leaving the 9 dragons!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIPxZ0jmhB8

Today we'll jump on the ferry to sail to Macao!

Meanwhile, enjoy the small movie we made this morning about the 9 dragons of Kowloon!

huggies,

PB

-oOo-

and here we are now in the catamaran, dancing on the waves, with mainland China on our right, covered in misty clouds. The sea is quiet and calm, almost no contrarian waves, it's a very pleasant trip.
Buying a ticket and boarding was a special experience, since no real good indication of what we needed to do in order to get on board! So many ships are departing from Kowloon, it's a real been-nest of people running around and trying to get the customers to buy their tickets (and not those of the competition!). Fortunately, Paul wrote down which line we should buy tickets from (First Ferrys), and from then onwards all went more or less problemfree. However, used to the 5 star service of the hotel, diving back into the real world confronted us with the fact that ordinary Hkies are not always friendly or don't always speak understandble English, or have the tendency to just ignore you, e.g. I wanted to buy taxfree siggies & Glenfiddich, and the salesgirl was chatting her life away on the phone and obviously in no mood at all to serve the customer! That also is HongKong!

We left 2 pieces of luggage in the Intercontinental hotel, no need to slep it all the way to Macau and then back to HK, I'm sure that Intercontinental will take good care of it. We'll pick it up when we return, although we'll stay in another hotel (Sheraton!).

I expect the hoteltransfer in Macau to be problemfree: every half an hour there's a complimentary shuttle from the seaport to the hotel, and that's a lovely service!

In the pictures, you will have seen that we went yesterday to The Peak! A futuristic building almost on top of the mountains of Central Hong Kong, with lots of shops and many ways for the visitors to spend their money! Which we did, of course, since HL found out that the obligatory HardRockStore was present there! He bought a nice Tshirt + pin, and I found out that polo's my size (yes yes 2XL) were halfprice, 50% discount for an excellent quality, so I bought one, because it was a little bit fresh and I could immediately use it, but don't you ever think that I have become a HardRockFan hehe! It was a one-time-thing only :-)

-oOo-

Now we are in the hotel already! Pasportcontrol in Macao is swift and chopchop you're over the border! Each hotel has its own stand in the welcomehall, and the Westinguy piloted us immediately to the left, where numerous hoteltranfercars waited for the few customers to be transported to the hotel. Westin's shuttle runs ever 30 minutes, from 09:00 till 23:30, and the trip is only 20 minutes.

Macau is momentarily dead. No traffic on the roads, no more constructions going on (and the projects that already started are immobilized). It's probably the most quiet spot on earth, for the moment. China has forbidden access from it's mainland citizens to the casino's of Macau - the money needs to stay in the mainland. America is no longer sending it's sons and daughters, since they have problems over there too. It left Macau in a state of shock, the occupancy in this hotel will probably be only a handful of percentage (at least we only see a handful of hotel guests), quite an unhealthy financial situation!

We stay in room 820, top floor, corner room, quite a walk to the elevator but guaranteed quiet. From here we see the whole of the bay and the ocean, impressive.

The hotelmanager gave us a short tour, he's from Macau (proudly he said: I'm Portuguese!) though born in South-Africa. A young fellow, end of his 20s, I guess, and obviously not too expensive. It's the first hotel in Macau - and it shows: it really starts to age. Huge renovations are planned, but I doubt that this costly operation will be executed as foreseen. Time will tell!

We already have a good contact with Alexander, working downstairs. He promised us a free internet access daily, provided it would be short. I'm sure that some pocketmoney will stretch "short" into "not too long". These are hard times for us all!

And now we go the "unwind" activity of the hotel: an evening chat + drink + snack. Nothing fancy, I can imagine, but it will give us the opportunity to meet new people.

PB
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