I acquired eight new stamps on my passport in the past few days, passing through passport control in China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Although both HK and Macau are territories of China, they have a special autonomy and for the purposes of travel are considered international. Faizal also discovered that I have a talent for picking good customs lines: every time we chose a line, I got through faster by a significant margin. Possibly this is luck, but I like to think that I am able to weigh a lot of subtle variables, such as the composition of foreigners in a line, the number of children, and proximity to nearby resident-only lines which are often repurposed for visitors if no residents are waiting.
Macau is an interesting place historically, and if I had more time I would have liked to see more of the colonial history. But we only had a few hours to visit, which I spent watching Faizal bungee jump off of the Macau tower (the highest jump in the world) and roaming around the MGM and the Wynn. I wanted to see the Venetian, but I did zero research so I didn’t realize that it is not near the other hotels. Macau is not much like Vegas except for the décor of the hotels. Whereas Vegas has people from all walks of life eating, drinking, partying, and gambling, the big hotels in Macau are patronized by wealthy Asians who want to spend their time and money purely on gambling.
I don’t know whether it was the abundance of well-dressed girls or the fact that on every escalator (and there are innumerable escalators) people would stand to the left and pass to the right, but Hong Kong is a wonderful city. The British influence is apparent everywhere: clean
and efficient subways, polite manners, sharp dress, excellent signage, and driving on the wrong side of the road. Also, English is widely understood, which is a nice bonus. All this helped to offset the tininess of our accommodations: a mere 130 sq ft hotel room for both Faizal and I (pictured).
I think my favorite thing about HK was how easy it is to get around the city. The subway (MTR) is amazingly extensive, clean, very fast and operates on a very frequent schedule. We waited in most cases about 30-60 seconds to catch a train. Even more amazing was the fact that there is enough space of the subway that you can actually occasionally find a seat.
It’s hard to explain exactly, but the main thing I learned from visiting Hong Kong is that Beijing is still very rough around the edges. In Hong Kong I got a taste of what Beijing has the potential to become (on a much larger scale), but probably never will. That’s not a bad thing at all; in fact, it makes for good adventure.
Macau is an interesting place historically, and if I had more time I would have liked to see more of the colonial history. But we only had a few hours to visit, which I spent watching Faizal bungee jump off of the Macau tower (the highest jump in the world) and roaming around the MGM and the Wynn. I wanted to see the Venetian, but I did zero research so I didn’t realize that it is not near the other hotels. Macau is not much like Vegas except for the décor of the hotels. Whereas Vegas has people from all walks of life eating, drinking, partying, and gambling, the big hotels in Macau are patronized by wealthy Asians who want to spend their time and money purely on gambling.
I don’t know whether it was the abundance of well-dressed girls or the fact that on every escalator (and there are innumerable escalators) people would stand to the left and pass to the right, but Hong Kong is a wonderful city. The British influence is apparent everywhere: clean
and efficient subways, polite manners, sharp dress, excellent signage, and driving on the wrong side of the road. Also, English is widely understood, which is a nice bonus. All this helped to offset the tininess of our accommodations: a mere 130 sq ft hotel room for both Faizal and I (pictured).I think my favorite thing about HK was how easy it is to get around the city. The subway (MTR) is amazingly extensive, clean, very fast and operates on a very frequent schedule. We waited in most cases about 30-60 seconds to catch a train. Even more amazing was the fact that there is enough space of the subway that you can actually occasionally find a seat.
It’s hard to explain exactly, but the main thing I learned from visiting Hong Kong is that Beijing is still very rough around the edges. In Hong Kong I got a taste of what Beijing has the potential to become (on a much larger scale), but probably never will. That’s not a bad thing at all; in fact, it makes for good adventure.
I believe I have collected sufficient data to declare with certainty that your line selection expertise is not luck. :) Also, it extends past customs lines to security lines and possibly all other lines (research in progress).
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