After a few more lazy days in ChengDu Cherie, Rod and I split up and headed off in our seperate directions for a few days. They headed off to Lijian and me to Macau to visit my cousin Jon and his wife Summer who are living out there teaching.
Macau is chock a block with casinos!! There seems to be hundresds of them lit up like Xmas trees at night. You really have to wonder how they are all getting enough business to stay afloat - but apparently they are and there is currently even more being built.
Friday was a public holiday in Macau so Jon and Summer were off work so we headed to Hong Kong for the day with some of their friends from work. Having been to Hong Kong before a coupld of the girls were keen to spend the day shopping, but me Jon and Vitoria instead headed to the peak.
The peak is the highest point in Hong Kong and you reach it by riding up the mountain on a cable train. Th eview from up there was great - it perhaps would have been better if it wasn't so hazy from the smog but we stayed up till the sun went down so we could see Hong Kong lit up at night.
There was a huge que to get on this cable train and we would have had to wait about a hour and a half to get up. In order to skip the que we bought tickets to the cable train and Madamme Tussards which is on top of the peak which alowed us to que jump to the front. I wasn't all that fussed about Madamme Tussards but we figured since we had the tics anyway we may as well check it out and I am glad we did. It was a lot more fun that I thought it would be.
There was a wax figure of some famous sumo wrestler - not being up on my sumo wrestlers I hadn't the foggiest who he was but they provided sumo suits to dress up in to pose for a picture with him and I wasn't going to pass up on that opportunity!!!
On Saturday both JOn and Summer had to go in to work (how ridiculous!!!) so I explored Macau for the day. It is small enough that I just got around on foot all day. Macau is the perfect mixture of Asian and European - European smells of coffee and baked pastries but Asian prices!! It feels much more like South East Asia than China.
Yesterady (sunday) after getting up at 9am to watch the replay of the world cup final (I had to switch my phone off and give it to JOn for safe keeping so I didn't text people to find out the result and he disabled the internet connection in my room cause I couldn't be trusted not to try and sneak the result)we headed to Coloane to go to the beach and eat portugese tarts - a nice relaxing day.
Unfortunately due to the weather in South west China,I got a message from Cherie saying that we are not going to be able to trek Tiger leaping gorge after all which was our plan for what to do next! It is a real shame as it's the worlds deepest gorge and looks stunning - besides the Chinese government are talking of damming it in the next few years so it mau not even exist for much longer! But if weather is bad there can be landslides in the area so we just can't risk it! That means that although today I had a flight to go back and meet tham in Lijian, I am still in Macau. Instead I am going to blow that flight (ouch) and we are meeting on Wed in Guilin instead. Guilin is closer to where I am now so at least we know the weather is good there are the scenery does look amazing so it may not be so bad. I do feel sorry for Cherie though as tiger leaping gorge was her must see in China. Oh well - Guilin it is!
