more Hong Kong

I can't believe it was only 3 weeks ago that we were in Hong Kong. We are all back at school and/or work (last kid went back to school yesterday) and life seems to be normal again! The scrambling for uniforms/school lunches/stationery thing in the morning. My school has lots of new teachers - it is an exciting year coming up. I've been covering piles of delicious new books, meeting new students and sorting beginning of the year stuff out.


Lots of shopping photos here - no IKEA in New Zealand nor H & M nor Gap (but really not that thrilled with either H&M or Gap  - few tees for boys and socks, tights and underwear bought here).
Supermarkets are fascinating, no matter what country you are in (even Australian and English supermarkets send me ga-ga - HA! First aisle always - tea! And organic tampons! ha! Actually those were virtually impossible to find in any shop in HK!). There were many foodstuffs we had no idea of what they are. Junk food was incredibly cheap and the boys in heaven with the much much bigger variety! Even the bulk packets of things like toothpaste and cleaning stuff - you buy ones of everything in NZ.... the fruit and veges were fab. As was the local market near our hotel - fascinating - watching the butcher and the fish mongers was very cool! I learnt we are SO ripped off with grocery prices in NZ (way more expensive than both Australia and England too! We have little compettion in NZ).  Hong Kong prices were very cheap to us. Eating out very good locally - the Hard Rock Café meal (had to show the boys one of those!) and an Italian meal one night blew my weekly pay... but you know gotta have these experiences while travelling.
I truly think a trawl around a foreign supermarket is a great thing to do - takes us a couple of hours always!
Eslite bookstore was incredible - we all bought a couple of books each - spent hours in there! The children's books were so cute!
I bought a wallet and a shopper's bag at Cath Kidston (bar my key ring -my first ever CK purchases!).
I cracked up at the Christmas jerseys in H & M - actually I did love this one, but no-one wears these in NZ...
And Hallmark was a new to me shop too  - 4 packs of notecards later (virtually cannot buy packs like this in NZ! They were cheap!!).
One could spend a serious amount of money in that city!! I'm glad that the husband thought we did not over shop bringing home 55kg of luggage between us (limit was 150 !! kg).