Museum. Wet Hong Kong. Drugs.

So Monday’s are all about exploring. This involves the Metro, we’re still getting excited about it. The Norwegian one,  Janette captures this beautifully.

Going to collect Cariad from School. I just love it, stacking at its best.

So the Shanghai Children’s Museum had been refurbished. Us Shanghai Mamas get notified via WeChat. We plan a trip. Top of our list is the sand pit.

This place is awesome. A safe area for the little people to run around. Here we are in the ocean area.

Siblings helping each other work out the puzzles. Not sure if Otis is any help really.

Cariad in the submarine diving into the deep, deep, blue sea. Just after this photo was taken she got shifted out of the way by some chunky Chinese kid.

This Chinese family loved their view from the submarine! Blonde boy ahoy!

“Okay, Houston, we’ve got a problem here … we seem to be in China!” Yes, we’ve now entered the space section. 

This museum was awesome. It was free. The only flaw was that the sand pit wasn’t open. This is only opened on a weekend … when it is hugely busy and our children would get buried amongst the 100’s of Chinese kiddies!

So I thought it would be nice for Cariad and Lindaaa to do some baking together. One minute in and it all went tits up. Lindaaa didn’t think Cariad was stirring in the sugar right. Cariad wouldn’t let Lindaaa show her how to do it. Cariad ended up shouting for me. Lindaaa ended up having a strop. Gee whiz Chinese women can strop. I stepped in and we baked some lovely cakes. Just for them to rise in my book is a good cake!

So I’m still feeling pretty shite. But it’s time to suck it up as we’d booked to go to Hong Kong. The kids and I are on a Tourist Visa meaning we can only stay in Shanghai for 3 months. We had to leave to come back in.

I do love a selfie! Hong Kong here we come …

In Hong Kong you have different colour taxis. Certain colours can only go to certain parts. We needed a light blue taxi to take us to Pui O … shit loads of green ones, not a blue one in sight.

Hong Kong isn’t exactly a beach destination but Trip Advisor recommended Pui O beach. The weather was not kind (for the whole frigging weekend in fact!) but on a sunny day I can see this beach being much more glorious. The mountains that surrounded the beach were very beautiful.

Local fisherman. We got to see him real in the net. Both kids in awe of it. We showed Otis the bucket of fishies and he said “Yuk!”

Otis had just witnessed all these water buffalo cross the road right in front of him. He was speechless! This boy loves wildlife.

Time to leave Pui O on Lantau Island and head up to the New Territories part of Hong Kong. We thought it’d be fun to take the ferry. Mum didn’t feel too good … head between the legs, Mr B to take charge, “are we there yet?!”

We stopped for lunch on Hong Kong Island before getting a taxi to New Territories. We walked around a little bit, I felt that Hong Kong was much more condensed than Shanghai. Very built up with sky risers butted up against each other. Shanghai suddenly had a lot more green space! Jesus I’m going to get back to the UK and think I’m in some remote land!

Our hotel was the stepped down one.

We’d booked the hotel as it had a Splash Park. The weather was miserable but that didn’t stop Mr B, Cariad and Otis. Here they are enjoying 30 minutes before they turned blue! I just watched from the sidelines. I have Williams blood.

We got to Hong Kong airport and said good bye to Mr B at check in. It wasn’t emotional, this Welsh lass is hardening up! Hong Kong airport was so organised. We got through security, immigration with no stresses at all. I spotted a few shops and thought about taking a looksie, I was traveling on my own with two children surely I deserved a treat! I did the wise thing and went to find our gate first. Thank god I did, the airport is ginormous with 500+ gates. Ours took 45 minutes to get to, 40 minutes of that was fast paced walking, 5 minutes on a train … phew, good job I didn’t go dawdling in Zara!

Just these two and I jetting back to Shanghai. But who’s the girl in the orange with the Chinese pose???

We land in Hongqiao International Airport, it’s a little closer to home than Pudong. We approach luggage reclaim and Cariad is asking why there is a dog on our luggage! Yes there’s a dog sniffing at all the luggage but thankfully he moves on. A little while later whilst we’re in the queue for ‘Nothing to declare’ the dog is back, this time trying to lick the yogurt off Otis’s face! Otis loved him.

We’re in a taxi on the way home and the driver is flat out on the social media app, WeChat. To make it worse, he is receiving messages about a smashed up car. Ah man …

Hong Kong I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t the greatest of weekends, we’ll be back when the sun promises to shine.

Ok so by the 3rd week I’m really not well. I give in, email Bupa, book an appointment at Parkway Health. What a swift service. Blood results and x-ray results back within 15 minutes. I have pneumonia.

After 5 solid days in bed. And 10 days to consume these bad boys. I was over the worst of it.

So the first of these ‘bed’ days, it’s daddy-day-care. They have popcorn for breakfast. Cake for lunch. A day at the zoo. This particular day also happened to be Mother’s Day. Life at this point was pretty shite.

However, I was and am so grateful to the super friends I have made here. One neighbour/friend Miriam got me a few groceries from the shop. All the Shanghai Mama’s were messaging flat out. Anna dropped off vitamins and DVDs. When you’re in bed, soaked in your own body sweat, in pain, feeling extremely sorry for yourself, it was very touching to hear Nataskia say that they’re my family whilst I’m miles from home …

Lindaa was a complete and utter star. She did extra hours, taking complete control of the kids and the house. It actually paid off as she’s really bonded with Otis because of it. Otis either calls her “Linda” or “AYI”. I used to find AYI so impersonal and never wanted either child to call Linda this, however seeing and hearing Otis say it with a smile on his face as Lindaaa comes running … is real sweet. All she’s got to do now is learn how to bake with Cariad!

Next instalment (sorry, I’m nearly caught up) will be of big bro coming to visit! Yee ha!

Lots of love to the Welsh Land x