Hong Kong Trip, or Was it???

This past weekend was the last weekend before Tom came home. So I had planned to take a little vacation to Hong Kong with my friend here. Sort of a Shanghai Girl's trip. Kathy M, Angie, Deb, Raquel, Rebecca, Karen, and I all were looking forward to shopping, eating, and maybe more shopping. But, we forgot to plan on the unplanned. Tropical Storm Nuri. It blew through on Friday afternoon. Three of us (Raquel, Rebecca, Karen) took an early flight Friday morning. They successfully left at 8:40. Unfortunately that was the last flight out that. Boo Hoo. And in fact it took most of the afternoon to figure out if we could even get there on Saturday. But we were able to rebook for Saturday morning at 9:45. We four got on our flight and headed out. All was looking good until the pilot came on and said that Hong Kong was currently overwhelmed with flights and that our flight would have to wait a bit until we could receive clearance to land. After 45 minutes, he came back on and said there might be a chance that we would be diverted to Xiamen (an hour and half away). And another 45 minutes later he said we would in fact land in Xiamen for fuel. It was supposed to be about a two and half hour flight. At this point, it had already been 4 hours. We did land in Xiamen, fueled, and then the pilot again informed us that we had not received clearance from Xiamen Customs. I guess they thought we had smuggled a bunch of HK migrant on or something. We were almost 3 hours delayed on the ground in Xiamen. Then we took off and landed in HK about 3 hours later. We basically were on the plane for the same amount of time as it would take to fly from Tokyo to Minneapolis, US. And none of were prepared for that long of a flight. But we did entertained ourselves with hangman and drawing pictures.

After we finally got to Hong Kong, it was 8:30. And there were huge lines at immigration. We had originally made plans to join up with the other girls at the Felix at the Paramount hotel, but we were all wiped out and decided to just head to the restaurant in the hotel. We stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, on the island, near Happy Valley Race Course. After eating, a few of us headed to Lan Kwai Fong, which is on the island as well. I felt pretty old. It was sort of like going to Mardi-gras. There were several blocks of restaurants and bars. Open containers and people walking around with drinks. And the girls all seemed so young and vastly under dressed. We didn't get back to the hotel until after 1 a.m. What a long day...

Sunday, some of us headed to the Peak. The weather, believe it or not, was great. Hong Kong is so much cleaner the other big cities we have been to in Asia. It is nice to be able to breathe. The Peak is at the top of a mountain and has a tram that goes up and down. The views were great. Then to shopping at Times Square. That was nice as there was a huge English bookstore. Nice to shop with such a nice selection. Finally to lunch at the big IFC Mall where the Central station is. You can check in to your flight there, check your bags, and then go back to shopping.

All in all, a nice getaway. If we had not had the logistics issues, it might have been perfect.

Macau

While Natalie is gone (boo hoo), Tom and I decided to take a weekend trip to Macau. Our spur of the moment activity for the year! We decided on a Monday to go that upcoming weekend! So we flew in on Friday afternoon. After we arrived and figured out the local currency situation (they use the Pataka generally and the Hong Kong Dollar) we headed to the Rio, where we stayed. The lesson learned with the hotel was that unless you are staying at the Wynn, MGM, the Sands, or the Venetian, go cheap! While our room was nice (see picture from the window), because the idea of a "Strip" doesn't really exist yet, there was not much at the Rio. The casino was awful, one blackjack table, slots mostly with "blue screen", and no real life there! I saw better Casinos at the Denney's off-strip in Vegas. It is definitely the place to go to escape the "mainland" either. But that is primarily due to the fact that 75% of the money made in Macau is from the big players who play in private casinos or rooms. But really, it is not really fair to compare to Vegas right now. There are lots of casinos, but only the four I mentioned are run by guys with Vegas experience, so it is just different!

It was also our first trip to Southern Asia in the summertime. Let me tell you, I will no longer complain about Shanghai being hot. In the picture on the right, you can see the heat haze. You practically melted walking to far.

After we figured out we would not be playing in our Casino, we headed out to the Wynn. And it was a mini-version of the one in Vegas. They had this big gold tree that "grew" in the lobby. After entering we walked around. No video poker (my fav!) to be found! Many Baccarat tables, some Black Jack, no Keno, no free alcoholic drinks??? What was up with that? And it took me half an hour to find a place to have a drink! The bar was tucked way in the back. Weird. We then headed back to the hotel and then on to the Sands. The layout was nice with a stage with live entertainment right in the center of the casino, open to the rest of the casino. And a big bar wrapping around it. The entertainment was so-so, with the funniest thing being the Filipino band singing. It is totally acceptable in Asia for the bands to use sheet music. Sometimes I guess that is because the bands are just a step above Karaoke. Even when the band is playing, people still think it is karaoke! Hilarious. And that was the Case this night. Many of the guests were singing right along with the band, and really loud too. The funniest part was that the most rocking song was "Ret's Get Roud". Oops, I mean Let's get Loud, by Jennifer Lopez.. But that is not how they sang it or what the audience sounded like singing with them. How funny is that song selection? After the band, the next entertainment was 3 sets of ballroom dancers. No kidding. How do you end up with that job??? Anyway, it resulted in most of the crowd dispersing.

Saturday we headed early over to the Venetian. It is on the Cotoi Strip which is on the two small islands of Macau. That Friday night the US Olympic Basketball team had stayed here and played some non-Olympic team. So, there were many more foreigners at this hotel. We enjoyed this one the most I think. And not just because we both won there. We watched a band play in the Bellini Bar in the casino. Mostly jazz with a decent trumpet player. Tom enjoyed a drink and funky little cigar while we relaxed in the bar. I focused on more interesting things such as making art out fruit and thinks from my purse. There was lots of shopping and so many things to do there. We ate dinner that night at the Morton's Steakhouse. Wow, it was delicious. Of course we ate too much and felt miserable, but it was fun.

I noticed a big difference in that there were not a lot of attractive women here. Part of this is due to the fact that Shanghai in general seems to have more attractive women. But it also seemed to be a different mix of people. There were quite a few Malay, but many were hard to place in term of ethnicity. Another big difference was that we saw people looking on the floor for dropped chips. I saw someone doing that and wasn't sure what it was, but Tom confirmed later that it was a chip searcher! Another thing you would never do in Las Vegas is to put chips on someone else's hand. If you are at a table with other players, you can play money on their hands. Kind of freaks you out. But I guess if a player is hot, you can win long with him! At the end of the day, Tom and I both lost what we had won Saturday. But we had a nice time and enjoyed our adult weekend.

Olympics - From a Shanghai Perspective

8/08/2008 at 8:08 pm night was start of the XXIX Olympics. Watching the ceremonies from a location in China was a special treat for us. Really, who didn't think that it was awesome? We made a reservation for about 10 of us at Malone's in Thumb Plaza to catch the excitement. And it was exciting. Albeit in Chinese! One downside to watching live here was that meant we watched the CCTV feed, not a nicely translated, and as it turns out, interpreted, opening ceremony. I had many favorite parts, with the opening drums probably being one of my favorites. I am sure you have heard by now that many of the synchronized scenes were conducted by soldiers. Your country can do that when you are not fighting wars around the world! (sorry, political commentary not intended!) . It was interesting to watch in a location with about 50% international and 50% Chinese. Let's just say that the crowd was not overwhelmingly for the US. You can get a sense of that watching the video on You Tube of the US team entering the stadium. They were clapping for the team, but booing at the clip of Bush! And you have also heard about the scandal of the two-girls-one-song situation. Oh, and the footstep fireworks (which really was my favorite euphemism, "walking through history", that was great!) were taped the night before to ensure clear visibility. But com'on, really, besides those little things, it was an awesome display. You can see from our pictures that we all had a great time. It did take a quite a long time though! Finally, many Tiger beers later, the finale of the Lighting of the Torch. Tom and I rode the scooter (it is about 3 miles from our house) so we had a bit of a wobbly ride home (someday I will blog about drinking and scootering). By the way, Tom and I purchased a DVD of the opening ceremony. Pretty awesome to re-watch!!!

Since the opening night, we have been watching table tennis and badminton non-stop! In Chinese. Here, you get a totally different set of sports to watch and you get to see about 5-6 different CCTV channels (who says controlled media is bad???). In the US, it is probably the basketball, volleyball, swimming, etc. Plus since it is usually only NBC, CBS, or ABC, you are limited to the edited version! Here, we get to watch hours of rifle shooting and weight lifting. And as of right now, China is pretty solidly kicking our butt overall. But, the track and field events have started, so maybe we will draw a bit closer soon. We are missing a lot due to the language, but we simply augment with Internet updates.

Final comment regarding the Olympics was a funny comment made by Natalie. She was watching with family in the US and stated "I don't know who to root for, the US or my country". And recently she told my mother that it was kind of like cheating: She wanted both the US and China to win, so whoever won, she was happy!