Traveling is costly.. especially with kids in tow! @_@ Everything for us is x5! (x6 actually because our growing son eats for 2!!!) Gone were the days when we can leisurely travel long distances care-free. Due to budget constraint in this depressing philippine economy, all we can afford are short distance countries for now! ;P

Amazingly for a place so near, the kids have never been to HK. They’ve been to many other places but HK was never one of them because my hubby feels that vacation means somewhere far far FAR away! ;)) The kids have heard so much about HK that we decided to give in to their curiosity. Thus our 9-day HK/Macau adventure..

May 31, we left early for our expedition. Having left early (6am), we naturally arrived early (8am)! Clearly, I do not know the basics of booking a flight, hehe! 😛 So, to while our time away, we set off to explore disney first. Tickets were expensive at 10k for the five of us. (Last time we went on our florida vacation, tickets cost us 2.5k each but was so worth it because of all the rides & attractions. HK disney lacks a LOT of rides & easily conquerable in less than a day)

Our favorite carrier.. Cebu Pacific. For their LOW rates! 😉

The kids excited to go off on another adventure. They LOVE to travel! Unfortunately, traveling means EXPENSES! @_@

Got to the hotel too early for check-in (3pm). So took some pictures first then went off to explore the park!

We are a family of CAM-WHORES!!! ;)) The tripod is our best friend!

Off to “the happiest place on earth”! 😉

Don’t be fooled by our cool smiles! The sun was already up & glaring at us here!!! ;P

Buzz Lightyear Alien Encounter..

My baby girl loves Dumbo! 🙂

Of course, what is Disney without a picture of the Small World!!! 😉

By 5pm, we were all hot, sweaty, sticky & exhausted so we went off to check in at our hotel & have a quick refreshing shower.

The kids loved our hotel room! 🙂 I’m glad we threw caution to the wind & reserved at Disney Hollywood Hotel after much deliberation.

After a quick shower, My honey & the 2 older kids decided to go back to the park to repeat some rides they liked & watch the fireworks. My baby love & I were too tired so we just begged to stay & EAT at the buffet hehehe!!! <3

Buffet was 2k a pop! What an overkill!!! @)_@

But my baby was delighted with all those disney character-shaped food that I finally relented & started enjoying our meal! 😛

The next two days we spent in Macau. We figured, what the heck.. since we were in HK already might as well cross to macau! So we stayed at the venetian to find out what the hype was all about.. and we fell in love! <3

Rode the cotai jet for 1 hour to cross to macau..

What we expected was a dingy boat turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t crowded at all & the ferry boat was clean & spacious.

The Venetian was like a palace, oh so beautiful! 🙂 One can spend  several days in it alone & never get bored!

Our beautiful & luxurious room. 10k a night but so worth it! We had our own living/dining room so we didn’t feel crowded at all. (And this is actually 2x the size of our regular disney room for the same price!)

The huge Venetian shopping Mall.. where one can get lost for hours & hours on end..

But of course we didn’t just stay indoors! My family is a bunch of explorers, I tell you! So we went to the Senado square & the ruins of St. Paul Cathedral.

Then had dinner at a local portugese restaurant to sample authentic macanese cuisine which we found to our liking! 🙂

I highly recommend dining at ALorcha. Quite expensive but so worth it to try their authentic macanese cuisine. Mostly filipino staff too, so it’s best to ask them about their popular dishes. You need to make a reservation, tough. It’s always jam-packed & you can’t get a table unless you reserve in advance. Our bill came up to 4k, but not bad for the amount of food we consumed! ;P

After that heavy meal, we 3 girls couldn’t sleep. We tossed & turned so finally at 4am, the 3 of us snuck down in our jammies (yes, jammies!) to get coffee, but ended up EATING again. Oh my!!! @_@

We are such bottomless pits!!! *blush*

After our vacation from our vacation, we returned to HK with the kids having only one thing in mind: SHOPPING!! @_@ So we devoted the rest of our stay in one cloudy blur of shopping quest! 😛

MTR all the way to our final destination: SHOPPING HEAVEN! @_@

Endless & repeated trips to tsim sha tsui, mongkok, IT, H&M, Cotton-On, Topshop, Mango & Nike/Adidas!!! Giordano ba, AYAW NYO??? ;))

Ate finally found shoes she liked! She ALWAYS has a hard time buying shoes (or liking, for that matter!), so when ate finally found a shoe designer (Jeffrey Campbell)  that she really liked, I encouraged her to buy as many as she wanted in different shapes & colors! She ended up buying 5! I wanted more but she couldn’t find anything more that she liked. PICKY, PICKY!!! 😛

Was able to sneak in a bag each. Kapatan Kunat was in a good moood, haha! 😉

Weary, tired travellers, hahaha!! ;P

This is the result of our shopping! @_@ We went to HK with 3 suitcases. We went home with 7! (plus hand carries!) Each of the kids have 1 suitcase-ful each, brimming with treasures they found in HK!

Oh! And of course we couldn’t let our stay in Disney pass without trying out Disney’s very own MRT!!! ;)) So we had one last hurrah before boarding our plane back home!

How easy it would be for just my honey & me to travel on our own. More distance, less expense. But then again, being with our family is what makes us happy. And as my baby always says: (borrowed line from lilo.. or is it stitch???) OHANA means FAMILY.. and Family means NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND!!! ;))

‘Til our next adventure! ;P