Hong Kong. Macau. Are they part of China or are they their own countries? Sovereign States perhaps? Do they have different rulers, political systems, currency, laws?? Even after visiting these places and doing extensive Wikipedia research, some of these questions remain unclear, but, officially, Hong Kong and Macau are China's SARs (special administrative regions) of the People's Republic of China. They do have different political systems and they do use different currency (Hong Kong dollars, Macau dollars). You also have to go through passport control when flying into them from China, since they are listed as 'international'. However, they are officially now no longer under British or Portuguese rule respectfully, therefore, Chinese. I will also repeat what a Chinese friend told me about what China teaches their students about Hong Kong and Macau. "Hong Kong and Macau were like two children taken away from their parents and raised by different parents so they grew up differently, however, they always know who their true daddy is." Creepy China, creepy. Phew, hopefully that alleviates some confusion and now I can begin with the adventures.
Barr and I couldn't track down Rochelle in the airport after we arrived in Hong Kong so we headed to the hostel ourselves. When we had searched online for a place to stay a few names came up all in the same area. Once we arrived at the hostel (above Burberry...???) we noticed a sign that said the hostel was operating illegally and that the building was not responsible for anyone who chose to stay there. Great. We got in and immediately looked online for another place to stay. We found one down the road, however, when we went to check out that one, it was closed, or never existed... Later on we realized that the hostel was listed under about 7 different names presumably because it was illegal and had to change it's name constantly. It definitely wasn't the nicest place but we survived and it was in a good location in Causeway Bay. Overall very unclear, but it did the trick and was cheap.
Barr and I had lunch at this hole-in-the-wall place and the people were sooo nice and gave us some milk tea to try. Awesome. Later that day once we had tracked down Rochelle we had dinner with Gigi, a friend of Kevin's who he had met while abroad in Shanghai and who was currently living in Hong Kong. She was greattt. We had really yummy sushi, 2 bottles of sake, and about 20 beers. This was before I told Gigi about '7-hopping,' a game I claimed we played all the time in Thailand but really I had just made it up in my head. The game involved getting a beer at every 7-11 that we passed and chugging the beer in between 7-11 stops. Needless to say it was a really fun game, however, we were all pretty smashed when we finally got to the bars. We ended up dancing on the bar at Carnegie's, causing a ruckus on the streets, and getting drunk food at Ebenezer's in the form of gyros... typical night. So much fun!
The next day we headed to the mainland part of Hong Kong (we were staying on the island... and part of the land that is Hong Kong is on mainland China), called Kowloon, and visited the Museum of Fine Arts, the Space Museum, and saw Cosmic Collisions in the Planetarium (during the show we all ended up taking a nap... which was fine with me especially after the announcement "Hello, my name is Robert Redford, and I am going to talk to you today about how are universe developed..." snore, literally.
After the show we toured through the markets on Temple Street and attempted to locate the Jade market but failed so we ended up having dinner on the street in clay pots. We got chinese eggplant and beef brisket and then a fried oyster cake. Very random. Chinese food was okay but it's super greasy and heavy on the sauce so not my favorite. At this point I'm really starting to miss Thai food for sure.
Day 3: We took the Peak Tram up to the Peak in Hong Kong then hiked a mile or so straight uphill until we reached Victoria Peak, the highest peak in Hong Kong. It would have been a lot prettier had it not been for the smog that engulfed Hong Kong, so unfortunately it was a little bit of a let down. Afterwards we visited the Zoological and Botanical Gardens. We concentrated on the animals instead of the plants, oops. There were lemurs, orangutans, monkeys, raccoons, Asian crocodiles, etc... pretty too look at but small cages :(
We had dinner that night with Gigi again and Lauren (who arrived late to HK after spending time with a teacher/co-worker and her family in China) at Bang Bang Pan where we made our own okinomiyaki!! Curry/chili, pork belly, veggies, egg, and all sorts of awesome sauces were involved. So cool I love cooking my own food!
The next day we headed to Macau. L-O-V-E Macau. It may have been my favorite place of the entire trip. It was Asian, yet, it felt like I was in Europe. The food was crazy, everyone I met was Filipino, the things we did we awesome, just sooo happy. We got up early in HK and took the Macau Ferry over to the mainland. After hopping on a bus downtown we popped into a restaurant and nibbled on some Farmer's beef brisket in a bread bowl, Macanese pork sandwich, Macanese chicken, and last but not least a Portuguese egg tart. Sooo good. We spent some time walking through the streets and markets, Largo de Sanada, and the famous ruins of St. Paul. It was breath-takingly beautiful.
After our explorations in the city we took a bus to the Venetian to check out the casino scene and see my first Cirque du Soleil performance, Zaia. It was awesome. My favorite part was the Chinese dog/dragon acrobats (obviously because the performers were the only Asian ones). Although the casino itself was really impressive I was not blown away by the Chinese gamblers. I really thought that they would be super hardcore, however, almost no one had a drink in hand, they were all dressed really casually, and it was pretty much empty. What kind of a casino was this anyway?! Vegas for sure trumps in the atmosphere category, get with it China!
Our last day in HK we slept in then headed to Stanley Market to get some souvenirs for friends and family back home and in Thailand. The area itself was beautiful and reminded me a lot of the coast of northern California. For dinner that night we headed to Gigi's favorite hot-pot place and stuffed ourselves on seafood, beef, pork, veggies, tofu, and went to town on the 'make your own dipping sauce' area. After dinner we went back to the bar area in Wan Chai where we head gone all-out our first night in HK. It was ladies night so after our 2 for 1 margaritas we ended up back at Carnegie's, which was serving champagne free all night. Obviously at that point we found no reason to go anywhere else and ended up back on top of the bar again. Told you, typical.
The next morning before our flight we chilled out at the tea house for like 4 hours and occupied ourselves with some Chinese checkers and Monopoly. I bought at 7-11 umbrella that I had been admiring and we headed back to Bangkok. Lauren had left earlier that morning to head back and grab her bag for Bali before heading to Indonesia, Barr was going to her uncles and then back to New Jersey, Rochelle was meeting her dad in Bangkok and going on their own Thailand adventures, and I was just passing by and doing a little shopping at Forever XXI before heading to Malaysia with Cortes. :)
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