One of the main things you’re supposed to do in Hong Kong is go to Victoria Peak. It’s the highest point of the city and has amazing views. On our second night, we made reservations at one of the restaurants on the peak (making sure we got a table next to the window). It was a foggy night, but we decided to chance it and see if it was clearer near the peak. Boy were we wrong. The fog was so thick as we got higher that you couldn’t see more than 20 feet in front of you, and our view out the window of the restaurant was a white cloud. It stayed cloudy the entire time we were in Hong Kong, so we never got to see the amazing views. I guess I’ll just have to go back to Hong Kong one day to see what we missed. After dinner we went to the pier to catch a ferry to Macau, an island about an hour away from Hong Kong that is supposedly the Las Vegas of Asia. When we got to the pier, we saw that you could take a helicopter to the island, for a competitive price of $300 USD per person. We opted to take the ferry for $20 USD. At customs in Macau (still unsure as to why you have to go through customs as Macau is technically part of China) we ran into an American who was studying at the University of Macau and she told us the best place to go on a Sunday night was the Venetian Hotel and Casino. I expected Macau to have a strip of hotels/casinos just like Vegas, but I was wrong. The casinos are spread out all over the island, and to get from one to another you have to take cabs. The Venetian looked like the one in the States, minus the canals and shopping center. It was huge, beautiful, modern, and even housed a Cirque de Solei show. Considering it was Sunday night, the place was pretty dead, with only about ½ the gaming machines and gaming tables in use. Those of us that aren’t gamblers headed over to the bar, in which a live band was playing. They were a great Latin band playing a mix of songs in Spanish and English. On the way home from Macau, I laughed to myself as I considered my night: I was with six Americans at an Italian-themed hotel and casino in China, listening to a band from South America while drinking Australian wine and trying to get a drunk British man to leave me alone. What an inter-connected world we live in. Pictures: Kaci and I at the Venetian in Macau; The view from my hotel room, not from Victoria Peak. Hong Kong was foggy and rainy the entire time we were there.
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