Occidentally Oriental

Typhoon warning

3 August, 2006 at 15:18 (Hong Kong)

We are currently at level 3 typhoon warning because there is a storm moving in towards Guangdong.
http://www.hko.gov.hk/contente.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5241016.stm

Level 3 isn’t that bad really, just strongish winds and raining on-and-off. But, it has interfered with plans to go to an island called Cheung Chau.  I was really looking forward to going there because the only way to get there is by Ferry (so it’s not too developed) and it has a pirates cave!  Next time…

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Macau

3 August, 2006 at 15:10 (Hong Kong)

I had originally planned to leave on the 2nd, but because I wanted to see some places and do a few other things (plus relax a bit), I extended my stay until the 4th.

One of the places I wanted to see was Macau, a former Portugeuse colony about 1 hour away from Hong Kong by ferry. So, on Tuesday myself and four other remaining students from summer school ventured there to see the sights.

After an inauspicious start to our day (myself and the other two guys forgot our passports :P, but hey, I did remember my digital and film camera, a change of clothes, shoes & socks for the casinos and my lonely planet book), we had a good time in Macau.

The main attractions in Macau are probably the casinos (there are about 15 to 20) and also the fusion of culture, architecture and food that arose from portuguese colonisation. I’ve updated the album with some pics from Macau so check it out, some of them you wouldn’t know if you were in Europe or Asia.

Anyway, we visited a few places in Macau, first we went to the Flora gardens. The gardens are the largest public park in Macau are on the top of the highest peak. Also on the peak is the Guia fort and a lighthouse, there are some pics of these too. Really nice views from up here and the architecture is great.

After this, we headed to the ruins of the Church of St Paul, it is basically just the facade of a Church which was burnt to the ground by some careless chef in 1835. The area around the Church is where I took the photos which look like they are in Europe. It was fairly touristy, but we managed to find a local type place to eat some lunch here. The food was pretty decent, it seemed a bit like fusion food leaning more towards Asian style than Portuguese.

From here we went to the Macau Museum which wasn’t too bad, but it was pretty small.

Then, we tried to get into some protestant cemetary which looked really cool, but we were there after opening hours so the gates were shut. Some local guy told us that it was ok just to jump over a low wall and look around the cemetary, but the caretaker didn’t agree and we were promptly asked to jump back over. It’s pity we didn’t get to check it out, it looked really nice, it was quite small and shady, and the tombstones would have been very interesting to read.

Having been kicked out of the cemetery, we decided that we should buy our ferry tickets back to Hong Kong. Since it was a weekday, the last ferry was at 20:30, so by this time it was about 18:00, and we still wanted to check out at least one of the casinos.

As the two other guys only had flip flops on, they weren’t allowed inside any of the casinos. But, the guys and one of the girls didn’t want to gamble anyway, so they took off to the only shopping mall in Macau while myself and the other girl headed into Sands casino. We were hoping to check out two casinos, one old and one new, but by the time we had walked around sands for a bit (losing on roullette but coming out ahead on the pokies! hooray!), we ran out of time and had to head to the ferry terminal.

Macau was a great place, I think you need to stay at least overnight to see enough of the sights though, since a day isn’t really enough.

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