Macau

Macau is another island near Hong Kong. It is famous for its casinos and furniture. I've been twice so far although the first trip was purely shopping.

Gabbe, Holly, and I went on our second public holiday. However, we didn't realize we needed passports, and as a result, we didn't reach Macau until 2pm. We shopped most of the day, and I ended up carrying home a small butterfly cabinet.

Two weekends ago, Jeff and I headed back to see the island. We started out with a cup of coffee at Starbucks (a local tradition obviously). Then we jumped on a bus to Coloane island. I wanted to see the black sand beach because I thought it would be a fun place to go and stay if I needed a weekend away from the city. The beach did have black sand which in fact turned the water a lovely brown color. We didn't stay there long because it was really just a beach and not much else. We jumped on the next bus back to Taipo which was luckily a shorter ride because Jeff and I were standing on the minibus and it was not made for a guy over six feet to stand up in.

In Taipo, we ended up checking out the East Asian games. We lucked out and got tickets to two soccer games. Noise makers have not been banned in the stadiums here and everyone was enjoying banging them around. The soccer played by U19 or U21 teams was pretty good. The last one was rather uneventful because the North Korean team didn't push up the field much (although their defense was good). Jeff and I ended up leaving at the beginning of halftime of the second game.

We had another exciting bus ride. It started out with me frantically trying to scrounge up enough change to get on, and then I ended up being the last person on at the stop. I traveled to the next stop hugging the change machine at the front of the bus because it was packed. Jeff and I were shocked when the bus driver pulled up at the next bus stop and let on seven or eight more people. Luckily, we didn't let anymore people after tha. However, we were so crammed in that neither of us could see where we were going or know when to get off. We ended up having to take a taxi back over to the restaurant because we were so far away. We had an excellent dinner at a local restaurant called A Lorcha (the name of the Portugese boats). The food was fantastic and we tried some of the local green wine.