Monday was National day, so we got the day off of school. Anski, Juho, Philip, Asher, Megha, Charles and I decided to go to Macau. Our main purpose of going was to bungee jump the longest jump in the world off of Macau tower. I hoped to surprise and impress you all with crazy bungee pictures. But alas, Macau is a land of hopelessness and despair.
For those of you unfamiliar, Macau is a seperate SAR of China like HK- you have to go through customs and all as if you are visiting another country. It is somewhat known for being a former Portuguese colony and gambling. the "Vegas of Asia" if you will (I won't). So I hadn't been and thought it was worth a visit.
Firstly, we get to Macau full of hope and excitement. We get off the ferry and grab a taxi to the tower, however they weren't doing any jumps because of the high wind speed, so they told us to come back later in the afternoon. Fine. We walked around. Macau is weirdly almost creepily empty and vast compared to Hong Kong, and seems pretty boring. It is really inconvenient to get around and we just went to a random casino. I guess it was kind of cool, in its cheesy way. Everything in Macau is just really fake and plastic, it kind of feels like the Disneyland version of Vegas. The boys lost some money and bought some cheap food, while we walked back to the Tower to discover the sad news: no bungee at all that day. We wallowed in our misery and cursed Macau for a bit, and then decided to attempt to salvage the day by going to the Venetian. It is the biggest casino in the world, and they are still completing it. The point is that it is like Venice, with fake gondolas and fake canals. And fake marble. It is kind of cool in a ridiculous way. So I wasn't about to lose money, but everyone else gambled. Describing the atmosphere is difficult, I will explain it this way: I felt like I was in the 80s. Like the casino your grandma went to in the 80s. Filled with smoke, the chairs all this awful 80s brown, horrible showgirls doing awful covers of pop songs and performing movement loosely defined as dancing, though my 7th grade talent show had better quality.
Once again, trying to salvage the day, we saw this tower outside. The lift was broken so we're like hey, we'll climb these sketchy grey stairs filled with dust to the top. Yet surprisingly, as nice as this dank dungeon sounds, it was underwhelming. We climbed 15 flights of stairs, literally, for a mediocre view of the Cursed City of Doom. Then we had to leave to catch our ferry, leaving at 6:45. And oh crap, there is a giant queue and really no other way to leave the godforsaken Venetian way out in nowhere. We barely catch a cab, run to the ferry, and barely make a ferry back. Alcohol was purchased at the ferry terminal and we played a penis game very loudly on the way back. The whole point of going back was to make the National Day fireworks at TST in HK. So we look like we will barely make the fireworks, and then Philip somehow gets delayed at customs. After being mysteriously taken away (and perhaps being scarred for life), we got our favorite German porn star back and ran ran ran to the MTR. Yet, the curse of Macau lived on, despite our presence in HK. My Octopus card ran out of money and I just had such trouble getting on the MTR. But we made it barely. It was ridiculously crowded at TST by the waterfront for the fireworks. It was a pretty good display, from what we saw from the crowded straight.
By this point, it was 10 pm and we were starving to death so we found a Chinese restaurant and had some good food (yummy dim sum). We had fun conversations about how weird we all are, man I appreciate crazy people. Then what? Well, we couldn't go home after that. I was feeling a bit ill from the curse of Macau (um I still have a cough. probably just avian flu, don't worry about it). We hit up 711 and then went to the waterfront by TST. We had lots of fun there, and then it started to rain. That was the beginning of the end, and although we hung at my place for a little bit, the others headed off to walk home in the rain (rather insanely).
The day was certainly an experience. Bonding at the least. I don't know if I can really go back to Macau though, even to bungee jump. Coming home to Hong Kong was certainly nice, I appreciate it. Man this is home now. I feel like it is.
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