Foggy Big Buddha and Foggy Macau ~ Unsettled TCK

I really need to be more diligent about this! I promise I've had a legitimate reason...ish... I realize I never actually completed my whole Lhasa adventure post but that will just have to wait since my memory is terrible and I might as well write about what most recently happened. Basically, a good friend came to visit and I have some great photos from the trip. I have a new tripod and a remote control which has made picture taking SO much easier! Gone are the days of the irritating self timer where I was constantly have to sprint into place for every photo with me in it. I bought both in a shop in Mong Kok at extremely reasonable prices:

hkd 130 for the control (Ml-L3)

hkd 320 for the tripod (Velbon CX444)

The reason I haven't gone for a tripod in the past is that the price can be pretty extravagant and the cheapest ones I found didn't really do the whole rotating top bit. Also, I could never really visualize how high any of it was whenever I browsed online. There are definitely some things that I prefer to shop for in person.

So far I've been loving having the both and can't really imagine going without them! This is especially the case for the remote since the tripod requires a little more work for set up. The great thing about the tripod though is that since I love taking low light photos and cityscapes, gone is the blur factor!

I'm trying to motivate myself to begin a project where I take a self-portrait of myself for an entire year. Not going to lie, I actually really dislike being photographed and I admit that I think I'm better at taking photos of inanimate objects rather than people. With inanimate objects, I can just move them at will and contort them in any way I feel. That's a bit more difficult with a person... I think that this project will be good for me but it's hard to keep going! I had a false start two weeks ago and then it fell by the wayside. I'm also trying to get more comfortable at asking people if I can take their photos since I a) hate confrontation and b) what if they say no?

Now, while my friend was here, it was delightfully foggy! Admittedly, this was not the greatest for the whole seeing the city thing but it made for amazingly eerie photographs. We hit up all the usual spots of: Ladies market, Temple street, and the Peak. I also took her to Golden Arcade in Sham Shui Po which I used to frequent as a child. It was known for the large number of pirated games and was a favorite of my brother and mine. All you had to do was go up to any booth that had a packet of listed games sitting on the counter. For U.S. systems, you had to install a chip which would allow your playstation one, etc to be able to play these bootlegged games. After the government cracked down a few years ago, it was never the same. They even ended up gutting a back room that was used as a room for shady dealings. Basically, when the government operation began, the pirating operations began to shift. You had to ask about the games and then they would bring you to the back of the store and show you the packet. After making your order (not giving the name of the game but a listed number), you waited for about an hour before heading to a location on the ground floor. There, a guy waited with a golden cigarette holder. You were thensupposed to go up to him and show him a slip of paper with the list of games that you bought. He flicked open the cigarette holder and checked the list he had. If he saw your numbers there, he would bring you to the back room et voila. I saw no such sketchiness there this time around.

We also ended up going to the Big Buddha and taking the crystal cable car which had a clear bottom. It was foggy and miserable and all we managed to see of the big buddha was its base and a vague outline of its hand.. There was also a band of roving dogs and starbucks ended up being our saving grace. Again, got awesome photos but it was pretty cold, rainy, and miserable. On the way back we had some Americans with us. One girl went to high school with the guy that Snookie on Jersey Shore is dating. That was our one tenuous brush with celebrity this trip...

Finally we ended the week by going to Macau, the Las Vegas of the East. They speak Cantonese so it was pretty handy! Plus, they take hkd everywhere so we didn't have to change money, which is nice. My opinion of Macau is that it is just like a smaller, gambling version of Hong Kong. It is also more European: Portuguese (makes sense), French, and a little Belgian... We went Saturday night without incident, although getting the free shuttle to our hotel was a bit confusing since we didn't stay at a casino. We just had to wait around and check the small buses as they went by for the name of the hotel. After checking in at the Emperor Hotel, we got gussied up and headed out. We successfully managed to sneak my friend in since we didn't want to pay an extra hk300 for her to share a bed. We went to the Wynn, Starworld, Landmark, Hotel Lisboa, and the President Casino. To be honest, I enjoyed Atlantic City more because they were a lot more skilled at hiding the fact that they take your money. Also, with no idea how to play baccarat, our experience was pretty much stuck on the slots. 99.9% of the tables were baccarat! The Wynn ended up being the best of the night. I didn't bring my passport and to get into the Pharaoh casino in Landmark, you apparently needed it...

The next day we headed to Fernando's, the famous Portuguese restaurant. It's located on Colaone island and was a 30 minute trip from where we were. GREAT SANGRIA! Totally worth the trek out there and we didn't have to wait in line. Apparently traffic can get pretty heavy there but since it was foggy, ferries were delayed until late afternoon and so the usual Sunday crowd was delayed. Then we stopped at the Venetian and this was much more like Atlantic City including a fake Venice complete with blue skies, clear blue water (Venice is actually pretty murky), and gondolas. It was reminiscent of Ikea since once we started walking along the "canals", we couldn't find our way out! They trap you and try to brainwash you into thinking they provide great prices for obnoxiously expensive designer ware. After escaping, we made our way to the Ruins of St. Paul's. It was pretty fantastic, the facade was beautiful! And there was a street full of food (mostly jerky) leading up to it. Then we went to the A-Ma/Mazu temple which is the oldest temple in Macau. We attempted to cab there but it was irritatingly difficult to hail one that we ended up taking a bus. The bus system is pretty efficient and once you point to the place on the map (free from the hotel), the bus driver will stop and tell you it's your stop. The temple was pretty and I got some nifty photos of coils of incense.

We had heard that ferries were being delayed due to the heavy fog, so we headed to the ferry terminal at around 6:30. After going to the turbo jet counter, the employee told me that the next available ferry ticket was for 2:30am... Apparently Macau's government was being extremely strict with traffic in and out of the harbor and all of the other times were sold out. Luckily, there was a woman standing right next to the counter who offered us tickets for an 8:15 ferry. She told us that her friends had forgotten/lost their passports and she wanted to unload them. She actually ended up charging us less than the value of the tickets. What ensued was a mess. We ended up going for a short walk to the fisherman's wharf, which looked like the real world version of the casino reality. Upon returning to the terminal, no one knew what was going on. The ships were apparently on their way but weren't being let in! It ended up being really fortuitous that I spoke Cantonese. If you are ever in this situation and don't speak the language, I think it will suffice to just wave your ticket into the face of everyone you see. Our boat wasn't even on the board! One girl who was supposed to be helping us ended up wandering off because I think she didn't want to face us. Another guy told us our ferry had been canceled! Finally, we managed to get into one holding area with seat assignments. Then we bought some little bottles of port and waited. Even asking the officials didn't give us any useful information, they just kept repeating they didn't know and it would probably be a "long, long, long, long, loooooong time". Luckily at around 9:30 the boat came! It was only one way traffic so we still had to wait but at least we made it on the ferry.

Here come the photos: