The Symphony of Lights & Shopping at the Temple Street Night Market

After being in Hong Kong for less than 24 hours and talking with our new Hong Kong friends, we have found that the fantastic night life (oh, and the food) is the real reason for visiting Hong Kong.  We definitely planned to do the typical tourist things, but honestly, most of our time was spent bar and club hopping well into the early morning.  So, needless to say, that explains why I’m taking my time to update my posts…that and I’ve been travelling for work the last few days since I’ve been back and I’m finding that the lack of sleep and living out of a suitcase for the better part of 3 weeks is finally catching up with me.  But the stories from Hong Kong must go on-

Dinner at Din Tai Fung- soup dumplings!

Bite a hole in the dumpling, blow on it and suck out the soup!

Greens and more dumplings...

Dessert is sweet red bean curd...

We came all the way to Hong Kong to shop at

H&M...I loved the sticker shock.  I spent $826.00.

Hong Kong dollars, that is

Getting drinks at Felix at the Peninsula Hotel to watch the

Symphony of Lights on Hong Kong Island- it was overrated...

but as American tourists we had to do it anyway.

I could not stop laughing in this photo- Jenn and Mary were cracking me up from arguing about what angle Jenn should take the picture in order to capture Mary’s best side.

Kowloon at night

Temple Street Night Market

I bought some bangles here for my sister & sister in-law...they are super cute!

 The famous Shanghai hairy crabs..never did get to try these...they're pricey!

This will never not be funny….the seller of these fine wares had to shoo us away because we couldn’t stop laughing like 10 year girls.  We will always be a couple of
Catholic school girls at heart

 Good-bye Kowloon!

Eggs Benedict

After our crazy Macanese adventure, Jenn and I woke up crazy hungry for western style meals, so by chance we decided to walk across the street from our hotel to a restaurant called Wagyu to get some breakfast/lunch.  Since we hadn’t really explored the winding and hilly streets around our hotel just yet, we thought it would be best to stay near our hotel and Wagyu looked like it was a pretty popular place to be for lunch.  We were getting a late start on sightseeing today, but since we were a bit worn out from our Macau adventure, we thought it might just be best to scratch our morning trip to Repulse Bay beach and grab some food and wait for Mary to arrive before heading to Kowloon for the afternoon.  The restaurant was pretty busy and looked like it had a lot of great lunch items on the menu, but  I was eyeing a guy at the bar who was eating some delicious looking egg dish that I couldn’t seem to find on the menu.  Dying for an egg breakfast, I decided to take matters into my own hands, so I went up to the bar, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him what he was eating.  I was already used to asking people stupid questions on this trip, and at this point I didn’t care because I wanted some stinking eggs.  Turns out that I tapped on the shoulder of one of the Wagyu night managers (Alex), who was off for the day. After simply striking up a conversation about his Eggs Benedict and being our charming American tourist selves, we somehow got the hook up at Wagyu with complementary drinks,  amazing food, and great local companions who were willing to show us the best of Hong Kong nightlife (and the worst)…

My Likeable Alter Ego, “Vacation Rachel” Emerges

Three glasses of wine and 2 new Hong Kong friends later, Jenn, Mary and I were refreshed and ready to start our day of sightseeing.   As we flew through the crowded and narrow Hong Kong streets Jenn and Mary noted that those *several*  glasses of bai pútáo jiǔ that Alex had sent to our table had really given me a lot of energy…and I could tell that in Hong Kong, my relaxed vacation had finally begun.

Free wine and food at Wagyu,courtesy of Alex, and new friends...

The theme of China- construction everywhere!

The famous Star Ferry Port

Riding the Star Ferry to Kowloon on the Mainland

Jenn and Mary enjoy their ride on the Star Ferry

Me...taking pictures again...

We have arrived!

                                      

Kowloon shopping- I’ve never seen so many designer stores in such

a small area…and each designer has multiple stores…



The “Macau-n-Eye" and More Macau Wanderings

More Pictures of Our Macau Wanderings….

 The market near the Ruinas del Sao Paulo

 A traditional Macanese egg tart- crazy delicious!

 Yum!

 beef jerky- Macanese style??  My best guess.  It tasted good though.

 Look!  A protest...This was the one and only protest that we saw in China

 Some locals...

 Dried mussles and shrimp...

Rice wrapped in a banana leaf...this is on our list of things to try,

but we're saving our appetite for sangria and Portugese tapas!

Dinner at Dom Galo, Another Fodor’s Choice!

Jenn and I were ready for dinner and some cocktails after all walking around the island all day and taking pictures, so we set out to find Dom Galo’s, a Portugese restaurant famous for its eclectic décor and spicy prawns. Dom Galo’s was also, of course, a Fodor’s Choice :)  Since the street signs in Macau are very small and difficult to find, and there are no addresses, it took us a while to get to our destination, so we arrived, we were ready to rejuvenate with a few pitchers of sangria….and that’s when things got crazy….

Our dinner here was amazing- go here if you ever come to Macau

Guacamole with Doritos- genius!

Spicy prawns and Octopus salad

Fodor has done it again...Jenn won't leave home without Fodor.

After our dinner, the owner sent us complimentary glasses of port and coffee ice cream.  When we went to thank him for his gesture, he told us that he was so excited to have foreigners enjoying their dining experience at his restaurant and exploring the island of Macau.  I suppose that there aren’t a whole lot of Americans who come here, although maybe I just need to go out for drinks more often with Jenn, who has a tendency to attract the "gray foxes".   Did I mention that I love it here??

Macau:  Jenn Discovers the Sweet Power of Wielding the Macanese Eye, or “Macau-n-Eye”

We were pleasantly tipsy after our dinner at Dom Galo, so we decided to “ride the wave” as we like to call it­- which is defined by when we are having so much fun that it doesn’t make sense to end the night short to go to bed.   The return ferries run all night long, so we decided that it might be fun to grab a drink in one of the casinos.  But first, we did a lap through the MGM where Jenn practiced using her “Macanese Eye” to continue the luck that we had had at Dom Galo.  The results were staggering…we had guys actually leaving their gambling tables to follow her out of the casino and get her phone number!  By the time we got to the hotel bar at the Wynn, she had gotten a guy to follow us in and tell us to stay for a drink with him when he returns from his business meeting. 

The bar was awesome- we had an adorable girl from Shanghai who was our server and we had a great view of all the high rollers sporting “murses” as they walked through the casino corridor and I had a thought to give the Macaunese Eye to the security guy in Cartier, although it probably wouldn’t score me that watch I’ve been coveting for years… We are also pretty sure that we saw some shady deal going down with the Chinese mafia at the table next to us since there were a lot of men walking in and out and handing off briefcases.  Jenn thought it might be best to keep the Macanese eye under wraps while they were around J

Bar at the Wynn

Enjoying our post-sangria drinks...note shady businessmen behind Jenn

When the business man who wanted to have drinks with us did return, we realized in a few short minutes that we would only have the energy to have one more drink before catching the 1 am ferry back to Hong Kong.  Also, giving men the Macau-n-eye had clearly taken it’s toll on Jenn’s eye (or it was from  pollution, lol), and she had to throw out her contact lenses which made her my cyclops friend who I had to direct through Hong Kong immigrations in the wee hours of the morning.  Even though I was crazy tired, I tried to make sure that made it safely onto the ferry and through immigrations before I also passed out on the 1 hour ferry ride back to our hotel.   It was a great day and all the friendly gestures from our trip to Macau were definitely sweet vindication for the loss of Jenn’s wallet a few days beforehand.

A Day Trip to Macau: Latin America Meets China

As everyone knows, Jenn and I have arrived safely back in the states and have returned to normal everyday life.  We ended up having a little too much fun while in Hong Kong, so I slacked a bit on updating the blog and I also thought that this way, we can still linger on the untold stories that we have to tell about our mini adventure.....

Since we were planning to have Mary join us on Saturday, we wanted to try and squeeze a day trip to the nearby island of Macau for our first full day.  We got up early and headed to the Macau ferry port for our one hour trip to the “Vegas of Asia”.

Boarding this boat might not be the greatest of ideas- it was

getting tossed all over the place by the waves

Arriving in Macau was a bit confusing at first.  The streets are in Portuguese, the people speak Cantonese, and it’s sort of like a crazy mini Vegas.  It took us a bit to figure out how to jump on a free shuttle to the main strip, but we finally figured out where we wanted to go on the island and found an MGM Grand shuttle that would takes us there.  The hotels are incredibly grand and opulent here, and when you compare them to the actual Vegas hotel subsidiaries, they actually more posh, but much smaller.  The island takes about 30 minutes to walk, so we decided to just explore this quaint island with tons of culture and crazy stifling heat.

We have arrived..now, what casino shuttle to take?

Walking past all the casinos- this is the Grand Lisboa

It's domination of the Macau skyline was helpful when navigating the city

Graffiti, another one of my favorite things

My god, it's hot here!

We stroll through and old cemetery so I can take pictures

of creepy headstones

Largo do Senado- a charming town square filled with brightly

painted neoclassical buildings and beautiful stone patterned cobblestone  plaza

Ruina’s de Sao Paulo

We were truly bombarded with requests for pictures with native men while at this tourist site…and since we were loving scenic and relaxed Macau, we agreed, although Jenn mentioned that we might start charging per picture.

We finally got one of our admirers to take our picture after we took several pictures with his friends in a row…I have to say, he did a pretty fantastic job!

After our impromptu photo session, we were approached by some Macanese school children who asked if we could help them with their English homework by letting them interview and take pictures with us.  It was seriously adorable; especially since we saw them giggling nearby and pointing at us for a few minutes before they gathered up their nerves and asked us.  It was obvious that it took them a bit of courage to ask for our help…and we were glad to take our picture with them for free J

So cute!

My new buddies