Nine years ago today we arrived in HK on our way to Europe, and I messaged an old school friend who lived there to see if we could catch up. She was in Koh Samui at the time, so we couldn’t, but nine years later we are in the city at the same time.

We made the most of the late checkout time of 11am by sleeping in until 8am. I think Abi and I were both asleep before 10pm last night – it didn’t even bother us that Belle stayed up to watch Disney shows on the tv in our room. We packed and left our luggage with staff and took the free shuttle back to Disneyland. The train station is right at the entrance, and takes you one stop to Sunny Bay station, where you connect with other lines. Disneyland (probably not surprisingly) has one of the cleanest, most detailed platforms I’ve ever seen.

Alice was waiting for us at Hong Kong station and treated us to lunch at the American Club. Alice and I went to preschool together, and then our whole thirteen years of schooling, making her one of my longest known friends.

After lunch, Alice gave us some suggestions and directions and we walked down to and along Hong Kong Harbour. This was Abi’s city to research and we had to stop and assess how much we could fit in to the afternoon, so we stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and discussion.

We decided to skip seeing the Big Buddha on Lantau Island and instead head to Victoria Peak. We caught a public bus up, which was cheap ($2.50 each) but a long (45mins) bumpy trip! Once we looked around, we took the Peak Tram back down (8 mins). The Peak has some of the most expensive real estate in HK, but the fact there was only one lane up and down the side of a mountain, and bottlenecks in the traffic, gave me anxiety!

The Peak Tram was near the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, so we wandered through there before walking through the business district to get back into the train system. It appeared that Central Station was closest, but once we bought our tickets there, there was a LONG walk underground that brought us back to Hong Kong station – reminiscent of all the underground miles we had to walk in the Tokyo train system.

We made our way back to Disneyland to collect our luggage and head to the airport. Being there well before we needed to, the girls had time to explore some shops (where they bought me some Disneyland socks to say thankyou for our HK trip), and Belle even tried seaweed-seasoned McDonalds fries.

My left foot has remembered it is damaged so my ankle has swollen up and I am having trouble walking on it (and it is day 3 of 40 days 😩), so I appreciated the chance to elevate it (and ice it with McDonald’s ice 😂) while we waited for our 12.35am flight.