Around the World in 112 Days!: HONG KONG

We’ve arrived in Hong Kong 2 days before our ship, so we could do whatever we wanted. Our friends also went off to do their own “thing” (shopping, I think).

Bill and I slept in (a luxury in itself) and then headed out on “Big Bus Tours” (HK’s equivalent of a hop-on, hop-off bus), i.e., a double-decker bus with an open-air top level. We took in the sights of HK, which is to say we saw buildings to the left, buildings to the right, and buildings in the front and back too!

From the moment you arrive, this is a city that never ends . . . seemingly. And today was frigidly cold, compared to the heat and humidity of our previous ports. The haze remains.

We departed the “Big Bus” at “Star Ferry”, the closest point to hitch a ride on a cab to the ferry over to Macau – their version of “Vegas” (in reality, better than Reno or Laughlin, but no where in the vicinity of Las Vegas!)

We took a 1-hour, high-speed ferry to Macau, where loads of casinos were more than willing to give us a lift – go figure! Immigration acts as if we’ve left the country and ended another . . .

We spent the rest of the day in Macau before returning to the city, again by ferry. I think this is the fastest I’ve ever moved on water! We made a new friend in the face of a 2-year-old Chinese girl – who happened to like the little San Diego keychain that I gave her, so much that she then offered Bill and I a little ginger biscuit! Adorable!

From there, we returned to our hotel by taxi and ate dinner at our hotel in Central HK. (I think I’ve gone into some strange trance from the lack of familiar, comforting food. I hope I may recover one day, but for now, I’m numb to what was once good about the world of food. It simply doesn’t exist for me anymore. They eat fish brains and shark fins and all kinds of weirdness here … it doesn’t even smell right. God bless America, land of the well fed … .)