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Published: March 14th 2008
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On Wednesday's all museums and art galleries in Hong Kong are free so we'd designated it as cultural day and headed for the space museum a few minutes walk away from the hostel. It was alright, nothing special and got swarmed by little tracksuited school kids while we were trying to take it at a leisurely pace! It did make us laugh though as we remembered being that age while they ran around grabbing everything in sight! After a quick lunch we headed next door to the Hong Kong Museum of Art which proved to be much better. We arrived at just the right time to blag a free tour from an extremely posh English ex-pat who to her credit knew her stuff and smelt great (Katie's words!). The first floor was filled with contemporary and modern art from local Hong Kong artists. It was really interesting as many focused on Hong Kong's confusing Identity. Were they Chinese, were they Hong Kong Chinese? Some others highlighted how people are very individualistic in Hong Kong, keeping themselves to themselves whilst others celebrated the freedoms Hong Kong enjoys but the mainland does not. All in all a really interesting collection. Feeling cultured and
intellectual we headed up to the next floor which contained Chinese fine art and antiques. All museumed out Katie headed off to do some shopping. Me and Rob decided that we had no interest in the pottery on show and headed out as well. We walked down the promenade along the harbour with great views over to Hong Kong Island. There was an LA style walk of fame with hand prints and statues of famous actors and actresses from China and Chinese Cinema. Not having heard of any of them me and Rob were happy to come across Jackie Chan's hand prints and a statue of Bruce Lee. Jackie Chan's hands are the same size as mine. Score. A bar on the promenade was offering cheap Tsing Tao beer with amazing views so we settled for one and decided that it was number 2 in awesome beer spots so far, only losing out to Palolem Beach. After doing some post we picked up some noodles from this tiny place which turned out to be one of the most disgusting things I've eaten so far... Regrettably we headed for McDonalds to solve our hunger needs. It's so difficult to find cheap,
quick eats in this town! Either that or we're not looking hard enough. We settled for the evening on the terrace reading up a little on Macau for tommorow and chatting to a bunch of travellers who'd gathered there.
Next day we got up earlier than we had in weeks and headed for the China Ferry Terminal. It was really easy just to turn up, grab a ticket and hop on one of the frequent high speed catamarans that take you across the 65km of South China Sea to Macau Peninsula in around an hour. It was a Portuguese Enclave for 400 years and now like Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China. We ran into this Australian guy we'd got to know at the hostel who joined us for the day. We passed through Hong Kong Immigration and had our passports stamped out as well as being stamped into Macau on the other end. All seems a bit pointless when both are effectively the same country! We changed some Hong Kong Dollars into Macau Patacas - effectively worth as much as each other - and headed out armed with a map. Vegas style casinos towered over
Hong Kong Museum Of Art
view from window to HK Island us, Chinese people walked past in the street and adverts hung from buildings whilst all the road signs and names were in Portuguese. A very strange mixture of places! We found our way off the 'strip' and into a nice little Portuguese square, straight out of Lisbon. This proved to be a good place to find lunch and we settled in a little cafe and had Foccacia with Cheese and Salami, washed down with a nice Portuguese Sagres Beer. Surely we weren't still in China! 2 nice Portuguese looking and sounding people pointed out where we were on the map and suggested a few places to go and see. We followed their advice and headed up a little cobbled street (although filled with chinese businesses and people) to the ruins of St Pauls - an old Catholic Church. It was quite nice and again very european! The mixture of cultures was so bizarre. After looking around a bit we headed up the tiring steps to Macau Fort. It may have just been a particularly hot and humid day but it felt warmer than Hong Kong. The views were worth the climb though and you could see all over the glam
of casino Macau and the not so glamorous residential Macau. The huge towering Grand Lisboa Casino was calling us in and we were powerless to resist anymore so headed down and inside. To call it plush would be an understatement. Everything was decked in gold and diamond with chandeliers everywhere, even in the mens rooms. There were 5 floor of tables, slots, bars and stages. Within a flash Patrick had managed to lose 130 (about 9 quid) on the slots.. a little wake up call! I decided I would take about 300 onto the poker table but the minimum buy in was 400 and the bets were looking so big that I would literally have to call all in before I even got to a flop. Disappointed we had a beer or 2 and headed for roulette which proved to be a lot of fun. After a little while of fun and suspense I was a measley 20 dollars up but decided to quit while I was ahead. It would buy the next beer at least! Rob had managed to get 120 up and did the same. Patrick on the other hand was now in the hands of the casino..
around 400 down by this point. We headed to the biggest room and settled at a bar infront of the big stage. Dancing girls came on which was just fine so Me, Katie and Rob sat and enjoyed the cheap(er) drinks and the dancing. Rob was convinced one of them was giving him the eye whilst Katie was doing a fantastic job at being a lad/pervy old man. After a few hours we decided we probably had become pervy old men and made an exit. We grabbed a late dinner at a little chinese place and said goodbye to a now 600 down Patrick who was hoping his luck would change at the MGM Grand. The Casinos all looked fantastic lit up at this time and we felt even more like we had found some crazy version of Vegas. We got on the 10.45pm boat back to Hong Kong - got stamped out and in again - and grabbed the MTR back as after 8pm the boats only go back to Hong Kong Island and not Kowloon. A good last night for Hong Kong, even though we hadn't spent it there.
I really liked Macau as it was such
a crazy mix of cultures, 2 or 3 I'd never put together! Back at the hostel me and Rob tried to finish our last beer on the terrace so as not to waste it but failed. Headed for bed in the musky man dorm for one last time. As much as I've enjoyed Hong Kong I think we've spent enough time here and I'm looking forward to arriving in Bangkok tonight!
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Dad
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A great way to finish off a trip to Hong Kong
I'm so glad you had a chance to go to Macau - the Vegas of the Far East. The pictures are brilliant! Enjoy Bangkok ... I think it's going to be quite a shock after Hong Kong! -Dad