Day 45: Hong Kong and Macau

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If you don't like stories involving barfing, then maybe you should skip a few paragraphs ahead. You have been warned.

On the express train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong I started feeling a bit nauseous. The feeling had been coming and going after being on the rides at Chime Long paradise in guangzhou, but this time it was worse. I visited the bathroom at one point, but it was a no go. Unfortunately for me, the time came once the attendants had locked the bathroom doors, which I guess they do towards the end of the trip. Luckily for me there were common sinks for all the bathrooms, so I walked briskly down the aisle to the sinks and emptied my stomache as quietly as I could in one of them. I was a little paranoid about being found out, because we'd just filled out the health forms required for entering hong kong, which said I had a clean bill of health. but I was not caught, and we made it through the hong kong border checkpoint without issues.

Unfortunately I had a second round in the train station at the hong kong airport. this time I at least had my own stall, but it was a squat toilet. the logistics were a little complicated to say the least. but after that, I felt quite a bit better. Looking back I think it was the chicken kabobs I had at the chime long paradise park. they were tasty but they looked like they had been sitting around a while.

I'll stop the barfing story here, so feel free to read on if you've skipped until here.

from the train station we headed to the Tsim Sha Tsui area of hong kong on the Kowloon peninsula, which is home to the infamous budget guest houses of Chung King Mansions. The chung king mansions are a set of run down buildings full of budget hostels, surrounded by new hotels and department stores. It is one of the strangest setups I've seen. the bottom floor is a maze of cheap shops, with a lot of indian food for some reason. Each of the towers has a set of elevators that only go to either even or odd floors. Our first night we stayed in a place called the "disney deluxe guest house", which was neither deluxe, nor had anything to do with disney. Our room was ridiculously tiny. we didn't care too much since we weren't planning on being in the room much, but after steph saw a cockroach in the toilet we switched rooms to a cleaner (although just as small) place the next night. Here's a video of the first room:



Hong Kong was everything we imagined, and more. we didn't get in to the city until nighttime, and the sky scrapers and neon lights are definitely impressive. we caught the nightly light show, where several buildings on hong kong island have light displays in sync with music, that plays on the Kowloon side of the water. as you walk down the street near chung king you are approached every 10 seconds by someone selling copy watches, handbags, pens, and suits. At least it was nice to have english so much more commonly spoken than in mainland china. (in china, all they know is "hello! hello!") it is also very clean compared with cities in china. people seem to obey the no smoking signs, and they even have laws against spitting in the street!

Our first day in HK we took the tram up to the top of victoria peak, for some must see views. It really is a pretty city, with much of hong kong island off limits for development. then we found a bookstore that the robert jordan books that steph was looking for (and that I'll read after her). we then went on a quest for the longest escalator in the world, which we heard was on hong kong island. People seemed to know what we were talking about, and pointed us along until we were riding a short escalator. then another, and another. I figured they were leading up to the big one, but they never did. Only later did I find out that it was the longest escalator SYSTEM in the world. whoopideedoo. at least we didn't spend any money on it.

That night was halloween, so we decided to go out to a club in kowloon that had halloween posters up everywhere. there weren't many dressed up (we didn't have costumes ourselves) but there was still a bit of halloween spirit in the air. we had a lot of fun, but it wasn't the cheapest night we've had. Hong kong is pretty spendy.

the next day in hong kong we went to the south side of hong kong island, which is much less developed than the north side. We touched the ocean for the first time this trip (much more to come) - it was a little colder than I would have thought, but comparible to so cal this time of year. very pretty coastline. they also have their share of touristy little shops. they had these really cool little remote control helicopters - i would get one except it is probably the most useless thing I could buy while travelling. that evening we went out to a movie - also a first for the trip - and then caught the ferry back to kowloon for the night.

THe next morning we bid chung King mansions - and hong kong - farewell. Macau, here we come! for those who don't know, macau is supposedly the "vegas of the east". And according to our lonely planet, they rake in more cash than vegas.

We had a 7:30 pm flight from macau to bangkok, and we were determined to get the most out of our time. After two boats, a taxi, and a free shuttle, we made it to the MGM grand around noon, and left our bags with the front desk. Steph is a fan of craps (she got me in to it too) so we figured we'd spend the rest of our hong kong dollars on the craps table (or double it!). After exploring the dissapointly bland casino, we found the craps tables, but nobody was there! I guess the chinese aren't big craps players. we had to go to two more places before we found one craps table with people there.

Steph put down HK$500 (about 60 USD), and lost it before we knew what happened. I've never seen so many 7's come up at such bad times. we decided it was a sign to leave, so we explored more of macau.

Based on our 6 hour self-guided macau tour, we decided that it doesn't even come close to it's "vegas of the east" title. even if it does make more money, it just doesn't have the spirit of vegas. that said, macau has a rich history of portuguese influence that I would have liked to see if we had more time. But the beaches of thailand were calling our name, and we weren't all that sad to say goodbye to china for the trip.

Here are some pics from hong kong. I have more of macau that will be up on flickr soon.

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