Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Well Christmas wasn't the same without family, friends and snow. We tried to enjoy the season over here, but as much as it looks like Christmas here with splendid decorations, the spirit just isn't the same. We headed out on Christmas Eve to have a drink in the Lan Kwai Fong area and found ourselves with thousands of people counting down to Christmas.
Here everyone becomes very excited about Christmas and celebrates with one massive street party. They count down at midnight like it's new years and the shops are open, what seems like all night, on Christmas Eve. The streets in the main Kowloon and down town Hong Kong area are closed off to car traffic and the police start their crowd management process called 'Pedestrianization'. It's was hard to walk anywhere as we were shoulder to shoulder with strangers all night. The police attempt to enforce one way pedestrian traffic on certain streets but it's pretty useless. Right at midnight we were stuck in the middle of a street trying to exit, it was worse then leaving a huge concert. It was all fun and interesting but nothing like the family filled Christmas Eve that we're used to.

Christmas morning was quiet. We stayed in bed till about noon watching Polar Express and eating our 711 breakfast :) The Kowloon street out our window was empty until about 2:00pm. We had always planned to see the movie, The Golden Compass, on Christmas day and when we finally arrived at the theater we discovered this was the same plan as everyone else. The theater was located in a mall and to our surprise all the shops were open and the mall was packed full of Christmas day shoppers. An odd sight for us. An hour before the movie we purchased some of the last seats available, good thing we don't mind sitting in the front row. While waiting we found a place to have lunch and then tried to find a quiet place to blog. We weren't very successful but in our search we ran into Santa Clause and were disappointed he wasn't off delivering presents to our friends and family back home.

The movie was great but it's a 'to be continued' one and now we have to wait for the next :( We rushed back to our small hostel room after and prepared for our 8:30pm traditional Christmas buffet at a hotel around the corner. The food was good and it was nice to have some turkey and cranberry sauce although desert was definitely the main attraction.

Once we were stuffed we headed back and phoned family and friends as it was Christmas morning at home. It was wonderful to talk with everyone and the best part of our Christmas day. We finally headed to bed around 2:00am, just when everyone else is getting ready for turkey. We definitely missed everyone this year.

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