Today was an even earlier start than normal. I only woke up 10 minutes earlier but was in the shower very quickly as I needed to be downstairs for the tour pickup by 7:10am. I got cleaned up and ate a quick breakfast and was downstairs with a few minutes to spare. The pickup guide was already waiting for me but the bus hadn't arrived so I had to wait a few minutes. From there it was circling through the city to pick up other people on what was apparently only our tour. Kate was not on this bus route. Apparently they had two different buses working different routes. The bus dropped us off at the ferry terminal and that was where we met up with the other group and Kate was indeed there.
She had to repurchase her tour because apparently they couldn't find her in the voucher list even though she had booked the tour before she even arrived in Hong Kong. They told her to purchase now and they would sort it out tomorrow for her when there was more time. She was definitely annoyed at having to put up more of her money. The tour basically started with us going through immigration to head off to Macau which is a territory of China formerly owned by the Portuguese but returned to the Chinese in 1999, a couple years after Hong Kong was. The territory is still separately run like Hong Kong is but somewhere down the road (I think it was 50 years from return to Chinese ownership) they are going to be fully absorbed again. Macau is a peninsula off the edge of China. We took a high speed ferry to Macau. The trip lasted about one hour and was fairly painless.
After getting off the ferry we had to clear immigration on the Macau side then we met our guide for the tour who is from Macau and not Hong Kong. The people from Macau speak Portuguese and Mandarin. I am sure more speak Mandarin than Portuguese as she said that about 3% of the population is Portuguese. That doesn't stop the territory from having very heavy Portuguese influence as well as a bit of Dutch influence from some previous time where they also held the land. The first stop of our tour was to see the gold lotus flower statue that was given to Macau when the country was returned to China. It was a very short stop. This was where we discovered that Kate's cell phone was missing. She had just bought it the day before and she had 2 sim cards in it. As we left we checked her jacket and everything in the bus but couldn't find it.
The next stop was at a small shop where you could sample some of their almond cookies or their dried meat meat products. We spent the stop searching everything for her phone but it didn't turn up. We talked to the guide form Hong Kong and he told her it was probably already stolen. She decided to try the guide from Macau and she called the ferry company and them the ferry type and time, her seat number and the colors of the phone and they said they would call back if they were able to find it. Of course this set Kate a bit off as she was worried about it but I tried to keep her positive about it. We knew she had it when we got on the ferry but not if she had it when we got off so it was most likely to be on there.
The next stop was at the Saint Paul's Cathedral which had been previously been destroyed I believe in World War II. This meant that there was really only the front of the cathedral there. It was kind of a neat stop. The sun really started to come out by this point and it was getting a bit warm for me. The stop also had us go through a museum of the history of Macau and our guide took us through to a lot of the exhibits and explained a fair amount of it to us. It was a reasonably good tour and after it was over we basically headed over to lunch in the fisherman's wharf. During the ride there the ferry company called the guide and told her they found the cell phone and there was much rejoicing... This definitely lightened up her mood quite a bit.
Lunch was a Portuguese style meal which started with a potato style soup, followed by a slaw and fried fish (think fish and chips without the chips) with the main course being a chicken stew of some sort that was very yellow and rice on the side. The food was generally good although the glasses looked a touch scary for dish washer spots (I hope they were dish washer spots). They served us coffee and a coconut pudding that was very jellylike and not very flavorful for dessert. After eating we were told we needed to be back to the bus by 2pm but we could wander around the fisherman's wharf. We wandered and returned at 2 along with almost all of the tour except for people from Singapore. Unfortunately they didn't show up until 2:30. This is when the guide told us she said 2:30 to everyone and we all disagreed with her. It kind of sucked a little to sit on the bus for half an hour for no reason but at least he had the AC running because it was fairly hot outside by this point.
After lunch we were taken to Macau temple. Apparently the territory is named after the temple because the Portuguese thought the name of the temple was the name of the region. The old temple is about 700 years old we were told though it has since been built up a fair bit. I liked the temple a lot. It had a lot of stairs and stone gardening and maybe a bit too much incense. The old temple is smaller and made of stone and is the main entrance to the rest of the complex. The newer temple is much larger and red. In the new temple there was a brass bowl that had handles that apparently if you rubbed the handles it would predict your luck. One of the Singaporean ladies tried it first and that pretty much got everyone in the temple trying it. Basically, it had water in it and if you rubbed it the right way the water would vibrate and percolate. She did it very well. Kate watched her and wanted to try and after a couple other people went with mixed results she didn't really have a good go at the start but as she started thinking happy thoughts it started to work for her. I tried it out a bit later and it was a bit better than Kate's try but not really anything spectacular. It was fun anyway.
After the temple we headed to Macau Tower. It is 228 meters tall, so shorter than the Eiffel and the Tokyo Towers. The first stop up is the 58th floor which is enclosed and has the glass bottom sections on the floor. I have gotten over my fear of those sections by this point and it was amusing watching other people be afraid to step on them. I convinced and Aussie woman to do it so her husband could photograph her doing it. It was sort of fun. The view might have been a touch nicer without the obligatory haze that has been in the area the whole time I have been here but it was still quite nice. After that it was on to the 61st floor which is open aired but not really in the sense there is a glass wall but the top is open. They sell bungie jumps and skywalks on this floor. We didn't really have time to try either nor would I have. You should know what a bungie jump is. The skywalk is done by putting you in a harness and hooking you up to a rail that allows you to walk around the building on the outside. The idea is to push your weight off the edge so the harness is suspending you. There appeared to be more takers for the bungie jumps on this day than the skywalks though apparently famous people have done both. Charlize Theron was one who had done the skywalk anyway.
From there we headed back downstairs and met up with the bus again. The tour brought many of the members to a casino where they would stay for 3 more hours then brought us back to the ferry station. We had to clear immigration then board the ferry and ride it back to Hong Kong. The people at the Hong Kong side had Kate's phone we were told so we would have to get it there. It was again an hour long ride and we basically dozed off during the trip because it was a fairly full day and we were tired. Back in Hong Kong it was actually quite easy to get her phone. The brought us to a security booth, she had to sign a form and she had her phone back. From there it was what I felt was an interminably long line to get back through the Hong Kong side of immigration. As soon as everyone was through we were lead through the terminal and split up to our respective buses. Kate and I said our goodbyes and I got on my ride to the hotel. Of course the Royal Plaza was the last stop and I got back at about 8pm.
I was fairly hungry but not willing to put a lot of effort into eating so went to the McDonald's in the mall and got a quarter pounder with cheese meal and ate that very quickly. I can say it was reasonably OK but I liked the Freshness Burger from the day before more. After that I headed upstairs to finish off the night with writing and posting. It was a very long day for me and I was quite tired when I got in.
The pictures from today are posted here.
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