When we left you last time, we were in Hong Kong, the former British colony turned mecca for the new economy: insurance companies, banks, electronics, telecom, and...great Indian food! Jon and I spent our last day in HK on a mission for a special Sony cable to connect my camera to the internet so I can download photos to this blog. We went first to an electronics store, and from there to the HK Sony Service Centre and eventually a spare parts warehouse in an outlying area of the city. Luckily we were well-fed before the journey - we ate a great meal of Indian food on the ground floor of the Chun King Mansions, another sprawling rabbit's warren of flea market stalls, guest houses, and ramshackle factory rooms and offices close to where we were staying. The mission took a few hours, so by that time we were ready to take the ferry over to Macau.
Macau is another former European colony, whose control was transferred from Portugal to China about ten years ago. Like Hong Kong, it's a really interesting combination of old and new, east and west, Europe and China. Where in Hong Kong you have efficiency, good government administration, and thoughtful city planning, in Macau you have Portugese architecture, a city square with a fountain like the ones through Latin America, lots of bakeries and candy makers, and a city known for its good times. In Macau the big business is casinos and gambling. Here's a photo of Macau buildings - the tall lotus-flower-shaped gold one in the background is the Gran Lisboa Casino.
Jon and I stayed close to the Old Macau city centre, in an interesting neighbourhood full of bakeries, candy makers, small hotels, and (as we saw when we went out to get breakfast early in the morning), prostitutes. Here's a pic of our neighbourhood.
Jon got us a great deal on a luxe (after HK) room in a small hotel on a quiet street by breaking out his Mandarin bargaining skills. The staff liked us because of Jon's Mando, and when Jon left his wallet in the room when we left (not the important wallet, but it did have his driver's license in it, the housekeeper chased us down about five blocks to give it to him at the bus stop.
We left Macau in the morning for our journey to Bali, Indonesia: taxi to the Macau airport, flight to Kuala Lampur (Malaysia), Malaysian immigration, check in to Bali flight, eat at the McDonalds at the airport, Malaysian immigration again, flight to Bali, buy Bali tourist visa in the airport, Indonesian immigration, Indonesian customs, and finally hotel shuttle bus to our room, a little Sauble style cottage with Bali architecture and a beautiful pond in our courtyard.
So here we are in Bali! I'm writing this from an internet cafe right down the street from our cottage, while Jon checks out the look of the beach. More on Bali in my next post!
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