We stayed in an all-expenses-paid hotel because my Dad's friend booked us in as her VIPs, it was called Panda Hotel located in Tsuen Wan. The hotel was full of pandas it was kinda creepy, conveniently there's a shopping mall underneath it so it was really easy to get small things like facemasks and face scrubs. I saw this in the window of Panda Hotel which was probably the cutest thing ever.
Little pandas on a romantic dinner date awwwwhhh. Too cute.
The room I stayed in with my brother looked like this (well, the bed looked like this)... I actually took this picture to send to my boyfriend, I was showing him my hoard of cuddly toys that I bought in HK. I can't believe I bought so many, my bed actually has no space for them :<
So the main purpose of the trip was for my grandma's funeral. It was a really sad 2 days full of lots of crying, lots of monks, lots of incense, lots of praying and lots of folding before we finally said goodbye to grandma. I've never been to a funeral before but Chinese funerals are very different, in one way, they're extremely long. Traditionally, we were supposed to stay at the funeral parlour for 2 whole days, overnight included but apparently they banned the overnight thing at the parlour because people would drink and play mahjong and gamble throughout the nights. So for the first day we just headed there, saw the monks do their thing with the prayers and we sat folding gold and silver for grandma in the "afterlife". Folding gold and silver sounds a bit strange huh? But in Chinese tradition, they believe in reincarnation and the purpose of folding gold and silver with paper and burning it for grandma means that she can use it to bribe the people down there - the more she has of it, the more likely she will come back as a human and not an ant or spider or something bad like that.
It was a really insightful experience to have attended a Chinese funeral, I was absolutely tired by the end of the 2 days because we had to wake up extremely early for the second day because it was the proper sending off, grandma was taken out, dressed and put into the coffin ready to be cremated. It was really really really sad, I cried when we all circled around grandma to say bye. It really broke my heart to see so many of my aunties and cousins crying. We all had a meal afterwards as a family and that was pretty much the end of the funeral.
Rest in peace grandma, you will always be remembered.
So for the rest of the trip, I spent it shopping, eating and eating some more...
Monday I spent it shopping with my brother for electronics. I find myself to be a huge electronics type of person now - I bought a handheld hoover today and couldn't stop showing it off to my boyfriend who was just like :| LOL. I bought a portable charger for my phone as well, these things are huge in HK, everyone has one and everyone seems to have a Galaxy Note as well. They love their huge screens. Managed to fix my boyfriend's S3 as well, the price was similar to getting it fixed here, darn digitisers are so expensive...
I had this bowl of ramen on one of the days (I think it was Tuesday...)
Only in HK can you find this delicious crabmeat (real crabmeat, no frozen stick-type ones) and sweetcorn ramen <3. It was a bit overpriced (about £6) for HK standards.
Had some yummy beef tripe noodles when I was out with my brother as well. My mum absolutely hates us having this but me, my brother and dad love it. Beef tripe is basically one of the 4 stomachs of a cow, it's not popular in the UK but really popular in Asia - probably the only ever organ that I actually eat and like to eat. This bowl of noodles was only 30 HKD which is like, £2.
On Tuesday we went to Sai Kung which is famous for it's seafood. It's by the sea so it's a really nice area for tourism and of course, seafood. There's a famous seafood street where a line of restaurants serve up seafood of all sorts. I wish I took some pictures because there was some giant crabs on display - by giant I mean mahoosive, sizes you would never see here. Giant lobsters, giant eels, giant fish too. We took a boat to a nearby island as well, it was a nice experience because well, it's something I've never done in HK before. Here's some pictures of the island, it was really pretty, there were small beaches everywhere and rocks and huge mountains.
This was the view of the island shortly before we docked, this was taken from the boat.
I took this standing on one of the small beaches, you can't really see because Google has downsized the image by there's huge rocks lining the rest of the beach towards the mountain and people like to climb over the rocks to reach the mountain.
A clearer picture of the rocks towards the mountain. My brother actually went all the way to the mountain and climbed to the top.
That's as much as sightseeing goes in my trip LOL, didn't really see any other sights because we had errands to run like fixing my boyfriend's phone, buying souvenirs, getting my bracelet adjusted etc. But it was a worthwhile trip, Wednesday was pretty much spent on family, went to visit my aunt and have a last meal with Dad's side of the family before me and my brother left the next day. It was damn cold on Wednesday too, as cold as UK probably.
The weather was beautiful on Thursday which was the day we left and my Dad's birthday.
Not a great picture because I took it on the bus to the airport on the fast road - but yeah you get what I mean, nice sunny day.
In sum, 5 days is more than enough in HK for me LOL.
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