Catching Up Part Three (Hong Kong/Macau)

While Tokyo surprised me with its sheer size, Hong Kong was a completely new experience. You fly in over the ocean and the first thing you notice is the mountains. They are lush and green and seemingly make up the entire landscape. There wasn't really any flat terrain to speak of, so they have created it. For example, the airport sits on a large man-made island. As you cross the bridge(s) into the city, you can't help but notice all of the tall buildings that are all over the mountains. It is truly the strangest thing. Picture if you will, say a 30 story apartment building. Now picture seven of them, in a row, exactly alike, on the side of a a mountain. Then eight or nine more in another design, all over. Then there is the port. Yep, all that stuff that is "made in Hong Kong" goes out here.

Unlike Japan, I guess earthquakes aren't a concern, so there is no hesitation to build lots of sky scrapers. The waterfront in Hong Kong is lousy with them, many are banks. What's really cool is at night when all the buildings are lit up in neon and put on a light show. There is music and narration in English and Chinese on alternating nights. There are lasers shining from the tops of many of the buildings. One of my favorite parts of the entire trip was sitting in a restaurant in Kowloon (across the harbor from Hong Kong) and watching the boats and ships go by, many of then with their own lights.

From Hong Kong we took the jet ferry to Macau. Macau is a peninsula on the tip of mainland China. Whereas Hong Kong was run by the British, Macau was a Portuguese colony. Nowadays, Macau is rapidly becoming the bigger and better Las Vegas of the east. There is already a Wynn resort, MGM, Sands and a Venetian three times bigger than the one in Vegas. There are also numerous Asian owned casino/hotels. It is still something of a well-kept secret outside of Asia, but with all of the new construction and openings coming up, it won't be for long. It is really amazing. Parts of it are a mixture of old and new, shiny hotels with old tired buildings surrounding them, but the Kotei Strip, a piece of land created to join two islands, is a blank canvas with a lovely view of lush green mountains. This is where the Venetian is located and several other hotels are under construction, including familiar names like Hyatt, Hard Rock and other high-end US chains.

We stayed in a wonderful hotel, the Crown, and had a room fit for a celebrity. It had a fantastic view of the waterway (what can I say, I am sucker for boats going by my window) and was just huge! It had a living room, dining area, office, bedroom, 1.5 bathrooms, a walk-in closet bigger than my SUV!

We had dinner in a well known restaurant in the Venetian and the manager who is a friend of hubby's arranged with the hotel for us to have a romantic gondola ride complete with a bottle of champagne. Our gondolier was from Palermo, Italy and had a great personality and a beautiful voice. At the end, we were serenaded by 10 gondoliers and presented with a gorgeous bouquet of roses and a gift basket. Lucky for us, lots of pictures were taken, so we have those memories preserved.

Before we left Hong Kong, we had one more piece of important business to take care of...
Hong Kong Disneyland! (Are you sensing a theme here?) Hubby had done it before with #1 and #2 sons last year, as well as the ones in Tokyo, but didn't want me to feel left out. I can sum it up with one word - small. We hit the few "big" rides in probably 90 minutes. They don't even have a "Pirates of the Caribbean" for goodness sake! It did have one thing that made it unique. In "It's a Small World", there are Disney characters located in their respective "countries" that you can look for. Their faces and scale are the same as all the other figures, so you sometimes have to keep a sharp eye out, but it really does add some fun to a rather familiar ride.