Hong Kong & Macau Day 4 – Italian Structures

Day 4 – Monday, 19th January 2009

Our last morning in Hong Kong began with us waking up at about 5.30 or 6am to get ready by around 7.20am or so, when our tour guide Garry would arrive to finally make the necessary last minute arrangements to send us back to the harbour.

Final shot of our Dorsett Seaview Hotel, I realised I didn’t have a good proper shot prior of our accommodation prior to this one.

To be quite honest, I was incredibly suspicious of tour guides ever since we had to fork out RM400 for some useless pieces of plates the two days before, so when Garry gave us Korean sweets – which he told us was from his Korean wife whom he met in Kuala Lumpur when he was playing amateur football there or something – I couldn’t help but wonder if they were drugs or something wtf.

We were ferried in a large bus, and on our journey he tried to sell us some Disneyland souvenirs for the benefit of the bus driver with low pay which we outright rejected – our Day Tour tour guide two days ago did the same, and we didn’t purchase them.

Despite being there early at the harbour, the other dude who was supposed to be there to pass to us our ferry tickets didn’t arrive on time (even though we were told to wake up early blahblahblah) and later after much waiting and sleeping, we learned that he got into a traffic accident, and Garry purchased new tickets for us.. or something. I couldn’t quite remember the specifics.

What I did remember was us being stopped at the checkpoint when we were about to enter, because apparently we had to pay for our oversized baggages. This, we protested, ‘cause when we came from Macau we weren’t charged at all, and the person-in-charge replied that his counterparts may have made an oversight etcetc and our tour guide took over to negotiate with him. He finally relented and let us off “for this one time” – indeed it may very well be our first and last trip to Hong Kong anyway.

We arrived in pleasant Macau – despite the fact that both Hong Kong and Macau are territories of China (even though they are regarded as Special Administrative Regions because of the different systems they employ), something about Macau seems distinctly different, perhaps because of the various international luxurious hotels sprouting everywhere, and the seemingly lack of people as opposed to Hong Kong.

Our Macau tour guide brought us to the imposing structure of the Ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral (or the Church of Mater Dei). Apparently the church suffered from three fires since its establishment in 1580, and its final fire in 1835 eventually destroyed nearly everything.

With my family.

At the back portion of the ruins.

Silhouette of the façade.

Looking through this structural hole.

Blooming flowers in front of the ruins.. apparently the pink flowers are fake or something. Also ate KFC’s Wrapz which my dad bought earlier at the Hong Kong Harbour – I only ate it on arriving at Macau for fear of vomiting during the ferry ride.

We were brought to A-Ma Temple where the locals worship the Goddess of Seafarers, A-Ma wtf (no, not our grandmothers). Apparently Macau is derived from an old name/phrase A Ma Kau (spelling most likely incorrect), and so they finally shortened the name to just Macau. It was also fairly hot at this point that I didn’t bother to don the windbreaker anymore.

The street leading back to our van. Reminds me oddly of Malacca, probably because Macau has Portuguese influences as well, judging by the usage of Portuguese in signages and other official-related items. Also had a short scare when I thought I lost my handphone shortly after using the public toilet, even though I distinctly remembered taking out my handphone to use it for a while in the van and I thought it HAD to be somewhere in the van.. thankfully my thoughts were true.

As usual we were also told interesting anecdotes about Macau from our tour guide – such as how its residents could go to the only two public hospitals in Macau for free, or how the government pays for the child’s first 15 years of education, or how parents could have as many children as they like and not being restricted to the One Child Policy in Mainland China. Apparently all these money were obtained from gambling, so I guess in a morally ambiguous manner, these money were channelled to help the people.

A strange arc we saw when we were brought around.

This statue apparently has the face of Mother Mary and the body of Kuan Yin.. interesting religious fusion. Didn’t get to see it up close as we were merely passing by it.

A shop where we were brought to to buy Macau cookies and confectioneries as souvenirs.

We were brought to the Macau Fisherman’s Wharf, the first theme park in Macau although at that time I’ve no clue what in the world that place was supposed to be, apart from being a hotel + casino. Soft Italian music (or from some other nations) playing in the background contributed to the overall feel as if we were in some other foreign land.

Buffet lunch at a luxurious-looking restaurant – we most probably wouldn’t even dream of eating here if we were on our own instead of following a tour, which is one of the only few perks of travelling by tour.

Comfortable seats. I like.

One of these huge CNY-related statues scattered sporadically around.

Mum and dad against the backdrop of water fountain and.. some building.

This was supposed to be Rome..

..because there’s a Colosseum which doubles up as a concert venue. o_0

Me in Rome. Yeah would’ve fooled people because it looked pretty damn real if not for that stupid candy store obstructing a large part of the Colosseum. Pardon me if the candy store is actually an important architectural structure in front of the real Colosseum, ‘cause I’ve never been to Rome.. and well, you never know, maybe the candy store has important historical and cultural implications in the centuries of Roman history.

Mum and dad against the backdrop of Vulcania, one of the more imposing structures that you can see from afar even from the Macau Harbour.

And against the backdrop of an amazingly long bridge that would probably beat our own Penang Bridge flat, although said bridge would be closed during typhoons for obvious reasons (where apparently Macau has a season of ‘em).

I had earlier wondered out loud to my parents why we weren’t brought to The Venetian instead, where my parents then relayed to our tour guide by phone call (he didn’t come to meet us after lunch as he had mentioned). Apparently we will be charged about RM100+ extra per person if we want to go to The Venetian, but after some convincing, our tour guide told us that he could bring us there.. only with the condition that we wouldn’t tell his company anything about it (like duhh).

So hurray we were ushered quickly to The Venetian ‘cause we were racing against time for some odd reason. This picture merely shows a small part of The Venetian.

It is fucking huge – it’s more mall than hotel methinks.

The casino lies behind those gates.

O_O! I was quite taken in by this architectural wonder of implementing an Italian feel throughout a large part of The Venetian. There’s even a fake sky with clouds to boot..

Was using my 10-22 and couldn’t switch lens quick enough as this singing opera dude was about to retreat, so I quickly snapped. Yes, it’s a real person.

All sorts of brands dominate the streets of Italy wtf.

There are even gondolas where you could pay to sit on along this fake river. Occasionally a foreign-looking woman on the gondola will smile widely at you so you could snap photos of her wtf.

Intensely detailed Renaissance drawings or something on the ceilings.

Escalators that actually bend..

It’s a food court, but doesn’t the fake sky makes you feel like you’re eating in the outdoors or something wtf.

As usual, all the great places we’ve been to thus far were rushed, rushed, and rushed. I suppose actually being there and seeing bits and pieces of things do count for something rather than not going at all.. ~___~

We were dropped off to the airport, my parents tipped the tour guide with 100MOP (~RM50) (or was it with an equivalent of RM100 wtf) for good services rendered, and we were all ready to check in. Curiously, there’s a Ferris Wheel structure atop this building opposite the terminal which I think is a hotel – apparently the Ferris Wheel has been there for years and has never begun its operation.

Cold sea breeze was quite strong and would’ve blown off any umbrella should you carry one there for whatever reason. Picture shows a look of the runway.

I had a faint suspicion that AirAsia’s flight would be delayed, and sure enough we were told that our scheduled 5.50pm flight would be delayed till 7pm! I was so bored that I used the 10 minutes free trial of this WiFi service on my handphone to Facebook wtf.

I napped for a bit, then my parents decided that we should really check in, and saw the same auntie again with her medicine-studying son. I wandered around, found several computers that were conveniently installed at the airport for free usage, and took the chance to surf around for a bit. About an hour later a staff member came to us sitting near a specific Gate and asked if we were on AK055, the delayed flight. We were told that the aeroplane would only arrive at about 7.30pm and take off at maybe around 8pm. Huzzah! More waiting!

With somewhat comfortable seats at the airport and having done a bit of backpacking in my life, waiting is all part of the norm so I wasn’t particularly fuzzed as I’ve mastered the art of killing time, if not for the fact that this delay might cause me to skip my morning class tomorrow after being too tired etc (which eventually, I did skip after all).

Family waiting at Gate 2A.

I have a hilarious anecdote though: I think due to the flight passengers’ increasing agitation, at any mention of Macau->KL flight over the intercom, there is a huge reaction. Despite the fact that the intercom merely told us that the scheduled Gate 7 to wait at has been changed to another at the opposite end at Gate 2A, everyone started to line up wtf.

My family didn’t line up so we were sure to be the last, so we merely continued to sit down. After a while the intercom announced again that the flight to KL is ready for boarding at Gate 7 (at the OPPOSITE end of the airport.. quite a long walk away), so my dad quickly dashed to said Gate, along with everyone else from our same flight. My family was now one of the first in line!

We then had our tickets checked, and were just about to be waved on when the lady in charge spotted something out of the ordinary and told us that Gate 7 was for another AirAsia flight.. the delay from our flight has inadvertently caused us to depart from Macau at the same time as the other flight. -___-

It was hilarious because ALL of us had to trot ALL the way back to Gate 2A, which was, again, located at the opposite end of the large airport.. and after finally reaching Gate 2A again, our family was now like the 10th in line or something as opposed to being the last. And all because everyone else followed my dad when he dashed towards Gate 7 without hearing the intercom properly hahahahaha (the aforementioned auntie told us, “I just followed your husband only when he ran off to the other gate!”).

The beauty of this mob mentality was that no one else bothered to listen to the intercom properly, maybe except for me ‘cause I thought the flight we were on couldn’t be AK057 or whatever that was announced at that time.

The 3-hour-45-minutes flight back to LCCT was endured by a combination of book reading and watching concert videos on my iPod. We took a bit of our time purchasing things from the duty free shop (which has very limited selection of alcohol), and then Jon and his dad fetched us back home with our Serena, where we finally arrived home at probably around 1.30am or so.

Having not eaten dinner (except for a lousy expensive Maggi-in-a-cup purchased aboard the AirAsia flight), I was hungry as hell and went for a good ol’ Ramli burger behind my house – finally asked the kind abang manning it what the RM10 pasted on his stall was, and he told me that it was counterfeit money.

And so after four incredibly hectic travelling days, my trip to Macau and Hong Kong came to an end.