Finishing Hong Kong

Macau day- On Macau day we woke up to go to Macau.


Making sure I had the passports, we made our way to the ferry again. There we purchased our tickets (about 15-20 USD) each, and picked up some breakfast from McDonalds to go. I had hotcakes. The ferry ride was nice. It took about an hour, which was used to eat and then take a quick nap. Upon arrival we tried to get some local currency but failed. But it was ok because in Macau the exchange from Hong Kong dollars to Macau dollars is roughly 1:1 and they accept Hong Kong in lieu of their own (which is called Patakas). In the station we were hawked for taxis, an interesting mix of Cantonese, Portuguese, and English calls. We ignored all of them and tried to find a way to walk to the city. The only sidewalk was obscured and at the end of bus parking but we did manage to find it. This took as along the coast for a bit, passing some smaller Casinos and a giant theme park that was closed in the morning. It did not take long to find one of the many giant golden casinos on our walk. We decided to investigate and were confronted with incredibly overly done luxury and a guard who would not let me continue in my flip flops. 


So we continued. We found a bunch of churches and old church libraries and visited them and took pictures. We then stumbled onto a wide road of touristy sites and shopping. We found a Portuguese eatery and had some wonderfully Portuguese themed sandwiches. Then we wandered till we found a cheap super market, where I had banana flavored Milkis (the carbonated yogurt drink) and some local stout. I was trying to open the stout by bumping it on a corner of a bench, when suddenly i was confronted; not by a police man, but by the Chinese beer fairy. I heard rumors but I did not think it was true. He was wearing dirty pants and no shirt and was wandering around with multiple beers and was drinking one. He pointed and showed his displeasure at the possibility of me cracking the bottled and produced a well used bottle opener and opened it for me. After an approving nod he walked away and moved on, no doubt to open the beers of countless others in need.


The beer a mildly sweet version of Guinness and was pleasurable.


We then returned to go buy me some shoes. We found 3.5 dollar cheap rubber things that covered my feet and looked mildly like lace-less leather shores, Michelle found a nice purse for about 4 dollars I think. With our new purchases we made our way to the biggest and goldest casino (the Lisboa) and entered the casino. Our first site was that of severely under dressed prostitutes of a quality resembling my new shoes. Just pass them was the gambling room, where to our surprise was located no black jack, roulette, craps, or poker. It took 2 more casinos to even find these games, only to have to walk away do to high minimum bids. The really like games of pure chance there. The casinos are exclusively slots, 3 dice, and 3 card Bakarat. The minimum bid on any table we found was 15USD per hand. We played 3 cent slots. Michelle made about 3 dollars, I lost about 1.5 dollars.  I did however get some free milk coffee. 


We then asked the lobby for eating suggestions and were directed across the island to a nice portuguese place where I had African Chicken (the local dish) and Michelle had some delicious vegetable soup and sausages. Both where good. We then walked all the way back, on the way we encounted a place that had an orange eyed cat, some old porutugese houses, a lake with a scenic view of the city, some locals gibbering in heavy portuguese accents. We took a taxi the rest of the way to the marina and took the ferry home and MTR back to our hostel and slept.


HONG KONG- Last Day


On our last day in Hong Kong, we walked a long long ways. For breakfast we went to a bakery where I had some British tea time cake, which was pumpkin cake with nuts and fruit and was delicious, and a japanese sweet potato bread, which was bread with an entire sweet potato in the middle.  Michelle had a pao de queijo, and a pao de queijo which was blueberry flavored. It then began to rain, but we didn't care. We went to the coastal defense museum which was nice but incredibly cold because of the rain. We then metroed to the beginning of a long walk across some Bangkok like shops. In between them we found a nice little french bistro and had some snacks of sausages and a ham and cheese sandwich. We continued to the flower market, which had lots of flowers, and the bird market, which had lots of birds in small cages and made me sad. So we left and walk across a line of pet stores, mostly fish, but also lizards, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, gerbils, and some conveniently placed restaurants. We skipped across these and walked to a fancy but local section of town and got some dim sum, which made me realize how authentic the place in Atlanta is.




Hong Kong end of the Train~


This day was uneventful. We woke and had breakfast at the place by our hostel, packed, took the bus to the station, had some street pizza which was good, waited to board the train and got on.


The only seats were fold out seats in the tiny aisle. We were on the last of the cheap cars and the least cramped one. We were in a room of 6 beds stacked 3 high with a tinier aisle inbetween. The bed was exactly 2 meters long, giving the only other white person in the cheap beds a hard time (he was 6'2"). Oh and btw we where in the only cheap cart with another white person and he was in the bed above mine. Nice guy, Indian from San Francisco, but a Fraternity brother so white enough to be white even if he spent the first 10 years of his life in India. The only other non Asian near by was a Haitian Canadian who lived in Beijing and spoke Mandarin, also very nice. Basically we talked, read a bit, had dinner and fell asleep.