From September 21st – 24th I went to Hong Kong and Macau with Riccardo, one of the local Italians. But before I arrive I need to travel to Ningbo, China to catch my plane. We decide to get into Ningbo on the night of the 20th after work, start the vacation a little early and then we will be nice and ready for HK. Well first off I am sure NONE of you have ever heard of Ningbo, unless you’ve heard me talk about it or know someone who has been there before. Ningbo is a nice ‘little’ Chinese city. I say little because its still about 7 million people. Yeah, that’s what, 2-3x the size of Miami, and more than ½ the size of NYC? Yeah even most Chinese don’t know it, it’s a small rural town…good grief where am I.
Well stay at the Ningbo Marriott because we have a sweet deal, after checkin we go out and venture. Will as we are walking around the nice shopping area (Dolce & Gabana, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, Omega, and countless stores I don’t recognize but look expensive) we see in the middle of the plaza a bunch of tents, so we decide to check it out. Well the tents just had random food and beer vendors. Doesn’t the food look appetizing:
Now normally I’m not weak stomached and will try just about anything. But there is one reason to not bother with this…THE CHINESE WERE NOT TOUCHING THIS FOOD! Now that just puts things into perspective. I’ve eaten chicken stomachs, chicken livers, jellyfish, and random farm animal parts with the Chinese. If they do not eat this, I’m waiting to try it somewhere else. I’m sure that tarantula is awesome.
Now onto the point of this entry, HK was AWESOME! I say that but understand one thing, HK is not part of China. I am convinced of it. I know it is technically China, but it is so completely different, in my mind you have left China and gone to London. Oh and you need your passport to go from Ningbo to HK, complete with exit stamps and entrance stamps in HK. Yeah, not China. Either way, we arrive flag down a taxi with white glove service and head to the hotel. Now it’s time to explore. We walk around checking out all the random shops and try and get a feel for the city. The way we discovered the city is that Riccardo had a Lonely Planet Guide to China. Let me tell you, I hear a lot of people complain about these books, this was my first attempt at this book and it was pretty darn good. The book from 2-3 yrs ago told us where every restaurant was that was worthwhile, where the night life is, where internet café’s are, everything. Take it as a simple guide of what someone suggests and make your own adventures from there.
Anywho after we walked around a bit we decided to go check out South Kowloon area, specifically Tsim Sha Tsui. An area known as an Expats hangout. Pretty cool area. We sat down at a bar and ordered some rounds of cocktails: Mojito’s, Guinness, Cahpirinha, Guinness, Margaritas, Guinness….After chatting it up a bit with some locals we go to an Irish Pub to grab some grub, but end up calling it an early night to rest up for the next few days (got to the hotel at 2am…).
The next day we wake up and head out about 10am. I actually knew someone from High School that is in HK so I give her a call and see if she can show us around. We end up checking out a few areas, Mid Level (longest outdoor escalators in the world, over 800m long), Central, Soho and Lan Kwai Fong to eventually meet up with my HS friend. From there we begin the trek. Grab a few drinks somewhere, then head to another place. Well we then get the idea that we need to go up to Victoria’s Peak at night. This is basically a mountain in the middle of HK island and overlooks everything. Really spectacular views especially at night with everything lit up and the laser show. The two sides of the water have a dueling laser show, building on building. Really neat. After some grub we get back to Lan Kwai Fong to enjoy the evening festivities. Now you know how I mentioned that HK is not Chinese, well at the end of the night fights start breaking out between Chinese vs Foreigners, Foreigners vs Foreigners and Chinese vs Chinese. It’s a mess, right in the street too. After this goes on for a little, the police show up and break everything up. Only reason I call this out is because I have yet to see anything come even close to resembling a fight in Mainland China. That’s what happens when there are drunk westerners I guess…
The next day we wake up at a respectable 11am and decide to go hit up the racetrack. We had walked around it the day before and wanted to say a race. Let me tell you, this place is actually quite spectacular. This place is called Happy Valley and is a large horse track on a hill, in the middle of a bunch of skyscrapers. Pretty amazing view. After we lose some money on the horsies (Something Special was not so special….) we make a trek to take the ferry to Macau. For those of you that don’t know, HK was part of Great Britain for 100yrs then turned over to China. During this period also Macau was part of Portugal which was turned over to China at the same time. We venture to Macau which is about a 1hr Ferry ride (don’t forget your passports like we did) and another entity in of itself. Macau is known to be the Vegas of the East and with good reason. The Sands, Venetian, Wynn are just a few casinos there amongst the slew of them.
But the really cool part of Macau, besides the gambling, is the architecture. I went from Chinese modern architecture, to HK’s London-esque, and now Macau is basically Mediterranean (like Spanish/Italian Villas). We walk around, successfully get lost for about 2 hrs, while trying to find one road. This one road just happened to be the road where Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom opening car chase was filmed. I think the reason we were so lost was because the Italian refused to listen to me, ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE READING THE MAP?...it’s ok though. We sat down, had a beer and recuperated . The rest of the evening tended to fly. We sat down had an awesome Portuguese dinner then went out to the Venetian for some gambling.
Come 3am we began our trek. The following I got back to my place in China for work the next day. 3am taxi from the Venetian to the ferry, 4am ferry to HK, 5am taxi from ferry station to hotel, 530-645am sleep, shower, 715am taxi to the train station, bought train ticket to airport, breakfast, 8am train to airport, got tickets and bought some trinkets, 1115am flight from HK to Ningbo, arrive at 130pm at the airport to get a taxi to city center for some basic shopping, shop for a few hours and relax at Starbucks, 5pm taxi to train station, 615pm train that is never late ends up being about 30min late, 730pm taxi to site complete with two random Chinese jumping into the cab with us (at that point I didn’t care what the hell was happening), and arrive to my apt at 815pm. Eat then sleep. Too bad for the next 7 days after I have to work, no way to recover before my Vietnam trip.
You are probably asking two questions right now, why the hell is this so long and why aren’t there any pictures of HK. Well to answer the first is that I am verbose. I like to speak and tell my story :P. The second, well I have Riccardo to blame for that one. While in Ningbo he bought a camera for the trip. Got an awesome deal and it was really worthwhile. We hit up HK/Macau hard and took pictures of everything. Food, buildings, people, escalators, views from the peak, I mean everything. As we are on the ferry, Riccardo looks at me and says, do you have the camera? NO YOU HAD IT, YOU NEVER GAVE IT TO ME no no, didn’t you take a picture 8hrs ago YEAH BUT I GAVE IT BACK TO YOU (Italian curse word Italian curse word….). Yeah so no pictures except for the really stupid ones I took from my phone, but here they are:
Ok let me leave two comments..
ReplyDeleteFirst: Oscar had the camera in Macau..
Second: Something special 4ever!!
Third: I said 2 comments not three.
Great moments in Hong Kong and Macau!