Mosaics in Macau - Macau, China
Macau, China
So today we decided to visit another place - Macau! A typhoon warning had been hoisted in HK yesterday (Typhoon 3) which basically means that there is a typhoon nearish. So we were glad to find all the ferries running on schedule. The ferry takes an hour, but was quite choppy. Rich slept but there were many people around us taking advantage of the sick bags and making horrible noises, so was happy to dock! The weather here was the same as HK - sticky and warm, but with massive downpours!
We arrived in Taipai, which is the second island of Macau, and caught the bus up to Macau island, passing a few of the major casinos along the way. Macau is very much a contradiction in itself - on one hand you have the glitz and glamour of the major casinos, and on the other hand you have very poor shanty buildings, many of which looked they had substantial fire damage.
We spent a lot of time wandering the streets in Portuguese Macau, with the ruins of St Paul's Cathedral (basically just the front facade), some Taoist chantings, local markets, squares, temples and mosaic paved streets. It felt very European. We did also pop into the horrendously gaudy Grande Lisboa for a nosey around at all the ostentatiousness that is associated with a casino. We had also spied on the map a "Colloseum", so decided to walk over to that to find that it was part of Macau Fisherman's Wharf and completely fake. Ho hum (im sure Yanks everywhere are telling their friends about the authentic Roman ruins they discovered in Macau!!)
We caught the ferry back to HK Island and wandered over to Lan Kwai Fong to visit Hard Rock Cafe (what visit to a city is not complete without a visit here!). The food was pretty good, apart from the ribs which were fatty, but was standard Hard Rock fare and still very well received. *************g Kong. Tick.
The LKF area is really where it is all happening on HK! There are so many bars. We opted for happy hour at the Hong Kong Brew House, which to our joy served not only HK's only micro brewery but also a large number of English, American, Belgian and Aussie beers. So we kinda stayed a little passed happy hour and didn't end up getting a cab back to Kowloon until about 12....
We then had to ring the transfer company (sure they loved us) as they had our flight detail wrong and had not booked our transfer until 4pm (our flight was at 10am). Oh well, but all sorted and a great day of exploring Macau and drinking on HK island to finish our time here, and indeed in greater China.
Borneo, here we come.