Macau and Hong Kong

Macau and Hong Kong weren't really on my list of backpacking destinations, but as with most places I've been to, I figured why not?  My flight into Macau was delayed, so I didn't get there until the early evening.  Luckily I had my hotel name written in Chinese, otherwise it literally would have been impossible to take a cab there.  There's not a lot of English spoken in Macau outside of resorts an casinos.   There is even a ban on hostels/guesthouses/anything cheap, making Macau one of the most expensive places to visit in the world.   What was the cheapest place I could find on Agoda for a Friday night?  $141.  Holy bajesus.  Prices on weekends are double, but I really wanted to spend a night there so I just said screw it and treated it like a mini-vacation from my rough life of backpacking.

After dumping my bags, I tried to get directions to the main part of town with the casinos, but no one at my hotel spoke English.  However, the city isn't that big so I just wandered around for an hour and ended up finding it on my own.  Macau is basically the Asian version of Las Vegas, but it's way classier.  The streets of Macau are clean, there aren't homeless people everywhere, and there aren't dudes handing out prostitute cards every 50 meters.  It is a lot more expensive though, sometimes the cheapest tables in casinos were around $100 minimum bet. 

This is what $141 gets you in Macau on a Friday night....

Sometimes Asia doesn't feel like Asia

We'll walk around the city like we own the streets, we'll stay awake through summer like we own the heat.  We're singing everybody wake up, it's time to get down.

Just like Vegas, Macau is filled with casinos that have various light shows on the side of their building and fountain shows with colored lights outside them.  There was really only one thing I needed to see though; A craps table.  When a man comes to Macau, he comes here to gamble. Luckily I was able to find a table at MGM Grand that fit my budget: $5 minimum bets.  Things were looking grim, but I ended up having a hot roll and turned what would have been a $30 loss into a $35 gain!  That was enough cash to cover my boat to Hong Kong, so I quit while I was ahead.

Ordering food proved to be a challenge as menus aren't in dual languages, so unless you understand Chinese, it's just a guessing game.  I couldn't really afford restaurant food anyways, so I feasted on random buns from alleyway bakeries, 7/11 chinese food, and Circle K hot dogs.  I spent the entire next day exploring since it's cheap and easy to get around Macau.  The public bus lines are $.50 and all the major casinos have free shuttle buses running to and from the harbor, so you can pretty much go anywhere you want for free.  

Grand Lisboa was the original big casino in Macau

Spinning and spinning, do you believe in what you want?

I close my eyes and believe...

I had to go to the Venetian (the world's largest casino), which is on a separate island from Macau city, but accessible via shuttle bus.  $3 and a slot machine later, I can now claim I've gambled in the largest casino in the world!  After losing my money I explored the casinos on that island before making my way back to the hotel to grab my bags so I could catch the ferry to Hong Kong.  They ended up selling me the first class ticket, which was $40 instead of the cheap $20 economy seat, but I just figured whatever and took the fancy seat. After all, I was finally crossing a border check by sea, so I might as well do it in style!  I even got a free smoked salmon sandwich meal... Rich people like me have it good ;).

Overall I definitely recommend going to Macau.  It's a very safe city; I was walking around alone past midnight with my camera out and never once felt in danger.  It also has the energy vibe that Vegas has where you don't need to sleep and every moment is worth observing because something amazing could happen.  It may be a little expensive, but if you plan it right I think you could find a room during the week for $40-50, or even head there in the afternoon from Hong Kong, pull an all-nighter, and then head back the next morning.  

Inside the Venetian

It has an artificial river/sky and looks pretty identical to the version in Las Vegas

So what do you do for a living?  I play the harp...in a casino mall...while wearing an angel costume....Also, I might be locked in a cage

You best believe that papa's got a brand new bag...

If you ever go to Macau, you must try one of these, they are epic

Casino skyline...This picture is terribly slanted, I'm never going to be able to fund my travels as a photographer

Planning isn't really a strong suit of mine (which is ironic since I used to be in charge of strategic planning at my last job), so I didn't really know which port I would arrive to when I got into Hong Kong.  I arrived into the one on Hong Kong Island vs. the one on Kowloon island, so I had to figure out how to get to my hostel on Kowloon.  Luckily HK has the most amazing subway system I've ever seen and I was able to find the route to my hostel's nearest subway station with no issues.  The hostel was in a gigantic building complex that housed several other hostels and various stores and there were no signs indicating where it was, but with the help of some friendly locals I was able to find the hidden entrance.

After dropping my bags, I grabbed dinner with a girl in my room and then had an early night.  I spent day two exploring town.  I have a cousin that occasionally resides in Hong Kong, so he sent me a list of things to do and I ran with it.  I had no idea which subway stop or even which island most of the activities were on, so I just took the subway to central station and roamed around.  The city has an awesome set up for tourists, with information signs in English pointing the way to the main tourist destinations, so without any planning I was able to find six items on his list with no hassle.

The stairwell to my hostel

The view that stairwell led to...One night in Macau meant slumming it for 5 nights in HK

The skyscrapers are so massive they get lost in the fog

Hong Kong's metro, the MTR, is by far the most impressive public transport system I've ever seen.  The subway runs at a 99.99% on time ratio and operates at a huge profit level, whereas the majority of the world's public transport systems operate at a loss.  It's so profitable, it was transitioned from being government run, to being held by the private sector.  They also have an innovative payment system that runs off an "Octopus Card", which runs off touchless RFID technology.  Meaning you can scan into any subway without removing the card from your purse/wallet and then scan out from the subsequent stop.  The card will automatically deduct the balance of the trip from your card.

You can add money to your card, so it just works like a declining debit card that you can recharge whenever it runs out of money.  They can also be used for the other public transport systems, such as ferries or buses, and can even be used in 7/11s and McDonald's among other places.  There's also no eating or drinking in any public transport vehicle or transportation area, so everything is super clean.  It blows every other public transport system I've been on out of the water... In case you couldn't tell from my two paragraph rant of adoration, I was a huge fan of it :).

Macau broke the bank, so I was happy to find some cheap tourist activities to do.  For less than a dollar you can take a round trip ferry between Hong Kong island and Kowloon. For about thirty cents you can ride a tram across town.  On the MTR you can get to most places for a dollar or two.  In other words, sightseeing is cheap and getting between sights is a breeze.  There are also subway stops every kilometer or two, so you never have to worry about getting lost, you can just wander in whichever direction feels right.

View from the Star Ferry

Hong Kong has an amazing system of escalators, underground tunnels, and elevated walking paths to bypass crossing traffic

The Tram - $0.25 to go across town

The Central Mid Levels escalators - the largest such system in the world.  Transports the working sector from downtown to their homes up the hill

Real mannequins don't wear pants

Temples are a huge part of Asian culture, so I headed to one of the most popular, Wong Tai Sin.  It's such a bizarre spectacle, as it's in the middle of the city and surrounded by skyscrapers;  A strange homage to ancient life in the midst of the most futuristic city I've ever seen.  The temple is also a little different than most, as it serves three separate religions in union; Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.  I have to say the Chinese temples are pretty bad ass, they're built as giant complexes with different buildings for prayers, meetings, meditation, etc.  They have a totally different vibe than the temples of Southeast Asia.  The amount of tourists in HK is definitely on a different level though, you're constantly wading through a flood of pedestrians.

One of the friends I met in Laos, Andreas, had actually spent half a year in Hong Kong, so he was also able to provide me with some advice on what to check out as well.  Since I have a deep love of all things food related, I took his advice on the best dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong and headed to One Dim Sum.  Most people seemed to order two or three items each, but I went with four!  Not only was that place delicious, but it was incredibly cheap, each dish was around $2, so I feasted like a king for $8.  Steamed shrimp dumplings, barbecue pork and egg custard buns, rice noodle rolls, eff that was some tasty grub.  It was so good, I went back a second time!

Wong Tai Sin Temple...I like my pictures like I like my t-shirts, with a deep V

Asian tourists are the worst tourists.  They budge, shove, and have an average walking speed of three inches per hour.

It says Litter, Cum, Recyclables.  So naturally I made an appropriate deposit of each kind.  Apparently they allow naked mannequins but a man masturbating in public is a criminal offence.  Dear Hong Kong, I'll see you again when my 15 year ban expires

Dim Sum is not a particular dish, it just means "touch the heart".  You order the mini-portions and enjoy them with hot tea

As with most places in Asia there are also a lot of random street markets, but Hong Kong has crazy amounts of them.  They have fish markets, which can range from goldfish in plastic bags to massive buckets of freshly caught fish/squid/eel, bird markets, flower markets, electronic markets, and of course night markets.  I didn't find the markets to be too substantially different from any I'd already seen, but no backpacker trip is complete without scoping them.  I tried to do some fancier activities as well to gain some class, learn a little more about the culture, and become a respectable human being.  Thus I went to a famous old hotel, The Imperial, to get a cup of tea, but the line was insanely long and the place was clearly too fancy (expensive) for someone of my (economic) stature to endure, so I crossed the road and went to the $1 museums instead.

When you see something called, "Space Museum", how can you resist?  But here's the deal, if you're called space museum, I'm not really interested in space.  I'm expecting to see a dead alien, some UFO propaganda, and a movie on how the aliens built the pyramids, I don't want to be educated about space.    Since I was near the art museum, I checked that out as well, but I'm not really into art, so it wasn't too terribly interesting to me.  However, directly behind the museum was Hong Kong's version of Hollywood road, The Avenue of Stars.  So I got to walk around and check out all the hand prints from famous Chinese celebrities, of which I knew 4.  Thus in my quest to gain class, I deserted the fancy tea time, ditched the museums, and then gawked at celebrity hand prints and statues... Sophistication at it's finest.

The bird market, it's cool to see all the colorful birds, but it feels very wrong.  The birds are all in tiny cages and are restless in trying to crawl out.

The underground entrance to the Hong Kong Museum of Art

The past is told by those who win.  My darling, believe your voice can mean something

If me an Lee and KG could be free, flying free tenaciously. Skinny dipping in a sea of Lee, I propose on bended knee. Cha-Lee-Lee-Lee-La-Lee-Lee (Tenacious D reference, drink!!!!)

I still had a few more days before my flight to South Korea, so I visited a giant Buddha, trekked to Hong Kong's highest accessible peak, saw the only pandas outside of mainland China, and grabbed drinks at the world's highest bar, but those are stories for another blog...

Random GoPros

I'm on my feet, I'm on the floor, I'm good to go.  All I need is just to hear a song I know.  I wanna always feel like part of this was mine, I wanna fall in love tonight

While the city sleeps, we rule the streets

I tried to mount this noble steed, but the guard spotted me and slyly said, "Hey, no horseplay!"

I'm the real Subway SensaSean

Pretty cool, a gigantic temple in the middle of the city

Lead on to save me or lead us somewhere. Find me some answers, one nation beware.  Can't tell the difference between myth and man, or what's necessary, or where I should stand...

I feel like this is the quintessential photo showing I'm not the kid from the start of this trip; That life is long gone, I'm someone else now

Hong Kong is peppered with "vertical towns" where there are 20ish of the exact same residential skyscraper forming a little village.

My main man, Jackie Chan!!!

Enter the Dragon

Patience, My Young Palawan

My delay in Iloilo meant I didn't have time to get my Open Water diving certification in Palawan, but I keep thinking there's a reason I always get delayed on diving, like the Universe has something important planned for me when the time finally comes.  I left my hostel at 6 AM to catch the boat, which was definitely the worst one I've been on, but it's views were by far the best.  There was a group of birds fishing right off the boat; It was incredible watching them casually fly around and then chaotically dart towards the water and snatch up a fish.  Absolutely amazing.  I also got to see pods of the fish that can fly when they jump out of the water.  It was so cool to watch them zigzag over the waves and flutter their wings.  I felt like I was living in an episode of Planet Earth.  

I was also so happy it was the last time I have to board a gigantic liner anytime soon.  I'm 5'10 and a quarter, which basically rounds to 5'10 and a half, which basically rounds to 6 feet.  So not only am I unnaturally tall, but I'm not exactly skinny either.  I mean, I'm basically built like a tornado.  Cramming myself and two bags onto the tiny beds of these boats is torturous.  I have to line my big bag up at the foot of the bed and raise my feet over it, except my feet extend past where my bed ends and the next person's starts, so I can't lay flat. Plus I have to curl my torso around my computer/camera bag, so I basically end up in this awkward fetal position with my legs elevated over my big bag.  Let's just say I get excited when I get to leave the boat!!!  

The best sunset I've seen since Indonesia

People thought I was crazy for leaving my old life behind... I think they're crazy for not joining me!

I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word.  Now in the morning I sweep alone, sweep the streets I used to own....

At 7 PM, the boat stopped and we had a three hour layover on an island called Cuyo before hopping back on the boat so we could sail through the night.  When I awoke for the sunrise, it was so amazing that I didn't even grab my camera.  I just wanted to enjoy the moment.  Later that morning I watched a pod of dolphins jumping out of the water and another cruising underwater at unreal speeds.  I got crazy lucky on the scenery.  We finally arrived in Puerto Princesa at 1:30 in the afternoon and I grabbed a Jeepney to the bus station, because it was 50 cents compared to a 3.50 tricycle ride.  I ended up getting there in time to catch the 2:30 bus to the northernmost city in Palawan, El Nido.  That bus took nearly 8 hours, so I didn't get there until 10 o'clock at night.  All in all my journey from Iloilo to El Nido was 40 hours.

If I had a do over I would take a flight from Cebu to Puerto Princesa vs. doing all the boats.  The boats are an adventure and save you money since they cover overnight lodging, but I lost 2 days waiting on a boat from Cebu to Iloilo, another 3 days in Iloilo, and then the 2 day boat to Puerto.  So in hindsight, I basically wasted 7 days in order to save $80.  Yup, I'm an idiot.  I only had 5 days to spend on Palawan before I had to fly out, so I had to skip the town of Sabang, which houses the world's longest underground river. But I wasn't too upset, that's more of something to say you've done vs. something that's actually awesome.

Bah, still terrible at photographing stars, too blurry.  But here's a shot of the night sky from Cuyo.  The three dots clumped together are Orion's Belt and you can make out rest of the Orion constellation

There were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven...

If I had one super power, it would totally be to fly....Well that and to be able to steal everyone else's super powers.  THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!

Since I got into El Nido so late, I figured I would just go with a Lonely Planet suggestion for accommodation since I didn't have time to walk around and find something.  The place was called Alternative Cafe and was supposed to be 250 pisos for a dorm....They didn't even have dorms and rooms were 600.  I walked around but everything close by was the same price or more, so I had to suck it up.  My only guess is that there's two places with the same name and my tricycle person took me to the expensive one.  After I went to bed that night, I started to hear something crinkling, but I deduced the fan must have been blowing on a plastic sack I left on the table.  Thinking nothing more, I went to sleep.

As soon as I stepped outside the next morning I realized that El Nido was a paradise.  The view of the beach, surrounded by limestone cliffs and an ocean full of boats was exactly what I needed after my long journey.  The tours in El Nido have standardized prices and itineraries regardless of vendor, so you simply choose Tour A, B, C, or D.  I went with Tour A, since Max had told me it was awesome when I met him in Manila.  

Fun Fact #1: Part of The Bourne Legacy was filmed in El Nido!

Fun Fact #2: When I was eleven, a unicorn farted in my eye.  I've been Asian ever since.

Palawan was easily my favorite place in the Philippines

In addition to myself, the group contained seven women from Manila, a Filipino guy that currently lives in Florida, and a Swiss couple.  We started off the morning by snorkeling in two different areas and sailing through a place called Big Lagoon, which is where the ending of The Bourne Legacy was filmed.  The water wasn't the clearest and there wasn't a ton of diversity or fish I haven't seen before, but I still loved it.  It'd been too long since I last snorkeled.

Our lunch was the best day trip meal I've ever had.  We had tons of fresh fruit, including yellow watermelon.  I was a little leery about grabbing a piece because it was covered by bees, but I had to try it!  Turns out it tastes exactly like a red watermelon.  In addition there were bananas, mangoes, and pineapples.  For the main courses we had rice, steak, squid, and a couple of gigantic fish.  The Filipino ladies were so nice, making sure we all had plenty to eat and were enjoying everything.  They even gave me cookies!

After lunch we went to a secret cove that you could only access by crawling through a tiny hole in the rock wall, but once you got to the other side you were in the middle of a knee deep pool of water surrounded by cliffs on all sides.  It was unbelievable.  After departing from there we ended up snorkeling into a secret lagoon type place, where you swam through some rocks and ended up in an even bigger lagoon that some people were kayaking through.  Such an amazing tour, if I had the time and money I would have done all 4 tours.

I was really hoping to see some a bird called a Swiftlet while we were boating around, because they make their nests entirely out of their own spit.  The nests are then harvested and turned into birds nest soup, which is a huge delicacy in China.  A bowl of the soup can cost over $100 and a kilo (2.2 pounds) of nests can cost up to $10,000.  However, I wasn't able to come accross any and my dream of harvesting the nests and making a fortune were crushed.  

Big Lagoon

A) This is the worst group photo ever, one dude is completely off to the side. B) I totally pass as full Asian with the black hair 

How you doin?  ;)

After I got back from Tour A, I sat down on my bed so I could upload the photos from my GoPro and check out what footage I got.  After a few minutes I looked over at my bag and I saw a tail move.  My eyes rolled up the tail and I was expecting the torso to be a gecko, but nope...There was a mouse on my bag!  When it saw me looking at it, it freaked out and jumped towards me, but luckily it was just jumping under the bed.  I then realized the crinkling sound from the night before was the mouse going through the plastic bag in hopes it would contain food.  I will admit he was a cute little bastard, but not exactly the roommate I was looking for.

I didn't take out money before going to El Nido and there are no ATMs there, so I needed to exchange money.  Exchange people never take your money if there is even a millimeter sized tear, so I had a 50 and a 20 that were no good and one of my remaining 20s got turned down for looking old (Seriously, what does that even mean? It was the same 2004 series as the one she accepted), so I could only exchange enough cash to stay one additional night than I originally planned.

Since I couldn't afford another tour, I decided to spend the next day getting back into shape since I hadn't worked out properly in a few weeks.  150 push ups, 150 sit ups, some bag curls, and a grueling ten minutes of cardio.  After my workout, I just swam in the ocean in lieu of taking a shower... That's become pretty normal for me now, take advantage of what nature gives you.  I spent the rest of the afternoon taking photos and strolling the beach.  In the meantime, a sticky pad  was placed in my room to catch the mouse, but when I got back to my room I noticed it caught a small mouse I hadn't seen before.  While that mouse was trapped I also saw a new mouse that was bright brown.  I felt like I was in the scene at the end of Ratatouille where he walks into the kitchen and there's a million rats.  All in all I saw at least three different mice in my room and a rat the size of a rhinoceros running through the restaurant area.  

Until we meet again El Nido

That night I met a pair of girls, Mirjam and Sasha, while I was eating dinner and ended up meeting with Mirjam for drinks.  We ended up hanging out until the bar closed and when we went to grab our flip flops, we noticed they were missing.  Thus for the second time on this trip, my footwear had been stolen!  We told the guy working there it seemed a little strange that both our flip flops were missing and he said maybe drunk people accidentally took them instead of their own.  But if that was the case, their shoes should still have been there.  Plus what are the chances two people walked by that had my size shoe and Mirjam's size shoe.  But it happens out here, so you just have to roll with it.  I am a little worried about my shoe karma though, I'm on my fifth pair of shoes and fourth pair of flip flops now!  Don't even get me started on my headphone karma, I think I'm on pair fifteen.  

The next morning I had to take a bus back to Puerto since I was flying out of there.  I'm pretty sure the lady next to me on the bus was a crackhead as she was unnaturally skinny and had pockmarks all over her arm that were pure white in comparison to her extremely dark skin.  She had a giant patch of white on her elbow and it touched me a few times.  I'm not gonna lie I was having a little bit of an inward anxiety attack, thinking about whether or not it was leprosy or something. But there was a little kid sitting on her lap, so I figured he would have marks all over if it was contagious, thus I quelled my fears.   I thought maybe I could turn the bad situation of sitting next to a druggie into a positive thing, but she didn't have any hard drugs on her for purchase.  Lord knows I would have loved me some crack!!!!

I went with another Lonely Planet recommendation when I arrived in Puerto, Banwa Art House.  The place was incredible in comparison to what I was coming from. It was extremely clean, there was even hand soap dispensers in the bathrooms, the food was stellar, best Chicken Adobo ever, and the staff was crazy nice.   It was almost half the price of where I stayed in El Nido and it was at least 10 times nicer, funny how it works out like that sometimes.  Definitely stay there if you're passing through!

Puerto Princesa is a pretty interesting town.  The streets are lined with all these overstocked clothing shops that sell shirts, shorts, hats, flip flops, etc. for prices between 50 cents and 3 dollars.  The only bad thing is all the men's clothing were gigantic, so you either have to love baggy clothes or have a little extra weight around the waist, but considering I have the waist line of Jack Skellington, there weren't any bargains to be had for me.  I also had a zombie girl come at me with her hands out just moaning and latching on to me while I was buying headphone set #15.  I mean, use your words, the whole zombie thing just freaks me out.  I'm not going to give money to someone that just moans, so ask me for water or a pop tart or something.  

Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.  Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see. I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy, because I'm easy come, easy go; little high, little low. Anyway the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me...

She's a killer queen.  Gunpowder, gelatine.  Dynamite with a laser beam.  Guaranteed to blow your mind.

Macau was my next stop, but I had to take two flights to get there.  My first flight from Puerto Princesa to Manila was at 6 in the morning, so I was planning to sleep at the airport to save a night's accommodation, although I wasn't sure it would be open 24/7 since it's a small airport.  The most likely scenario was that I would be sleeping on a bench outside the airport, hoping to not get mugged and or raped.  However, the lady at the hostel told me the airport would be closed, but I could just crash on a bed downstairs for free.  People are so nice in the Philippines! After I got to Manila, I transferred terminals, endured the worst airport setup ever and a three hour delay before boarding my flight to Macau.

The Philippines were the hardest country I've traveled by far, as there's no set route for backpackers.  If you don't book your flights in advance, you will struggle to find them cheaply and will likely end up boating.  I reckon I lost 1/3 of my time in the Philippines to traveling. To anyone visiting, I recommend picking two or three islands and getting flights between them in advance so you have more time to sight see.  Definitely an amazing place, with some of the nicest people you will ever meet.  I finally made it to Macau, but that's a story for another blog...

Random GoPros

You don't get sheets with the beds.  Before I started this journey, I probably would have considered that to be too sketchy and placed a tshirt down as a pillow cover...Now I just sleep on it, no worries.

In case you were wondering what it's like to watch it rain while in the ocean.  Also, about 2/3 down in the center, where there's the patch of blue, totally looks like a weird blue mask with a pair of blue lips...

Snorkel Selfie

Giant school of fish!

Camouflaged fish...can you spot it?

Since the moment I spotted you, like walking round with little wings on my shoes.  My stomachs filled with the butterflies, ooohhh and it's alright

Secret Cove

Just a pic to show you how massive the limestone cliffs are in The Secret Cove

The dim lit peacocks in the trees, they're hiding their eyes and their beauty, like me.

I miss this place already...