Macau

Wednesday morning, Lex, Kat, Anna, Anna’s friend, Mimi from Taiwan and I traveled to Macau for the day. We were supposed to leave campus at 8:30, but my old habits kicked in and I didn’t wake up until 8:38, so we got a later start. Oops.

We took a boat called TurboJet from Central to Macau, which took about an hour. When we arrived in Macau, the weather was not great- cold and rainy. And it lasted all day, so it put a damper on our day, but we made the best of the day.

We explored Macau Fisherman’s Wharf, where there were these huge replicas of famous world sites, like a Roman amphitheater, a volcano, and a smaller Forbidden City. We then hopped on a bus and headed to the Portuguese side of Macau.

{Macau used to be a Portuguese colony until 1999 and is now a Special Administrative Region of China, like Hong Kong. The official languages of Macau are Cantonese and Portuguese, but many of the signs are in Portuguese, Mandarin and English and a lot of the local people speak Mandarin.}

While in the Portuguese side, we explored the St. Paul’s Ruins, as well a church, which I forget the name of…

We grabbed lunch at Pizza Hut before heading to another section of Macau, to the casinos!

Macau is known for it’s casinos and gambling; it’s nicknamed the Las Vegas of Asia, and many Chinese people go to Macau to gamble (90% of Macau’s visitors are from China!).

We were able to take a free bus service that one of the hotels/casinos offered, called ‘The City of Dreams.” The bus played music and each seat had its own mini TV, which played commercials about the casino, to get you, excited to gamble and what not (it was Macau's Party Bus).

When we arrived at “The City of Dreams” we walked around for a little bit, ended up in the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel, before deciding to head over to the Venetian, or the world’s largest casino. At 546,000 square feet, 3,400 slot machines and over 800 game tables, the Venetian holds the title of the largest casino in the world. In addition, to the casino, there are hundreds of high-end shops, as well as three canals where visitors can go for a gondola ride! It was insane!!

The gondola driver singing!

We all took a chance at the slot machines- only Mimi walked away winning. We were interested in possibly checking out playing Black Jack or some other card game, but when we were informed you had to pay $300HKD to get in, we decided against it. Haha.

Trying out the slot machines!

Mimi, Anna and Kat playing a game

We wandered around the casino and hotel for quite sometime, avoiding the nasty weather outside. We grabbed a late dinner before taking the shuttle back to the ferry pier for our 9pm boat ride back to Hong Kong.

The Venetian at night

Well, the boat ride back to Hong Kong is a story in itself. It should be noted, that when I was younger, boat rides (and subways for that matter) scared me. My mom says that after I saw Titanic, boatrides were never easy for me. Somehow I got over that (e.g. Antarctica). But Tuesday night, I watched the Titanic trailer on Youtube for some reason and Wednesday night, I saw my life flash before my eyes about 5 times.

Heading home, the water between Macau and Hong Kong was so rough; the TurboJet was going a million (okay, I exaggerate) miles per hour and the boat was rocking from side to side. People were throwing up all around us, and I thought I was going to die. It was raining and you could hear the waves crashing against the boat as the boat rocked from side to side. The entire time I was thinking, “Okay, how do I get to a lifeboat,” “do I take my purse or do I leave it?” “Does China even have a coast guard?” It was insane. I was so glad to be back on land and will never get on a boat in that type of weather again.

Although Macau would have been better on a nicer day, it was still fun to explore the old Portuguese colony!