Day trip to Macau, and leaving Hong Kong - Macau, China
Macau, China
Sunday, Macau - I'm not sure why I wanted to go there so much but we got up pretty early and got across to the Macau Ferry pier about 11 after getting the ferry across to Hong Kong again. When we got there the screens said next boat wasn't until 1:40pm, great. Weighing up our options of going or leaving it til the Monday, or not going at all we eventually just bought the tickets for the 1:40pm. Went off and got some lunch and then came back, went through immigration and got through about 1:10pm, we got sent to a reserve queue and got on the 1:15pm boat which was good! The trip to Macau is about 50km I think, and takes about 55minutes, this meant the boat it pretty rough. Even though its got 200 people on board its pretty happily skipping over the waves relatively smoothly apart from the odd crash down on a wave - certainly looked comfier than the police patrols off the coast of mainland china. 4 in a boat which was completely taking off on some of the big waves, we were on the wrong side of the boat to get pictures annoyingly, or maybe luckily as they may have not appreciated it. Arrival into Macau couldn't come soon enough for Becky, cleared immigration through the rudest person ever, and then what? We didn't have a map, didn't have a clue where the centre was. I wanted to go and get some nice food and look around as it was meant to be like Europe I had read, after all it was Portuguese. We had no clue though, everyone else was getting onto the free casino shuttle buses. So we joined them, Macau is famous for gambling after all so hopefully it may have been somewhere good to go, we chose the Venetian, for pretty much no reason. It was quite a distance so we got a tour of the island on the way, and saw some of the truly mad casino buildings - I guess to try and make you choose theirs over the competition they have to try and get bigger and better designs! When we arrived at the Venetian its first impression was just it was bloody huge, the entrance we came too didn't look like anything much - more of a coach station. In we walked along with everyone else, originally we planned just to walk in to get the free lift, find a map and go into town. This was until we got in and realised that not only was there a casino but a shopping centre of about roughly 1 million shops, shops, more of them great! They weren't even that cheap compared to Hong Kong, but what did make it was the design inside, Venetian, Venice, look at the pictures and you'll see. It was amazing to be in, small street like areas, opening out into squares about 5 stories high, and all within a building. We walked around for hours, got some very regional food, a bar of German Milka chocolate and before we knew it the time was 5ish. We looked around the massive food court and then ventured along to where the casino was and had a look at some of the restaurants around there. Deciding that getting into town was the best option, out we went to the 'Coach Station' and found a bus that was going to 'Somewhere and Near city Centre' we queued up for that but the buses were so infrequent we thought we better cut our loses and head back to the ferry terminal. Switched queues and started to wait, altogether maybe a 25 minute wait. Joining the queue behind us was a guy and his wife heading back over to Hong Kong too - we got chatting about the boat times and he had heard another company didn't have space until 3am! As we hadn't got our ticket yet we definitely thought we had to get back rather than look around the town, annoying, but sensible. We got to the ferry terminal and went straight in, the next boat was 11:30 to Hong Kong, I remembered when we arrived I'd looked around and saw the boat to Kowloon was on a separate counter, over I went, 7pm! It was now about 6:30pm so straight away I bought the tickets before going to find Becky, and then finding the guy who was with his wife about to pay about double for a higher class priced ticket to Hong Kong. 20 minutes later and we are on the boat and on the way back, not quite the intentions of Macau but we saw gondolas and Venice inside a building, and on the coach back from the casino we had seen just how grand the area is around the casinos! We even arrived back at around 8pm so saw the buildings lighting up across on Hong Kong. We wanted to go to a Dim Sum place to eat and the one we were aiming for was number 1 on TripAdvisor, we got ourselves out to where it should be through a mixture of underground and walking and the tried to find it, none of the restaurants had signs in English we after walking around the block we didn't know which one it was and gave up. Instead going into the busiest looking place that had English words we could read, home made dim sum, sounded like what we wanted. After the event of buying the sushi and food to eat in the hotel a few nights before we opted to go for smaller amounts. BBQ pork buns, this time they appeared to be in sugar doughnuts, really nice though if not a bit weird, shrimp wontons as we loved them so much in soho, some pork shrimp and rice things and some spare ribs - all really nice, but we always forget the spare ribs are sort of boiled and served in tiny pieces with hacked bone. We ate as much as we could off them but made sure we cleared the other stuff! I think the whole meal was only about HK$50. Another 15/20 minute walk and we made it back to the Hotel, an eventful day that hasn't gone quite to plan but had still kept us busy and been an experience. Monday, the last day! Typical isn't it, the weather had slowly been improving and then went **** the day we wanted it to be nice! Got down to central and then saw the rain chucking it down, had a look at the maps to figure out where we could walk in the skywalks to not get wet, we could get all the way to the four seasons and then get a mini bus up to the Peak, that would mean only getting the Tram back down but it should at least keep us dry. That's what we did, got on the bus and started to go through the city and then climb up, some of the views we got were incredible - you can see how they really do build on any available land, the clouds coming over and covering the top half of each high rise! Eventually we made it up to the Peak, the views on the way up were maybe more spectacular than that from the observation decks. Yes, it was amazing to look out over the city even if it was only for short petrified of clouds whilst the clouds went between us - but just seeing the road systems as the rest of the island was amazing. We spent a good 30 minutes up the top looking out until the rain started again so we went over to the Tram and got it back down, its probably would have been better on the way up but we saw what we wanted by sitting in the right and having the view over the city, and you really can see and feel just how steep it is! After we loved the noodles and shrimp wonton so much in soho a few nights before we made sure that was going to be where we went for lunch, and we didn't regret it - the food was just as amazing the second time around. Once food was finished the weather had started to also brighten up, unsurprisingly as we only had a few hours left until we had to go back to get the train to the airport. We wanted to go out on one of the boats to central pier but didn't know which one to really take - I had heard Discovery Bay a few times and as we walked towards the waters edge we saw the boat there was about to leave so we just went for that. Thinking it'd be really cheap like the other transport we had taken we were a bit shocked when I think HK$37 was taken off the Octopus card - that wasn't part of the plan of carefully working out how much money we would have left to ensure none was left over. Anyway we made our way over on the 25 minute journey, we sat on the left side so could see all along the edge of Hong Kong island whilst leaving. When we got there it was a bit surreal, it was an area that seemingly has been developed to give foreigners somewhere to live with a bit of open space compared to the city. Its hard to describe the area but feels like you are a world away from the busy city, private cars are banned on the island - instead you either use the buses that go around taking the locals to each little area, or golf carts - yep people look stupid driving them around. But after you get over that fact it is a nice place to be, even if it was for only a short period of time. As we didn't want to spend so much getting back/ didn't know if we had enough cash left we figured out a much cheaper way of getting a bus followed by the MTR and we got back to Olympic about 6, just enough time to get our bags and leave. Knowing we didn't have any food on the plane we went and got another Pepper Lunch for dinner, working out to the last HK$ what we could get, we got a large portion between the 2 of us and then made our way to Tsing Yi to get back on the airport express line. By this point we had given back our Octopus cards and bought the tickets separately, instead of HK$60 each which we had saved for the trip we got told you could get a card for 2 people travelling it for HK$90, another HK$30 saved meaning we could have had a dinner each after all - typical but at least we hadn't ran out. To the airport, checked our bags in and that was that, a bit of a look around, spending the last bit of money on water and KitKats, and we boarded. We took off pretty much dead on time and got a decent view back over Hong Kong and across to mainland China (I think) And that was Hong Kong!