Follow Me Around the World

Saturday – last full day in Hong Kong/Macau

I met Raymond at IFC and he was a little late which seemed to be the theme of the week.  He kept telling me to meet him at a specific time and then would be late.  This time he was late by only a few minutes, which was better than when he was like 25 minutes late.

Before I went to the subway I picked up something from starbucks to eat a quick nosh.  As it turns out Raymond wanted breakfast as well, so I ate again at IFC.  It was really expensive.  All I had was fresh fruit, muffin and a juice and it was like 56 HKD.  Insane considering normal good food was much less.

The weather appeared to be holding in the early morning but would quickly change as soon as we hit the boat.  We were taking a speed boat from Hong Kong to Macau.  The fare was 140 HKD going and a little more coming back.  The boat was nice and pretty fast.  We were able to see some of the islands, relax and chill out.  We had to fill out a departure and arrival card as technically we were going to another country.  That is always nice, more passport stamps, different culture, and oh another passport stamp!

We arrived in Macau after like one hour and fifteen minutes and it was pouring.  Again it wasn’t a drizzle this was torrential rain.  I was bummed because I knew seeing the city sights with Raymond and his former co-worker Icee would not want to walk around in this type of weather and quite frankly neither would I.

The alternative was to gamble.  Macau is considered the Las Vegas of Asia.  There are many, many casinos on this small island and that is really it.  Besides the old city center part, everything else is casinos.  We ended up going to two casinos, the Sands and the Crown (Australian casino).  I ended up losing more than I probably should have, but hey shit happens.

After hitting up the casinos Raymond and I just caught the 615pm boat back on a different company.  This time we would head to the Kowloon side, as Raymond needed to get to a concert on that side and I didn’t mind because I knew that I could easily get to the train station, plus it was my last night and walking around a different area was fine.

Raymond and I said our goodbyes, he thought I might want to meet up with him after his concert at like 1115PM, but considering I had to wake up at 5am to catch my flight at 855am, I told him it was unlikely.  He insisted on calling me anyway to see if I might want too, which was fine.  Raymond gave me the directions back to Hong Kong station.  On the way back as fate would have it, feeling a little bummed from losing some money, something nice happened.  During the whole week I had been trying to find these candies that Raymond has sent me from time to time.  They were these Japanese cola candies, chewy and really good.  Jammed pack with sugar, they gave you a rush like no other.  Walking back seeing my last 7/11 store, I decided to give it one final shot and see if I could find the candies.  As fate/luck would have it there they were.  I immediately asked the clerk if they had a sealed full box in the back, after some language complications he understood what I wanted.  He came back with a sealed box, I was so excited, as again I had spent days trying to find them.  He rang it up as 85 HKD, and if I had bought them individually it would have cost almost double that.  I happily paid that price, and moved on, left the store and back in to the rain.  It had been raining in Hong Kong for like two days now and was quite miserable.  I found my way to the station, but instead of taking the train I decided to take the star ferry one more time.  Again fate would have it, even though it was raining the time was 8pm and time for the famous light show.  This light show would go on at 8pm automatically every night, illuminating the already bright skyline.  It was fun to see all the buildings light up and go crazy.  The ferry was really cheap like 2.2 HKD which is virtually nothing (20 cents maybe).  Great choice on my part.  From the ferry I took a train back to home, got home and started to pack up.  When I got back to my room my other mates had been sleeping!  It was before 9pm which was nuts.  The older guy was passed out and Strong was taking a power nap.  I decided to just pack up now as opposed to 430am and wake them up then.  Bob woke up and was up for a little while.  I decided to watch a movie, take it easy, chat with bob and make it a quiet last night.

Sunday –

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.