Country Hopping…. Macau for the Day!

Nov 2nd

I woke up this morning extra early to skype with my dad’s side of the family- the 13 hour time difference is difficult but luckily every Sunday night is a big family dinner so it’s a good time to catch them all. It was nice to see their faces and get in a quick hello with everyone even though I was kind of groggy since I had just rolled out of bed.

Jess and I had high hopes of getting an early start on the day, but she’s coming down with a cold and I was up all night on facebook, so we both decided we should sleep a bit longer. We woke up at 10am (still early to me) and got ourselves ready for the day. We packed day bags and a change of clothes because we decided to leave Hong Kong and hope to the neighboring country of Macau (rumored to have great nightlife). Macau is known as the Las Vegas on the East, filled with lots of casinos and all sorts of gamboling Asians. The ferry terminal was about a mile walk from our hotel and we got a little lost, walking past the entrance. We arrived at 11:52am. Not really paying much attention to the time we looked around for a ticket counter. We were shocked as a guy ran up to us telling us we needed to run and catch the 12pm ferry. We went to pay but didn’t have enough Hong Kong currency and of course they didn’t take credit cards. We really wanted to make this boat and not wait around in the terminal so we got them to agree to take American currency. We had read online that this particular company offers student discounts but since we were so rushed they didn’t want to give it to us, we gave up arguing about the few dollars we’d save and grabbed our tickets and made it run for it. We had to clear customs which was actually easy and no line for once. We had a sweat going as we full on RAN to the boat. We arrived with only moments to spare and were among the last ones to board. The ferry was actually really nice, filled with big and comfy leather seats. I filled out my health form and customs forms and fell asleep within 5 minutes of being on the open water. I love the rocking feeling, and miss being on the Semester at Sea boat, it was a great nap! Jess felt a little boat sick because the ship did do a lot of rocking, I managed to sleep though most of it.

We arrived in Macau and decided to head to the cable cars- we’d had so much fun the day before why not try again? We paid the 50 cent ticket and jumped onboard. We were shocked to realize that this particular cable car ride was less than 2 minutes. I was kind of embarrassed we even paid to go on it, it probably would have taken us 10 minutes to walk up the steps. We laughed about how silly the whole idea was- there was only 6 cable cars on the whole cable and during the time we did a complete circle not a single other person went up or down.

While at the top we walked around and went to an old lighthouse that we saw on the map. Neither of us thought it looked like a lighthouse.

We decided that we mine as well get our money out of the round trip ticket so we took the cable car back down. We scared the employee at the bottom of the cable car who was sleeping when we jumped off the cable car. The poor old guy was probably not expecting a single tourist all day and then we jumped off laughing about the whole situation- I’m surprised we didn’t give him a heart attack.

We then walked around a historical path which is a trail that has all of Macau’s world heritage sites. We like seeing the old church which was in ruins.

Jess and I were both surprised by the Portuguese design and architecture here. Most of the buildings are Spanish looking and some have bight and clean Spanish colors.

I grabbed a quick sandwich at a local coffee shop and we were off to explore some more. Some how we drifted off of the walking trail but ended seeing the Macau tower which has a 360 degree observation deck.

 

It was a long walk which was kind of annoying because we could see the building but often times couldn’t get there from where we were- there was a lot of construction and heave traffic. Eventually we made it. On the top floor of the Macau tower there are extreme activities like bungee jumping and some other kind of jump where u are attached to a cord with wheels and you wheel down the building. We had a lot of fun watching this one guy get all set up and fly down the building. The views were great from the Macau tower, I really liked getting an idea of the setup of the island and I got to see how big it really is.

We decided to take a taxi over to the bar area near he MGM Grand and Wynn Hotels (same ones as Las Vegas). We went into the MGM and decided to spend $20Macau dollars (less than $3 UDS) playing this 10 cent games that I still can’t figure out. I wished that I had more experience because the craps and black jack tables looked very inviting. I’ll have to get my dad and Mumsie to take to me Foxwoods soon! I was surprised that the casino was much smaller than I expect. I mean, don’t get me wrong it was still big, but nothing compared to Vegas. Also the hotel was very much separated from the casino which I thought was interesting. I didn’t see any sort or show or entertainment going on or even being advertised. I was also surprised that Macau didn’t seem to have a “strip” that a noticed. Although I haven’t been to Vegas in a while now, I remember the strip that connected all of the hotels was so much fun with lots of shops and souvenir places. I also remember each resort having a great theme with tons of cool places to walk around and check out- I didn’t see any of that here. Maybe we missed it, but I thought Vegas was much different.

 

We walked past the area where all of the bars and restaurants were supposed to be but many of them were closed. Jess and I wondered if we were there during the off season or maybe because it was a weekday after a big holiday weekend? Regardless it was dead, hardly anyone was even walking around. We grabbed some dinner and headed back to the ferry.

We got back to Kowloon around 9:30 and got caught up with our blogs and pictures and headed to bed ready to take on our last day in Hong Kong!

Love,
Katie