December 13 2006 - Disneyland Hotel

I belong to the League of Women Voters in Hong Kong (the US organization, here it promotes educating people about how to vote absentee). They have a monthly meeting where we usually learn something about various businesses in Hong Kong. Lately we've been going on a lot of hotel tours, why I'm not sure, except that hotels are big business in HK.

I was really excited about going to the Disneyland Hotel, since I haven't been there and I have such fond memories of when we took the kids to Disney World in FL around 13 years ago. I have to say I was pretty disappointed. Its very small, and really seemed like a faint imitation of the real thing. Some things were adorable...like when you change subway trains from the regular MTR line to the Disney line and suddenly all the windows are shaped like Mickey Mouse heads...

The hotel itself was very pretty, but the pool was really small by Disney standards. Maybe I was comparing it in my mind to the spectacular Marriott in Thailand...

The lunch was a 12 course Chinese banquet, which I'm starting to learn, means course after course of small portions of strange food served artistically. The servings were BEAUTIFUL. I took a picture of the first course. It was shrimp dumplings. The dumplings were shaped to look like carp, floating in a pond, with veggies cut to look like lily pads! Seriously it was too pretty to eat. I felt like apologizing to the little dumplings!

Each course was just as cute as can be, but most of them didn't taste that great...part of my problem is that right now I'm really homesick. I want to go to the US and be with my family for the holidays. Its bad. And I'm doing that stupid thing, where instead of being all happy and excited, I'm sort of sad and depressed because I know I'm not going to get to see either kid for very long. We are going to go out to dinner with some colleages of Lee's while we are in Minneapolis, and, while I like these people, and the kids are invited too, I still had this sinking feeling of "oh, that's one less night just to hang out with Daniel and Sarah...". Good thing there are plenty of ladies here that COMPLETELY understand how I feel...

I will send a picture of the crazy first course. I only had my phone camera, so i don't know how well it came out. We'll see....