Sep 7, 2009 – Day 3: Harbour City,  Macau

Initially, we planned to spend the whole day of 3rd day in Macau but fate brought us not being able to wake up very early and decided to spend the morning in Harbour City. Harbour City was a huge, various class, shopping mall located at the Tsim Sha Shui Area of Hongkong, close to the China Ferry terminal. I decided here to left my friends doing their shopping while I was spending my day on the Harbour longue and then moved to the starbucks still with the seaside view sipping my usual frappucino and reading some local newspaper. It’s to my surprise that Hongkong has a history of repetitive attack by acid thrown from above in one of its lot tall building which serves for both residential and business purpose.

View from Harbour City Longue

Around noon, we managed to gather everyone in the China Ferry Terminal, purchased our return ferry ticket for HKD 300/pax and then blasted off to Macau. The first ferry traveled before 6 while the last set sail at 10.30. The wave was not really killing that made you wanted to vomit. It took like 2 hours in the ferry to get you from Hongkong to Macau. By around 2, we were already there stepping on the soil of Macau.

After a bit of fuzziness, we managed to board the correct bus that would take us to the Largo do Senado (Senate Square) which was the host of many historical sites of Macau. We tried the famous Macau egg tart – must try, visited St. Dominiques church here, tried some desserts of a Portuguese restaurant (was too expensive to have lunch here) and finally reached the ruins of St. Paul which was the main historical attraction of Macau. St. Paul was originally a cathedral until it caught fire during a typhoon and had almost all of its parts burned down.

The famous ruin of St. Paul

From Largo do Senado, we left to get a bus that would take us to the Macau Tower, the highest point in Macau. During the way to the bus, we passed a hotel casino which was very famous in Macau, the Grand Lisboa. The architecture was magnificent and the building shined like a golden tower during the twilight. We didn’t happen to enter though. Close to the Grand Lisboa was also its older counterpart called Casino Lisboa and Wynn Casino Hotel. Later, after riding a bus for 5 stations away we managed to find ourselves in the Macau Tower.

Grand Lisboa

Macau Tower was the highest point in Macau and measured for 338 metres. It provided a high rise observation deck, skydiving, sky walking and buggy jumping from its top. But beware, it costed as much as MOP 1000 for a buggy jumping (MOP was pegged to HKD so it counted 1 for 1). So basically, we did nothing there but cam-whoring with the gigantic tower and the lovely suspension bridge with sun down shining open them.

Macau Tower

From Macau Tower we took a cab to the Venetian, the most famous and biggest Casino in Macao. It was also one of the largest building in the world. The inner part of the building was indeed lovely with the artificial canal, painted ceilings on some parts and artificial sky on the other parts of the building – somewhat like the foodcourt at Pacific Place in Jakarta. You could even take a ride in the canal with a Gondola, but I wouldn’t really recommend it. Long story short, we completed our cam-whoring cycle, took our late lunch here, shopped for gifts and spent some money for gambling in the casino – they only accepted HKD though, funny since we were in Macau.

By the time we finished gambling, we were already running late. Luckily there was a shuttle bus from Venetian to the ferry terminal. We dashed, jumped into the bus, stamped “kiasu” by other fellow Singaporeans who were half-surprised/half-ashamed knowing we knew that “term” very well since we were queueing like suck even before the bus completely stopped, ran all the way to the check-in area and finally we were there at the ferry that took us back to the Hongkong. The day finally ended after having some dessert back in the hotel area.

Sep 08, 2009 – Day 4: Last minute Shopping – Tsim Sha Shui.

Not much to tell on the Day 4. We woke up still as usual, early for our standard. Dashed for the usual buffet breakfast and then without taking further delay jumped to the Tsim Sha Shui area since it’s close and completed our final round of shopping. To be noted, the Espirit price in HK was just so damn cheap compared to Singapore so make sure to grab it. The G2000 price and many other brands were also cheaper, a reason why Hongkong was also called as a shopping-haven. I also bought some mooncake here which happened to be nice.

Noon time, we were already back in the hotel, took our stuffs that were already like 90% packed – 10% for error. We jumped into the coach after check-out out of hotel, arrived in the HKIA like super-soon, did some last minutes cam-whoring, took our last meal in HK and finally at 3 PM, we bided the final farewell to Hongkong. I believe I’ll visit you again, one day.