This past Friday evening (12/14), we were informed that we had Saturday and Sunday off. A weekend off?! I didn't even know where to start...
(Okay, I'll admit that I started writing this post on December 18th but quickly got caught up in work and prepping for my upcoming vacation and didn't get back to it until now.)
Two co-workers and I decided to head to Macau for a night, departing Saturday morning. Macau is a special administrative district of China just like Hong Kong. It started as a Portuguese colony in the 1550s, and it wasn't turned over to China until 1999, at which point a deal was made to give the area to China as long as it retained autonomy until 2049 (50 years after the transfer).
Some interesting facts about Macau:
- The 2nd highest life expectancy in the world
- Ranked highly in the human development index (very rare among Asian countries)
- The literacy rate is above 99% for people aged 15-29 (93.5% overall)
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| Sunset out my Hotel Window |
It was a rather long adventure to get there involving lots of traffic and lots of standing around. We took a taxi to the ferry terminal, and when we arrived, there was only 1 ticket left for the next boat (11:30am), so we had to buy tickets for the one after that (12:15pm). Immediately after purchasing the tickets, we realized we would be arriving at the wrong ferry terminal, but the next ferry to the correct terminal wasn't until 1:30pm, so we didn't bother changing.
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| Christmas Tree Lighting at the Casa Real |
After waiting in line for a while, we went through immigration and moved to waiting outside for another long while. The ferry didn't show up until about 1pm and departed around 1:15pm, so we probably should have just taken the later one. We had first class tickets for the ferry since they were only a few dollars more than the regular class. The first class cabin was upstairs, we had comfier seats, and we were served tea/coffee. Unfortunately, first class also somehow means "smoking allowed."
When we arrived in Macau, we went through immigration and then waited for a taxi for about 20 minutes despite there being only 4 people in line in front of us. Our taxi driver didn't quite know where our hotel was, so we drove in circles for a bit, he pulled over and asked someone, and we eventually arrived.
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| House of Dancing Water "Stage" |
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| Decorations at the Sands |
After consulting with the concierge, we decided to go see a popular show called
"The House of Dancing Water" that night. We wandered around the casinos for a bit both before and after the show, which brings me to my conclusion about Macau: it's like Vegas but for MUCH wealthier people. The lowest minimum bet we saw at any of the card tables was 300 HKD (~$40 US), and most of the tables were more like 500, 1000, or 2000, not to mention the "high stakes" sections. People would sit down at a table and just throw out 10,000 HKD (~$1280 US). Needless to say, we did not do much gambling.
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| Reminds me of the Legends of the Hidden Temple dude |
The next morning, one co-worker left really early to fly back to the US, and my other co-worker and I wandered around the fisherman's wharf area and the reservoir for a couple hours before heading back to Shenzhen. The fisherman's wharf area is full of Portuguese architecture and some replicas of things from the old colony, like the coliseum below.
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| Contrast of New and Old Macau |
There was a moat around a castle replica filled with koi, and they were amazingly trained to humans feeding them. Anywhere you stood near the water, all of the koi would swim over and circle.
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| Pedestrian walkways- these are everywhere! |
I really enjoyed the blow up decorations around the reservoir:
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| View of Macau from across the reservoir |
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| Things you can't do in the park around the reservoir |
It was certainly cool to experience a new place, but I am sad I didn't go see the pandas (I wasn't really aware that I should do that until after the fact).
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| Ferry back to China |
Stay tuned for my next post about Christmas in Thailand!
