Hong Kong, Macau & NZ
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Crazy! Hong Kong is an insane madhouse of people packed into high-rise buildings and narrow streets. To make matters worse we were there during one of the biggest Chinese holidays; National Day. From what we gathered from TV, more Chinese than ever are traveling this year and most of them to Hong Kong and Macau. We were there for one purpose only: shopping for cheap electronics. We bought an 80G hard-drive for my little laptop, an I-Pod, and a set of knock-off noise reducing headphones (which don’t reduce noise as much as I would like). We were in Hong Kong for a night before taking the ferry over to Macau.
Macau was an old Portuguese colony and is now one of China’s Special Administrative Regions. The architecture is much more European than Hong Kong and the City itself has a more provincial feel. Despite the fact that we were hundreds of miles north of Bangkok, it was just as hot (if not hotter). We walked around sightseeing, had a nice Portuguese dinner, and watched the National Day fireworks. Before taking the Boat Back to HK to catch our flight we hiked up to the old fort (death by sweat) and went to the sub-par, but air conditioned, museum (ahhhh!). To go back and forth from HK to Macau you have to show your passports and get stamped. I used my old passport for the last time going from HK to Macau and got my first stamp on the new one going back to HK to get the plane to Christchurch.
In Christchurch, we immediately started running into people from Antarctica we knew. We were there a little early because we made our own travel arrangements. Usually people are only there for a day of orientation before flying out. We had plans to go up for some spring skiing at Mt Hutt but we soon discovered that, after a warm spell, most of the snow had melted already. On top of that the weather was typically rainy and windy on the south island so we just chose to stick around town, catch up with friends and eat well.
Luke