Day 17 - Macau

see all photos »

Today we go to Macau, let’s wake up early. No, lets wake up at 10. But we will get on the 14:30 turbo jet ferry to Macau.

Macau is a tiny country, smaller than Hong Kong, that was settled by the Portuguese. They also did a handover to China in recent history. It is now back under Chinese control. Macau is known for Portuguese architecture, the Macau grand prix, and casinos!

Vomit rocket

In the lineup for ferry tickets Amy had an altercation with a few extremely rude people pushing her and yelling at her. Unfortunately I was window shopping and missed out on my opportunity to kick some ass.

see all photos »

The ferry ride was quick and uneventful. It was a jet powered hydroplane, so the ride was very smooth. When we arrived we tracked down our first attraction and walked over.

We arrived at the Grand Prix museum about 20 minutes later. I loved it. It was all formula 3 and GT cars and racing information. So wicked cool. They had cars there from the class that I want to race in eventually.

I drove in the racing simulator. In the half an hour there I was the ONLY one that didn’t spend most of the time against the wall trying to figure out how to get back on the track. In fact, I was less than a second from breaking the fastest lap record.

Stupid ants
see all photos »

The next stop was in the same building, the Portuguese wine museum. It was a nice little museum, very simple. It showed the process of making wine and how Portugal does some things differently etc.

At the end of the museum there was a free tasting. Of course Amy and I had a nice vintage port.

We ate at some little shop with a hot waitress. I haven’t figured out how to take pictures of people without upsetting them yet, sorry boys.

We started looking for a bus to get us to the famous “ruin” no luck. We ended up on the waters edge and took a bunch of decent night shots.

This is the photo I sacrificed my arm for. Hardly worth it.
see all photos »

I had positioned myself for a photo of a lit up dragon when I felt that my arm was in a prickly shrub. When I lifted my arm the prickling didn’t go away, it got worse. My arm was covered in fire ants. Owie. I welted up and got itchy and sore. There is a photo of the welts in the album for today.

We walked up the “strip” which is threatening to encroach on Vegas. It is huge. There are only about 20 casinos, but it looks like there are 5 really massive hote/casino operations. We went into the “Grand Lisboa”. It is a giant orb. I stuck 20 bucks into a slot machine. My donation to the nation of Macau. We stopped by a table where a woman was making a HK $20,000 bet. Big gorgeous casino, a stage, hundreds of table games, lots of great stuff. No photos allowed, of course.

see all photos »

From there we walked up into the cultural centre. We looked at the nice Portuguese buildings and headed up to St. Paul’s. St. Paul’s is the last standing wall of the old Portuguese cathedral that burned down many years ago.

We slowly made our way back to the ferry on the bus. We stopped to buy dried Ostrich meat on the way. We were at the terminal at 10 PM no ferry till midnight. To keep ourselves busy, we walked down into this little fake Portuguese village that is setup on the seashore. It is full of nice little shops and restaurants.

see all photos »

We had some “New Zealand” smoothie. It was a little too liquidy. My milkshake was like milk with a little bit of shake and strawberry flavouring.

The ferry ride back was on a different by a different company. This trip was a fun vomiting adventure. There were a lot of pukers. I had a good laugh at it.

Today in photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/babyblues6/Asia2007Day17