Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong has been one of the places I have been longing to see for quite some time. Victoria Harbor always looked beautiful and the food always sounds amazing. Well, the food always sounded interesting. Some of the food eaten in Hong Kong includes bird's nest soup. The birds nests are actually made from spit. The nests come from caves in Borneo. It used to be very dangerous to harvest, but now they keep birds in barn-like structures to make nest harvesting more easy. There is a food called thousand year old eggs. The eggs are fermented for like a year and turn black and smell terrible.


The buildings in the harbor front have a light show every night. Apparently is costs a million HKD to keep the buildings lit up every night. That seems like a lot. The power they used is traditional coal, a fact the city seems pretty proud of.



The scaffolding used in construction is bamboo.


The is the Mirador Mansion where I stayed. It was an interesting and scary place at times. It was filled with so many people and different things.


A view of Victoria Harbor on a clear night. The China Bank building is the one with the triangle designs. Apparently it causes bad energy to the buildings around it.



I'm not sure if this is just because pollution is very bad in Hong Kong, or if there was a bit of Yellow Dust. The was the same weekend that Taiwan, China, and Korea were all hit with really bad Yellow Dust storms. I saw photos of Beijing and it looked horrible. People were wearing gogles and everything looked orange. Anyways, it was difficult just looking across the harbor that night.


Again, very smoggy and dirty.



A view from the Peak. The Peak is on Hong Kong Island. This is where all of the naking takes places. When you walk the streets in Central, you feel like you are in London. It was just white people with British accents and European stores. There is a lot of money on this side of Hong Kong. The peak is covered with mansions. This green area is actually someones yard. I snuck the photo through a fence.


This the the ferry that connects Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon peninsula. It only takes 7 minutes to cross.


There are some tram lines that run east and west across Hong Kong Island.


I rode the tram to Causeway Bay where I was watching some films for the Hong Kong International Film Festival.


This is one of the films I saw:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnQndw478U

There was a really funny short film about a rice cooker being lonely because his owner never used him, just cooked things in the microwave.

I also watched Echoes of a Rainbow. It was sad. It was called a Hong Kong weepy. When a film is described as weepy, expect to cry.

There are many films I missed that I want to see, Crossing Hennessy and Love in a Puff. Those two are also Hong Kong films.

Of course while I was in Hong Kong I ate lots of dim sum. It was Delicious.

Macau is one of those places that feels very in between. The was a distinctively Portuguese feel and many people spoke Portuguese and there were delicious little bakeries everywhere. I can't even describe how amazing the peanut cookies tasted. It was also Asian in a way. There was also an American feel with all of the Vegas type casinos. It was a beautiful city. I made the mistake of going on a Sunday, so it was extremely crowded.

Macau is very easy to reach from Hong Kong. The ferry is about $20 and takes an hour. Ferries leave about ever 15 minutes 24 hours a day.






It almost felt like I was in Europe. I feel horrible making observations like that sometimes. Especially at a restaurant and the food is really good. Then saying how it's almost like eating in France or the U.S. Why in a country like Macau that is such a mixture of cultures is it necessary to assume the western influence is the better part. I guess it's something I need to keep in mind. Those ethnocentric thoughts will sneak up on even people with the broadest minds.



I had the chance to see a dragon dance. There were two dancers in the costume.




The main Plaza.



I loved the patterns on the sidewalks.



The old St. Sebastian Church. Macau is the Catholic diocese that overseas pretty much all other Asian countries except maybe the Philippines. I remember that Korea is under the Macao diocese.



Loooking down from the Church.



The Lisbona Hotel and Casino.



The ferry to Macau. There is also a slow ferry that takes about 2 hours.