Day 5 - Heading to Macau

We meet up at the MTR station and head off to take a Turbo Jet boat to Macau. Once we get there, Sam is ready for coffee at the Starbucks, but it looks like there is some immigration form we have to fill out and we have to go through a line. We head off and the line it actually not bad - it's worse for Wei Yan's cousins, since there are way more HK residents trying to get through. We end up getting on Standby for an earlier boat, so we are off a little early. I'm definitely a little weary of eating or drinking anything - even coffee, when I see our boat rocking like crazy, and we almost fall over when we are getting into our seats, so I'm bracing myself for some seasickness.

Once we get out of the harbor, we start booking, and it's surprisingly smooth. Sam gets his coffee and after about half an hour, I dig into my coconut cream bun from the night before. I think we're still adjusting to HK, since we keep buying way too much - thinking we're in the US and stocking up. Anyway, on the ride, I'm glad that I was so greedy the night before, but then I get even more greedy & wish my coconut cream bun was fresh. The ride takes little less than an hour.

We take a taxi to a restaurant. I know we crossed a bridge, so we're not in Macau - but on another nearby island. The resturant is pretty fancy by our recent standards - table cloths, full set of utensils, etc. Wei Yan's cousin's order - I mention the African chicken that our tour book suggested, but they already saw it in their Chinese guide book & had already decided on it. We get some deep fried appetizers - way fishy for me. Sam says he likes them, and no one else really does, so Dave quickly gives him the last one. Next is fried rice (too bland), bloody duck (I will pass next time, even though it's about the 2nd best dish of the lunch), african chicken (with fried potato slices) & ribs. The african chicken is super super yummy. The bill was kind of expensive, but not compared to US prices.

We walk up the street to another Tim Hau temple. This one is really big - more spread out, but there are large chinese characters painted in red on rocks. One lady is shaking her fortune sticks and I start to get nervous for her when she's been shaking for quite some time & nothing seems to be ready to fall out. We take some pictures, look around, and come back & she is still shaking. Finally something falls out & the guy give her the slip of paper from the stacks of papers behind him that match the stick. They are all in Chinese. There are these large, yellow insence spirals that are hanging everywhere. It takes me a while to figure out that these aren't just decorations, they are actually burning & spewing ash everywhere. We head back down. There is another small temple at the bottom & the opposite side of where we came in. We step in to check it out, but it is very smokey in there. Before we turn around, Wei Yan points out a guy trying to light 3 insence sticks that are as big as baseball bats. But the smoke is too much & we head out. While we are waiting for Sam to finish his photos, we take some more pictures & decide what to do next.

Next it is go carts and then dan tat at Lord Stow's. The dan tat are piping hot & much better than the ones from Excelsior claiming to be from Lord Stows. We then take a bus over to Grand Lisboa. The casino is pretty big - we have to go through a metal detector before entering the casino. No smoking in the casino here. We look around, even ask if they have poker, but all they have is 1-2 carribean stud tables, and tons of baccarat. We look around for 30 min, and Wei Yan gets to play a little blackjack, before we meet up again. We head over to the Wynn. They also have few games that Wei Yan, Sam & I are familar with, so we leave. We take a taxi to dinner. The first taxi driver doesn't speak cantonese very well, and claims that the place doesn't exist. After Catherine figures this out, we all get out & head back to the taxi stand. Finally, the next taxi driver is cool. He even sees a traffic jam, and navigates us around it - through some back streets. On a left turn, he turns so fast, that Wei Yan and I thought he was going to side swipe a car parked on the side of the street. But he narrowly misses it (Wei Yan swears it was by less than an inch). We pull over in what seems like a back alley. It's not a great neighborhood. We walk up some stairs and we are in what looks like a parking lot. There are a bunch of round tables set up outside, with platic bags over them & plastic stools for chairs. We sit down & Dave cleans our utensils, bowls & spoons with the tea. They order and the food comes shortly. First a noodle dish - yummy, the noodles are definitely fresh. Some chinese veggie (looks like green onion but thicker) & seafood dish - very good. Some fish with lemon sauce, also good. We order some white rice (yay! finally chinese food with rice). We get some type of chinese broccoli with chinese sausage. Eggplant & pork in a stone dish for me since eggplant is my favorite. Then soup - with a whole crab in it & some white cubed vegetable. Once we ate, we took a taxi back to Sands. We try to find something to play. We sit down at a black jack table - none of the players around us seem to know how to play. Hitting on 16 with the dealer showing 6 and stuff like that. The smoke starts getting to me, so I have to head downstairs to the smokeless lobby & wait for Wei Yan and Sam to finish up. We head back to our hotel (acoss the street) called Hotel Golden Dragon, and Sam gets his bag & heads of to try to make it back to HK on his own. It's maybe 10:30pm now.

After a long day with crowded busses (and I mean 2x as crowded as the HK buses) and the pollution, I'm done. Macau is pretty much a ghetto of Hong Kong as far as I can tell. With no gambling that I can figure out, so I'm not too impressed.