Thursday October 1, 2009
We have one day in Hong Kong. It started with Anne teaching a class first thing this morning due to the 12 hour time difference. As soon as the class was over, we talked to the concierge at the hotel and got a Macau map and directions in broken English to the ferry terminal via the subway. We walked through an outlet mall, found the subway and navigated our way through two different lines to the ferry. We walked up purchased a ticket and boarded the ferry which left a minute later. The trip to Macau took an hour. During the trip we studied our map and realized that there was a Hard Rock Hotel in Taipi. Better you never heard of Taipi, we certainly haven't but now we can say we have been.
We went through customs when we arrived in Macau and then caught a bus to "City of Dreams." When we arrived we were disappointed to find out that the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino did not have a Hard Rock Cafe. We were looking forward to a meal without rice. Instead we visited the food court and split a single hamburger and fries at zetty hamburger stand. Can't wait to find a McDonalds!
The next challenge was jumping on the local buses to find a place recommended to us to find the gift we needed to get Becca. We got to the stop, got off and went on our search. About every 5th person we stopped spoke some english and gave us directions. We were definitely in an area that tourists did not visit because we were the only gaijins in town. We kept getting deeper and deeper in this maze of shops where people were hawking scorpions, snake, and this beef jerky stuff that was labeled as beef, pork, and meat. Swear to god it all looked exactly the same. We rounded the corner and Anne saw the store we were searching for and we went in and found the most perfect gift. We are putting together all three of our resources to make sure we get it back in one piece during out epic 21 hours of flying.
We jumped back on the local buses and made it back to the ferry terminal and took a ferry back to Hong Kong. When we arrived we took a taxi to Victoria Peak where we purchased our obligatory Hard Rock shirts. We left on another taxi to Outback steakhouse. We were so looking forward to a steak, baked potato and iced tea. After 3 weeks of no fried food, the sudden intake of fried food really wrecked havoc on our digestive track.
After leaving Outback we watched the fireworks display. Today is the 60th anniversary of China's rule as a communist country. It is a national holiday. We then made our way back to the hotel and got in about 10PM. We have confirmed our flights and retiring to bed to get up early early. We are facing 21 hours of flying tomorrow to return home.
