chinapies

Ok, remember that comment I made a few hours ago about this place I'm staying being an internet-less gulag? I take it back. Completely. This place has net, and I am currently writing this post from there! Amazingness!

So that means I actually get to write a proper post instead of the quickie I gave you's before (get ur mind out of the gutter, Dr. Love). I do have an important announcement to make before I tell you about what's been happening to date - it appears blogspot blogs are banned in China (see wikipedia entry here). Therefore, I'm gonna have to find someplace else to host this tirade of misinformation and poor attempts at humour. When I do find something, I'll just link straight through in my last post from here. Nuff said.

Arright, I don't have any new photos as such to post either, coz I haven't been able to charge my latpot, but now that situation's changed too, so I'll get a few phots of the place I been staying and put them up, er, tomorrow or something :-)

The last few days have been pretty cool. Linds and I have been hangin' out on the island of Taipa, which is over the bridge from Macau, and it's a little bit prettier here. In fact, there's trees and stuff here. Amazing. The view from our lodging is a little spoiled by the power station nearby, but according to Dogbert pollution has vitamins, so who's complaining? I think the power station is coal too, so this unseasonably hot weather we're having? We don't need to look toooo far for the culprit. Boo! Hiss!!

The peeps we're hanging out with are all good too. There's a real range of folks, some who have spent time in China already, so it's been pretty invaluable in terms of knowing what to expect. This gathering is with a bunch of cool peeps, including dudes and dudettes (okay, more like fogies and fogettes, but there are a couple people under the age of 40 here) who actually live in Chengdu and haven't dissolved from all the pollution there. Yay for us!

The food here is great! No blocked toilets this time (although... oh never mind, you don't need to hear about it). Sleeping arrangements aren't too bad - sharing a dorm with people from Oz (kangaroos, not wizard of thereof), England and the US, plus a couple o' cute li'l kiddies who are comin' with there mommy and daddy to Nanjing (I think), and the dorms are air-conditioned from 8pm to 8am. Ain't bad for an all-up cost of $125 USD (incl. food!), if I may say so myself.

Hey, speakin' of USDs, holy crap man, do NOT under any circumstances bring US dinaros to Macau. Apparently (so the rumour goes) there was a host of counterfeit notes circulated during the 90s, and now banks don't like them one bit. Added to that is the fact that many money-changing places will re-sell the notes to other foreigners, so your notes gotta be in tip-top condition. Let me give a specific example:

Linds and I are leaving Best Western. All good. That'll be $1100MOP (about $150USD), says the hotel clerkess. Swet, I say, lemme just get some USD changed over. That's cool, says the clerkess, but you'd be better off changing it at the bank just across the street - 8 MOP to USD instead of 7.5, which is what the hotel offers. So I head over to the bank, and then....

"Too llinkly."

"What?" I say, chagrined.

"Too llinkly. Your dollar too llinkly. We sell to other customer. Too llinkly!"

"Flang! Too wrinkly? Ok, is there a bank around which doesn't have a problem if my notes don't use moisturizer?"

"(Name of bank censored)"

So I head to (name of bank censored). "We no buy US dollar! You go to headquarter to sell!"

"Ok, where's the headquarters?"

"Shanghai."

Get the picture?

Pies out.

Pies suggestion of the day (actually it's my second): Seek everywhere for internet. The Good Book says you shall find. Usually by knocking some heads, but that's not mentioned...

Posted by Mr Pies at 6:40 AM 0 comments  

I've been in a place with, like, no internet access, man. I'll provide a more detailed update on events when I have moved outta the internet-less gulag and have more time to write about the misadventures to date. Pix included. Pies out.

Pies tip of the day: Going overseas? Don't take US dollars with you! They are hated by banks universally (well, in Macau, anyhow... more on this later when I have the time :-)).

Posted by Mr Pies at 3:26 AM 1 comments  

Hell on Earth. These two are of the view from the hotel bedroom window. As you can see, Macau has been well-planned to accommodate it's inhabitants, and every effort has been made to enhance natural character and visual amenity. To be frank, I think the Pohe Island tip in it's heyday was a more attractive place to live.

Cuttlefish, normal fish, dried fish, blue fish, red fish, green fish, go fish. Later on we saw shark bits, but forgot to take a photo. You have been spared.

Macau's version of Ngahere Drive (or Remuera, for those that don't live in Whangaz). You can tell it's flash coz the air-conditioners don't leak onto the street like everywhere else.

In my previous post, I referred to the Death Star crashing to Earth. Here it is, and it appears the Empire is on the rise again. Skywalker must be informed.


The Death Star from a different perspective. As you can see, the protuberance from it's base must be the new planet-destroying laser gun. Ok, enough with the Star Wars jokes already, coz they're not funny any more...


Some greenery! These trees hide the Death Star from view, and actually make Macau seem like a nice place after all. It's a lie, I'm sorry.



No caption necessary.

Posted by Mr Pies at 7:53 PM 2 comments  

Okay I gotta admit, I'm getting over my initial misgivings about Macau. Man, the last 36 hours have been, er, fun.

Lemme start from the start (after the Hong Kong arrival). Linds and I finally tracked down her luggage from the Lost and Found at HK airport (thank you very much, United... Lost and Found is where they put misplaced luggage, useless ding-dongs). And boy, did Linds have some luggage! It wasn't that big a deal, coz we had trolleys :-) which you're not allowed to take on the train :-( which we needed to take in order to catch the ferry.

(one too many "which"s in that sentence... poor SNU students are gonna be screwed...)

Ok, so that was all cool, except we had to drag all 100kgs of luggage a looong way to get to the goddang ferry. And of course, English-speaking peoples were non-existent, esp. as far as customer services reps were concerned. But we managed to get onto the ferry (Macau has separate immigration requirements to HK) and get into Macau with approx. one brazillion other peoples... man I never seen so many people in one immigration queue man, made me wanna pack my bags and head back to cozy ol' Whangaz inna flash!

Soooo, anyhow, off the ferry and into another goddang queue for a taxi, with all our freakin' luggage. The taxi-dude pulls up, and man, do we pack his car full of our crap. I mean, there was luggage stickin' outta the window, luggage stickin' outta the boot, luggage pokin' outta the exhaust... let's just say that the driver wasn't amused (he couldn't speak English, but he didn't need to, lolz0r)...

Well at least he managed to get us to the hotel without a) crashing the cab; b) kicking us outta the cab; or c) disposing of our bodies in the Macau Harbour after stripping us of cash (and our bodies would have dissolved into Macau Harbour goodness...). Fortunately, the hotel had upgraded us to an Executive suite (i.e. rats were only on the menu instead of in the shower with you), which was a welcome reward for the pain of the morning. The only problem with the Executive suite was that it was on a higher floor than normal, so we got a better view of the hell-hole that is Macau. I will post a photo here for your viewing pleasure, once I download it off my camera.

After havin' a shower and getting changed, Linds and I decided to check out the town. So we walked up the street from the hotel, decided that if we continued, mugging and certain death would be our fate. Back to the hotel then for directions to a decent restaurant... and the answer was to head down the street, turn left, and keep on going until we found a restaurant that served actual food.

Fifteen minutes later, and we hadn't found a restaurant - instead we had found a little hole-in-the-wall where a bunch of little kiddies were drinking milk from Coke bottles. A good sign if ever there was one. It turned out to be a food place after all. Remember earlier when I said that English-speakers were rare around here? Try non-existent, now. So the lady behind the counter shows us some noodles. Thumbs up to that. Then she pulls out a ladle with what appeared to be lumps of rubber stirred into sump oil. We declined that. The lady then pulled out some sad-looking won-tons from the fridge. Thumbs up.

And holy flang, it was a good lunch! Best I've had so far since arriving, anyhow. We headed back to the hotel afterwards and crashed, man... haven't slept like that since last Friday's Policy and Monitoring meeting.

Hey if you're still reading this thing, great! If not, I don't blame you. How the heck am I saying so much about so little?

Fast-forward to the next day, and Linds and I are wandering around Macau. It turns out that the hotel (Best Western, if you wanted to know) is in a shady part of town, and the rest of Macau ain't that bad! We spotted a Portuguese restaurant along the way too, so we marked that for lunch. We wandered all over the place, and took a bunch of photos (again, please stay on hold while I get them uploaded...). The casinos here are literally out of this world. It appears the Death Star wasn't destroyed by Rebel X-wings - it crash-landed on Macau, and someone enterprisingly turned it into a casino.

I was getting hungry now. So we backtracked to the Portuguese restaurant, which turned out to be a classy affair. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the noodles and won-tons the previous day were $24 MOP, which is about $4 NZD. Today's lunch was $220 MOP, about $40 NZD, and it sucked the big one. In fact, it caused my stomach to be upset, and I, in turn (cover your ears, kiddies), caused the hotel lobby toilet to block and overflow, lolz0r. I told reception someone else had done it...

Anyhow, I promise to be more succinct in my next post. Apologies for the long read!

Pies out.

Pies tip of the day: Don't come to Macau. If you do, then you are an idiot, or a sadomasochist. Or both.

Posted by Mr Pies at 12:36 AM 0 comments  

Arright made it into Hong Kong without too much difficulty, altho I had to fork out $540 (!!!!) for excess luggage, aaaaaaargh... However, have since learned that we'll be getting accommodated pretty cheap in Macao ($125 for the whole week), which means that my budgeted hotel expenses are no longer a prob, so it kinda works out... still, $540... flang. The flight over was long and boring, and trying to sleep on the plane is akin to hanging out in a medieval torture pit. One of these days I'm gonna find the dude who designed the Economy class seating arrangement and punch his lights out.

Anyhow, hope everything is going well in Whangaz for those of you bored enough to read this blog. Linds and I are just hangin' out in HK aeroport waitin for United's luggage claim to open in order to get Linds' luggage (United also lost my luggage on the way back from Denver in July, so there is a lesson to be learned here... United are teh sux).

I'll also find a way to get people to comment if they want, so I don't kno how long this particular blog will last... however, for those of you savvy enough to know wot they're doing (Dr. Love), you can always create a blogspot account and comment anyway. Therefore, if I don't get any comments in the next week or so, it either means a) technological moroncy abounds, or b) nobody can be stuffed registering on blogspot.

Oh yeh and photos! Er... once I take some I will post some :-) This is Mr. Pies in China, signing out.

Pies recommendation of the day: Croissandwich at Burger King is the surest way to relieve constipation. The limpid, festering, sad-looking croissant with ham in the middle and some recycled weed-mat pretending to be an egg patty is not for the faint of heart.

Posted by Mr Pies at 5:22 PM 0 comments  

I'm not in China yet. Three days to go!

Posted by Mr Pies at 6:26 PM 0 comments