleep on the plane, then the bus on the way out to where Bev was gonig to meet me. We made it back to his apartment before we crashed (plans to visit the local fish market, out the window as sleep beckoned) then it was eating , eating, eating (interlude where Bev floods his apartment with laundry water - at least his floor was VERY clean afterwards)

Crap, it's 1am better go to sleep and write some more tomorrow. Unfortunately i have been extremely bad and haven't made it to work before 9:15am for the last week.... will have to try harder. I just don't know how it happens 8:30 rolls around and i still haven't left the apartment... *sigh*

Homecoming!

I've been home for 3 days now! It's been great and kind of weird.
My return started off with the quickest exit from Sydney Airport, i was out of the airport in less than 40 minutes (that's including customs!) world record i think.
I even beat mum and dad out!

The doggies hadn't forgotten me (which is a good sign) - i was a bit worried Wei would tear my arm off because he didn't recognise me. But luckily he was very happy to see me. Lulu kinda ignored me a little (sily b*tch) hehe

But gosh it's so different coming back to a roomy house, went into the bathroom and was surprised at how roomy it felt (for perspective, our bathroom at home is the size of almost two of my bathrooms in HK). Hell, i think my whole apartment can fit into our living room/kitchen!

It's been incredibly hard to get up every morning the weather is making me feel so lethargic. I don't know how i'm going to be able to get up on Friday to get to work... but geez i wouldn't mind not working at all!

I was in a writing mood before but no such much now... i'll have to think of something else to write

A post for the sake of posting

i can't believe it's been a month and a half since i last posted - not much has happened though since then, time appears to have gone pretty quickly. bit of 'excitement' at work though i guess it's not really excitement, more like tense, wary, fear - it was kind of strange. you hear of all the redundancies happening and you don't think it'll strike so close to you then arrive at work last monday morning and find that your team has been affected and people you know are out of a job. I can't say i felt sorry for them and although people were saying that they were sorry you can't help but wonder if they're thinking 'thank god it wasn't me'.

i don't know why but i was kind of indifferent, it seemed unreal to me and i was a bit 'shrug my shoulders, oh well' - I like to plan, i had already decided i'd go on a 1 month holiday to Germany first and then perhaps do a nice country tour of Englad and leech off Benny-boy if i got laid off. I guess it is really bad for people who have a family to feed, mortgages to pay off but if it's not happening to you and you are not in a similar situation it's really hard to relate to it... i hope that doesn't sound too bad of me.. :(

I'm feeling a bit contemplative today so i'm just letting my fingers type whatever comes to my head. Karina, her mum and gran are currently staying with me (though they have gone to Japan for a week at the moment) i was worried the apartment would get crowded but we have managed quite well and we don't get in each other's way, i guess it helps i'm working during the day and they go out and come back late.

hmm, i have a shopping day planned this weekend hopefully i'll do a bit of retail therapy (not that i need therapy but what's the point of earning money and not spending it!)


oh i guess i should write about something a little more interesting. Another food place opened across the street from my apartment! It's a miso ramen place, Karina and I tried it the other day after a nice foot massage session. it was pretty late in the afternoon and unfortunately everything we ordered was already "sold out" - either it was really sold out or they didn't have it in the first place. The staff appeared to be quite disorganised, the waiter told us the gyoza were sold out so we ordered the calamari rings - a little while later the gyoza's turned up!?

i guess there was some miscommunications, maybe our order was the last plate and the waiter misinterpreted it.

The side dishes

Then our side dishes came twice, though being honest we said they'd already arrived. The food was ok - nothing too crash hot but it's convenient i guess. i'll have to go down and take a picture of the food places around my apartment it's great for when i come home late from work and can't be bothered cooking.


bit of a lame post (i'm sure ben/bev will have something to say about this...) but not in the mood to write anymore... maybe after this weekend...

My Sunday Dinner

Mmm, Sunday night dinner.

My all time favourite ingredient has to be chicken wings. So easy to cook and delicious.
Tonight my dinner is quite simple, chicken wings cooked in soya sauce.
Chop the chicken wings (& drumsticks) in half throw it into the wok and through the normal and 'old' soy sauce in with some salt and sugar then toss it until it cooks.
Thicken the soy sauce by dumping in some corn starch and viola!

The Marco Polo German Bierfest 2008

Erica invited me to the German Bierfest held at the Marco Polo hotel in Kowloon.
Headed there after work, it was actually held at the other end of a carpark the "viewing platform" as they call it (the view of Hong Kong was quite nice from there, and we were lucky that it was a 'clear' night as well.
The tickets were $99HKD and included a "free" bier (Lowenbrau) and a souvenir beer glass.
You had to pay extra for real food - relatively speaking the prices were that steep either.
there was a german band and plenty of beer everywhere - the amusing thing about drinking in Hong Kong is how red the people get after one beer (granted the beer was a pretty big glass, i think bigger than the average schooner.
As a starter we got some... pretzels!
I liked these ones better than the ones in Germany, at least you don't get a sore jaw by the time you finish eating it.

Once the entertain started, we quickly went to get some food.
I went for the Nuemburger sausages (I *think* that's how you spell it... it was N..m.. something sausage)
The guys went for the pork knuckle (of course)... i didn't go for it because it didn't have serious crackling...


Here's Erica trying to get a headstart on everyone:
though she didn't even finish her FIRST beer.

After pigging out, i went and bought a round of Jeiger bombs for 4 of us (Purdey opted for an alcohol free night). the only dumb thing is they give you a plastic cup with the Jeigermeister.... and what happens when you try to bomb it into the red bull.... the cup floats so you end up shooting the red bull and you're stuck with the Jeiger... lesson learnt, next time just tip the Jeiger in an scull.

Ok it's getting late here so i'll just dump a couple of funny videos up for you to enjoy.
The night ended with some competitions, the guys had to see who could yodel the best... boy it was kinda embarrassingly.
WARNING: This is kinda painful...



The girls had to see who could blow the horn... (coming soon it's too big to upload here)

The Verdict

I was too stuffed to be bothered to post the picture of the end result last night (not because it wasn't presentable!)

So here it is:
It wasn't too bad, probably should have left it to bake for about 10 more mins (since my crappy little oven only goes to 250 degrees instead of the 325 that the recipe asked for) I think i like pan fried salmon more but this was healthy enough.

The black sauce is, of course, my white truffle balsamic sauce -not bad. BTW, it's sitting on a bed of rice.

Here's the recipe:

Baked Salmon Fillet
place salmon on foil
spread onion on top
drizzle with lemon juice
bake @ 325 degrees for 25 mins

- i obviously mucked around with the order of it and added salt and pepper..

Think i'l just have bread tonight and the soup i made a couple of days ago...

Tomorrow will be fun, going to the bierfest at the Marco Polo Hotel in Tsim Tsa Tsui!

my first cooking experiment

Why experiment? you say. that's because i've never cooked something like this before. I guess i should briefly add i did a spaghetti bolognese last night - delicious as always but tonight i thought i'd go for something a bit lighter.
So i headed off to Apita after work and bought the following:

I bought other stuff (of course) but they're not relevant to this particular meal so i won't mention it for now. The 'white truffle balsamic' was a bit of an impulse buy, i heard/read somewhere that it's supposed to be nice so i guess i'll find out.

Ok,

so first thing first - wash and debone the salmon - unfortunately didn't have any pliers (or fingernails to be able to grab the bones out quickly, need to put one on my shopping list)
anyway after that, pat it dry then sprinkel some salt and pepper on it then squeeze some lemon juice over it (ok not really squeeze coz i cheated and bought lemon juice because Apita didn't have any lemons, that i could see)

Get a piece of foil, dump the salmon on it and pour the pepper/salt/lemon juice over it (from the plate)
Thinly slice up the onion and dump it on top then voila
Pop it into my poor excuse of an oven and wait...

Next, is to make some rice (well, enough for my lunch tomorrow as well) and wash the sprouts.


Damn... mmm 5 day old rice in the rice cooker in humid weather - totally gross!!!! i had to disinfect the rice cooker bowl, that's the problem with living by yourself. You eat out a few days are you have all sorts of weird science experiments. I left some bread and a kiwi fruit in the office overnight and came back to a full blown mould colony - thank god it was in a zip lock bag...

Anyway... just tried some of the white truffle balsamic - yummy!!!

Next post... the end result!

Disneyland

Ingrid and I headed off to Disneyland today, it was a pleasant day and i had fully recovered from my bout of i don't know what, from Friday/Saturday/Sunday morning.

We started kinda late and got to Sunny Bay around midday anyway we were greeted by the Disney MTR.. which is kinda cute!
But what really gets you is the statues inside the train - gosh if there were less people on the train i'd probably walk up and down just to see them all. Here are the ones that were closest to us:

Can't remember how long the train ride took but before you know it we'd arrived at:
It was a bit of a walk to the front entrance, and before we got there -there was a massive fountain that was playing all this Disney music and the water moved in time with the music, Ben will probably love this:

We bought our tickets (which are cheaper if you go between Mon-Thu) and headed through the gates.
First stop was the "Main Street Haunted Hotel" which didn't open until 1pm so we had to wait around for it (but since it was still early there wasn't much of a line and we got in pretty quickly)
There was a group of Japanese children with a few mothers looking after them, they got to the front of the door and a few chickened out (because you enter the mansion through this massive door and the park people actually rap the big door knocker thingy before you enter - i really should've taken a picture of that). No pictures allowed inside (of course) but i have got to say that it would've been pretty scary if we weren't kinda rushed through it (and of course, the group of kids in front were so petrified by the first room they were screaming the heads off - there was a little boy in the group and he had to be carried thru the whole house, poor thing). Back to the house, it was pretty good except it was too dark so you were squinting to see anything. It would've been scarier if they spread out the groups more and brightened up the room a little bit more so you could see (= you could see what would be scary the sh!t out of you)
the decorations were extremely well done - i'd rate it better than the Ocean Park scary houses actually but again, lose points for being too dark.

After finishing the house we headed back outside and surprisingly, all the screaming Jap kids seemed to be fine after seeing daylight (i guess they have the rest of the day to get over the "horrors" they saw... but after "The Ring" i have no idea why they would be scared.)
Anyway, off to Adventureland next

and another Haunted House "Adventureland Haunted Trail" - i think Ingrid found the port-a-loo's more disturbing than the 'trail', i can't remember much of it so i won't talk about it.
We started to get hungry but instead of food we got side-tracked by the "Festival of the Lion King" which Ingrid tells me i'd appreciate more if i had actually watched "The Lion King" but still it was nice. I did get teary in one of the sections, can't remember which bit though...

After a nice relaxing 30 minute show, we heading to the "Jungle river Cruise" and i did have my doubts but the ride actually was pretty fun:

elephants, spiders, crocodiles, pirahnas, cannibals, hippos etc... and more, but i won't say anything b/c it'll ruin the ride.

Finally! Breaktime, though the girl at the snack store managed to somehow think both of us wanted 2 serves of curry fish balls and a pasta cone.. what is a pasta cone you ask?
Yup, a waffle cone with spag bol in it... weird...
what's even weirder is Ingrid finished it all. Adventurous of her to try a fish ball, though it only got as far as her mouth before she spit it back out (didn't even get a bite of it) - they weren't that good... i don't seem to be having much luck with fish balls these days...

Next up was "Mickey's PhilharMagic".... it was brilliant!! that is all i'm going to say about it otherwise it'll ruin it.

Now, with the heat i think i was starting to suffer serious dehydration - we were pretty clever had brought a bottle of ice water and a bottle of just water and mixed the two to get ice water but still i was feeling a bit off after "Mickey's PhilharMagic" so what did i do to fix it?

Yup, we went on the tea cups that spun around in crazy arcs.... Ingrid nearly chickened out for some reason but she did eventually get on and we both had tonnes of fun - though i think the attendant thought we were a bit drunk by the end of it.

I'm surprised we didn't POUR out of the cups by the end of the ride.



Reminiscent of our 'Temple of Heaven' trip, there was this giant cup.....

I guess these photos aren't as blasphemous as those ones...

I was still feeling 'off' after this so we headed off to "It's a Small World" - i don't know what Ingrid thought this was but i figured it'll be something like that cockington green (is that the name?, that miniatures place in Canberra?) anyway. i thought it'll be like that but boy was i dead wrong...
We started the ride, sane and relaxed enough
then came the "Small world"









If you still don't understand what i'm going on about....

Arghhhhhh!!!!! I think it would've been safer for us to stay outside... we were completely traumatised by the end of the ride









Next was the Winnie the Pooh ride, surprisingly fun - totally not whta i expected. it was kinda whacky (again, my (Disney) deprived childhood is being exposed - i don't know any of the pooh stories)You know, sometimes not being able to work out camera, results in the coolest photos!




This picture reminds me of Lulu









Alrightly, Tomorrowland. I must have been tired coz i made the worst call... "wow it's so futuristic!" .... *sweatdrop*




Ingrid tried to get out of taking this photo- no idea why, it turned out pretty good.






We then jumped on another ride, can't remember the name and it was fun but too quick so i won't bother mentioning it - after that we did "Space Mountain"... all i'm going to say about that is:
We went on a few more rides after this, one was some driving track... and Ingrid probably had it worse than me but we both got stuck behind... a putt putt driver!!!!! arghhhhh and i had a little nitwit of a kid bumping me from behind while we had to keep breaking because the old man(!) in front of us couldn't work out how to accelerate. Road rage in Disneyland! They should have separated the lines into two, one for kids and people who don't know how to drive and the rest of us 'normal' people. And this was a ride we waited the longest for too!

We went on Space Mountain again, then the Buzz lightyear ride (i have got to say that was the most fun, you'd definitely have to do it a couple of times though!)

Next on the list was souvenir shopping, i didn't find anything that i liked - Ingrid did though!
good thing i brought a backpack along :) before we knew it, it was time for the Halloween Parade

That was pretty enojyable:


See facebook for all the photos

The finale:

It may have been nice to see the fireworks but the thoughts of the crowd rushing to the MTR afterwards - Ingrid and I bolted after the parade.

Headed home and had hotpot/steamboat and a bottle of beer... ahhh!

Relaxing end to the day.