27 May - Day2 HK - Peak and Madame Tussaud

Though we went to the Peak on the last trip, the Peak Tower was under renovation then and thus we could not visit the Madame Tussaud's and the viewing gallery where we could view the HK skyline.

Instead of taking the tram up, i thot we could take the less crowded option which was to take Bus 15 (www.citybus.com.sg). Also, we need not walk from the Central MTR station to the lower tram terminal or to take a bus. Most impt, the daughter likes to take double decker, so it was quite an obvious choice really.

However, it did not turn out to be good. Of late, the daughter could not tahan long rides, and it did not help that the route up to Victoria Peak was a winding road. So, she began to yawn, go quiet - all the tell-tale signs that she would throw out. Indeed, it happened just as the bus was near the terminal. I could sense that parents and the missus were thinking how unwise of me to think of taking bus. Indeed, it was.

So, naturally, her mood was kind of dampened, and it did not help that the first destination was the Peak Tower's viewing gallery which was at its roof. Of course, the wind was strong (slightly cloudy too), and immediately she "demanded" to go back in cos she din like the wind blowing her hair! The photo of her below testified her temperament.

But the biggest joy for her was to re-visit the playground. Now, she could run thro'with ease. There we saw an ang-moh gal gog around unguided and she barely knows how to walk! You could see how different between us and them.

We wanted to go to Madame Tussaud's. The parents thot that the grand-daughter would not be comfortable with so many wax figures. So they suggested that both of us went ahead while they stayed at Mc. So both missus and myself dashed back to Madame, and took some pics with the figures of certain personalities. As I mentioned we had to pay to have our pics taken with "Jackie Chan". When we brought it back to show the daughter, she asked how come she not in there and the pic was not nice - cos she's not in there!

How come no secret service agents?

A salute to our "SM"!

As i was saying the sky was cloudy and it rained just when we decided to head back to town. After struggling our way thro to the station, we had to make many attempts to shut the windows in the tram during the descent. The rain din stop and we had to get a cab back to the hotel.

Oh ... i forgot to mention that we actually purchased MTR tickets for the daughter! They were half-price, so i thot it was fair for us to make. The irony was that we had not been doing likewise in Singapore. But cun blame us - charging full price adult tickets for kids is actually short-changing us. At least the HK authorities recognised that and did the right thing. This photo was taken at TST station after we came back from Mongkok's Ladies Mkt.

Btw, HK had a more relaxed criteria than Singapore. Their height limit is 1.0m while ours is 0.9m. Obviously our HPB would need to have a more updated database of Singapore kids (who are taller than their parents at the same age) and offer these to our tpt operators. But i doubt both would be bothered.