Macau

Part of what I like so much about traveling- especially in foreign places is that you just never know what is going to happen, what you are going to see or do. Today was one of those great days of travel for me. I took a ferry to Macau which is a peninsula off of China that used to be a Portugese (colony?). So I got on the ferry and found my seat and noticed a bunch of fingernail clipping in my seat which was kinda nasty- at least put them on the floor for God’s sake. Naturally I didn’t want to touch them so I blew them onto the floor and took my seat. A couple of minutes later this couple sits down next to me and the guy is on my left. I took a breath and noticed a number of unpleasant odors. The first thing I smelled reminded me of how my hockey equipment smelled at the end of a season- which isn’t pleasant at all. Then I noticed more current body odor superimposed onto the stale hockey sweat stank- seats were assigned so I tried to ignore it for my one hour ferry ride. The ferry was incredibly fast- 45 knots or something like that.

Kuniko has a classmate from Grad school living in Macau and he was cool enough to pick me up and give me a grand tour and tell me all about Macau- prior to getting here I didn’t know anything about it. I had about 5 hours in Macau and Sean helped me to absolutely maximize that time. First we headed to the older section (name I don’t know) which was really cool- narrow streets with sort of an old European style that was a bit run down but still charming. I was a bit hungry so I ate 2 egg custards and had a bubble tea (more on the custards later). We checked out some famous church that burned down twice, however the façade remains. We then headed to the first casino build in Macau.

As of 2007 Macau exceeds Vegas in gambling revenue. Sean works for the Venetian so he knows a lot about this subject. Anyway I already forgot the name of the first casino- we had lunch there at this place that makes the noodles fresh,- really cool these guys have a big piece of dough and use some sort of small tool thingy to slice the noodles into hot water. It was really good.

We then headed to the Venetian, but stopped for more egg custards. Sean took me to the best place that apparently created the egg custard. So it is basically a ridiculously buttery pastry shell king of thing filled with sweet egg custard and is served warm- these things are amazing. Apparently the owner of this place died from a heart attack in his forties- that is how good they are.

Next we drove to the Venetian which is the 2nd largest building in the world (the first being Boeing’s plane hanger/factory in Seattle. It is also the largest casino in the world. Not only that but they are also building a whole bunch of other casinos to make a strip of them. It may actually be the largest construction sight in Asia right now. Apparently the Chinese absolutely love to gamble and the high rollers consist of Chinese factory owners who are making shitloads of money- think about that when you are shopping in walmart- you may be helping to support a wealthy Chinese factory owners trip to Macau. Apparently the hotel has 3000 rooms- all of which are suites. It really was mind-blowing. It has a huge shopping mall- I think 300 stores and an auditorium for concerts and a convention center- crazy.

We then headed back to the ferry and I returned to Hong Kong. Luckily no one sat next to me but there was someone eating something that smelled like old beef jerky and it was really an unpleasant odor but luckily only lasted a few minutes.

I then headed back to the tailor for a fitting/adjustments to the clothes I ordered. After that I headed to the Temple street night market which is basically a bunch of stalls of people selling cheap Chinese made stuff and cheap jade and such. I then managed to spend about 15 bucks on a face and palm reading that was ridiculous- I didn’t realize until after I gave the guy the money that he essentially knew 5 english words- but he had a picture of him with Jackie Chan and had a newspaper article about him in English so I went for it. What an absolute load of shit. First off the guy just kept pointing to my face and these lines on my hand and saying “beautiful” and “lucky.” He then would point to something on my hand or face and then refer to his notebook which had phrases handwritten in English. He told me I as going to make lots of money. He also told me I have a good wife and then later found out I was single and then told me I would get married when I was older (wow- that is pretty insightful!). He also told me I had 2 sons (does he know something I don’t know??). The other thing is he touched my face a bunch of times which I didn’t like one bit and couldn’t wait to get back to my hotel to wash my face. He also said if I started a business I would be successful. He didn’t say anything negative at all- apparently 2008 is supposed to be a good year for me. I am pretty much done with fortune tellers and palm readers- especially ones that don’t speak English and consult a notebook to tell people their fortunes.