Hong Kong City Tour and Macau
The hotel had a good breakfast buffet and at 8:30 we met our tour guide, Patrick, for the morning’s tour of Hong Kong City. It didn’t take long for us to see that Patrick was very much a comedian and that we were going to have a good day. It was nice to have a private tour with just the five of us.
We started the tour by taking the Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak where we had a beautiful panorama view of the city. On the way to the tram Patrick shared with us a lot of information about Hong Kong. He had many jokes and at the end of most of them he said “never mind”. We particularly liked how he told us about the richest man in Hong Kong, Mr. Li Ka-shing (that really is his name). We also drove by a Ferrari dealership and he introduced us to his “babies”. As we drove by he gave them the kissy face. He also joked about Asian women drivers after one of them cut us off heading through the toll lane. It really did feel like he had a joke a minute which we enjoyed. Tom asked him if he ever thought about being a stand-up comic. He said yes, but his wife told him he was boring.
After spending time taking pictures and taking in the view of Victoria Peak, we headed to the Stanley Market. The Stanley Market is a place where many over-run clothes and souvenirs are sold. We had about 45 minutes to browse around and shop.
Driving to our next stop we saw many nice buildings, beaches, and cars driving on the road. We stopped at a jewelry “factory” where an employee shared with us information about their business and got the sale pitch to buy their jewelry. Patrick said that as soon as he signed his name to prove we were there we could go. We didn’t spend a lot of time browsing and headed to the Aberdeen fishing village next.
Here we took a 20 minute sampan boat ride around the harbor seeing all the fishing boats that people still use/live on today. It saddened me to see how much garbage was floating around in the harbor.
Our last stop was at a local restaurant for a Dim Sum lunch. Dim Sum is mostly finger foods (dumplings). Patrick didn’t join us for lunch so we said goodbye and enjoyed our lunch.
After lunch we walked back to the hotel to drop off the purchases we made in the Stanley Market. Since it was only 3:00ish we decided again to make the trip to Macau, this time with our passports in hand.
The ferry was super nice and kind of like riding in an airplane. The only complaint was that the air conditioning was cranked and we were all chilled. The ferry took one hour to get to Macau.
Once we got off the ferry we got a map and tried to figure out what to do. We decided to take a free hotel shuttle to the MGM casino. Of course a casino is going to provide free shuttles to their casino so that you can go spend your money there. We walked around the casino for a bit and asked the concierge for suggestions for Portuguese restaurants. We had read before we came that Macau was know for it’s Portuguese restaurants as it was once a colony of Portugal. We took the concierge’s suggestion and found the nearby restaurant. The food was really good, but my favorite was the steak with onion, parsley, lemon, and olive oil that Tom and I shared, and the tomato/mozzarella appetizer.
After dinner we decided to go through other casinos to gamble. We walked through the Wynn but it was so quiet, that none of us felt a good vibe there. We walked through the next casino and it was so small that we didn’t feel a vibe there either. After going through a couple of more casinos and striking out, we decided to go back to the MGM. We set a meet time for 1 hour and we all went our separate ways. I gave Tom 500 Hong Kong dollars (about $70) and he went off for a black jack table. I played a couple of slot machines and didn’t have much luck. I then decided to figure out the electronic roulette. After Sheila helped me find the English button so I could understand what I was looking at, I decided to just bet on either red or black. Black had been hit 3 times in a row so I bet on red and lost. I think it landed on black eight times in a row, but I didn’t start playing black until the end of that streak. I was kicking myself for not starting earlier as I would have been up a few hundred Hong Kong dollars. Eventually I was down to 50 Hong Kong dollars and I decided to bet all of it on black. Either I was going to break even or lose it all. Black was lucky once again and I walked away even on the roulette machine. I headed over by Tom to see how he was doing and found that he was up. He played a few more hands and won each of them. On his final bet he had probably close to 1000 Hong Kong dollars on the bet, and lost. It was time to go, but he still cashed in 4000 Hong Kong dollars after starting with just 500 (and the minimum bet was 300 Hong Kong dollars so if he would have lost that first hand it would have been a short evening). In the end he made about $450 American Dollars!!! We were both happy with that.
After we found out that you need a MGM players card with points on it to get the free shuttle back to the ferry terminal, we took a taxi. Wish we would have known that in advance as we all gambled and would have signed up for a card. The taxi’s are inexpensive so it was not the end of the world. After the one hour ferry ride and another taxi to our hotel, it was close to midnight when we hit the sack.
