Hong Kong and Macau

I've finally managed to upload some photos!  I had to individually resize all of them so that they would upload. Not sure what's happening, but I hope it fixes itself soon!

Anyway, Matt's parents arrived a week ago on Sunday and we had a wonderful week in Hong Kong since then.  We arrived on the Monday, and did a bit of wandering around, and went out for dinner to a thai place.

On Tuesday, we went to see the biggest seated buddha in the world.  It was a 40 minute cable car ride to get there, and Matt and I went in a glass bottomed cable car, which was a bit strange!

The below photo is of us next to the year of the dragon statue - note the dragon on his head!

We paid a bit extra to go inside the buddha, where there were some paintings, some of which were done in blood!  Our ticket also got us a snack each, which turned out to be a huge plate of noodles!

That evening we went to eyebar, which is up one of the towers, with a great view over the city. Hong Kong is a great city, and a real mix of Asia and England - roundabouts, double decker busses, M&S (!!! we were so excited about that one), all of the signs in English and Cantonese, and a general politeness that is seriously lacking in Shanghai and other parts of China.  Hong Kong has such a good vibe to it, and we really enjoyed our trip.

Another day, another cable car... this one at Ocean Park, Hong Kong's answer to Seaworld.  It's great there, so much fun. A real mix of roller coasters (including one where you wear a virtual reality headset on a real roller coaster, and you feel like your climbing through the rain forest and jumping off cliffs - very cool), and animals, including some lovely Giant Pandas and red pandas.  There were also penguins, and a huge aquarium. We went on the log flume and a big rubber ring wet ride, where Margaret got soaked, we even got her on a small roller coaster! We saw the dolphin show, and went up to the top of the observatory.  Of course, the first thing that happened, as soon as I sat down on the first ride, was to rip a gigantic hole in my trousers, so spent the rest of the day in luminous yellow mini shorts! How embarrassing!

This is a photo of how thick the glass is on the giant aquarium. I thought it would rally magnify the fish, but it didn't at all! Amazing!

On our 4 year anniversary we went to Macau for the day.  The boat takes an hour and you have to go through passport control and security, just like at the airport.  We hired a driver to take us to all of the local sightseeing places and it was really good fun.  It was so hot, that having the driver meant that we saw a lot more than we would have otherwise.  Macau used to be a Portugese colony and it's very obvious in the architecture and street signs.

The below photos are from Macau tower, where we stood on the glass floor and watched several people bungee jump from the top!

We visited a temple with these giant incense sticks and huge incense coils...

We went to the Grand Lisboa hotel and Casino for a look. In the lobby they had carvings into ancient mammoth tusks!

We went to a Portugese square (above) and the ruins of St Pauls church (below).

And also to the lighthouse...

Matt and I were staying over and so Tony and Margaret went back to Hong Kong, while Matt told me that we were staying at a small hotel on the casino strip.  Turns out, he had booked us into the Venetian, which I had been going on about seeing for ages.  It was a fabulous hotel!  They even gave us an anniversary cake!

We went to a curry dinner, and did a bit of gambling in the casino, and generally had a great time. We also enjoyed the pool and played some mini golf.

We got back to Hong Kong in the afternoon on Friday and spent a lazy afternoon around the roof top pool. The hotel gave us some champagne for our anniversary too!

Friday evening, we were booked onto a boat ride around the harbor for the light show, which involved lots of buildings on the strip and is co-ordinated to music which you can hear on a radio station.  It was very cool!

All in all, I really enjoyed Hong Kong, but was glad to return home to our lovely kitty cats, who missed us terribly!