a two-leg journey

another school holiday has ended for the kids, filled to the brim with a bustle of endless activities and fun. i think the children had a great time with their cousins and i hope they have enough to pack away in their memory boxes for when days get longer and nights get darker.

i brought back stories from far far away and i shall tell them over the course of this week. hopefully, i can bring you along on this journey that i have travelled and show you what i have seen, through my eyes.



i was here for the first leg of my journey. i won't dwell on the why and the when but the where is singapore, the small dot down south. once my second home but now a distant memory in the past. looking back, it will seem that i have not been there for a few years now. the people have moved on. the places changed. what had once become a very cold place for me because of this alienation has suddenly turned into a warm and friendly place again this time round. all because i now know i have some friends on this little island, old and new. people who care, people who wants to know me for what i am. it makes the heart glow with warmth and the body a little reluctant to leave. it didn't matter that my schedule did not permit me to seek them out, their very existence is enough to make me feel a difference in the ar :-)

after an all-too-brief visit to singapore, we went on to hong kong. to search for the mouse. the elusive and popular mouse. yes, this time we ventured into disneyland.



i was mentally prepared for the various critique i have heard of this 'talk-of-the-town' place. disbelieving, i held the opinion that size will hardly matter, as long as we are having fun. infact, it will be refreshing to be able to move at a leisurely pace around the park. what i was not prepared for, however, was the heat. to put it in simple terms, this little pig was fried. and roasted. i was all armed with sun-block, water, cold towel and spaghetti straps. nevertheless, the heat made me wished i could peel my skin off, if only to give my skeleton frame some breathing air. HD said i was sure to have lost some weight from the dehydration, but it only serves to affirm my mental picture of a dried roasted suckling pig (incase some readers are wondering about this constant reference to the pig, i am miss piggy, born in the lunar year of the pig).

however, i am a highly adaptable creature and the heat alone is not enough to win the fight against my endurance. the thing that did me in was the discovery of some long-lost relatives at the theme park. some 'piau-chers' to be exact. having not had much experience with people from mainland china, i have always cut them some slack. even when another blogger proclaims them as obnoxious and loud, i put it all down to their upbringing. however, i draw the line when they start to encroach in my space. the personal yet intangible boundaries that everyone have around them.

i guess it should have been heart-warming, discovering relatives that you didn't know you had. for what else could they have been with the physical closeness that they intended? then again, even relatives of the same blood will not demonstrate such unappreciated 'friendliness'. in a queue, they insisted on pressing their bodies up against mine, so close that even a bacteria would have to scream out for air. the body was hot but it was mine, not theirs. in that stinky, sweating and steaming place (a lesson in the alphabet 's'), i would have gagged even at the thought of mr hot-bod of the year sticking so close to me. all because they cannot comprehend the concept of joining a queue. their envitable quest after encroaching into my space was to move a few more steps in front; in short, to cut the line. i gave them the deadly look but obviously their skin was too thick from all the cosmetic they had on. in frustration, i turned and grunted out 'miss!', for that was all i could manage in their mother tongue whilst keeping my temper in check. they must have finally realised that i wasn't going to let them through, as they slowly gravitated towards the left for another victim, my brother-in-law. he must have fallen for the 'hot sexy body pressed tightly against him' trick for they managed to squeeze through before i even blinked my eye.

that experience must have really ticked me off for then onwards, i noticed many more 'piau-chers' haunting the park. wearing 3-inch high heels! i know hong kong disneyland has been famed for being relatively small, but can you imagine having to teether all around that still vast space in pointy and very high heels? their hair was all coiffered up and their bodies dressed in sexy half-length ball gowns! a little out of place, if you ask me. maybe it was sour grapes, for i was nearly melting from the heat and was hardly a sight to look at. still, i am bewildered by their dress code. after all, this is a family theme park and the prince in the castle does not really exist, in case they were wondering.

the rating: it was the most tiring and exhausting visit ever, to any theme park or anywhere else. i don't know if the kids were enjoying themselves much but little missy never did get her wish to have her photo taken with the big elusive mouse himself.

well, at least we can know claim that we have visited hong kong disneyland to all those curious and nosy relatives who know our travelling habits all too well.



can you guess which is mine?