After a 3 hour coach journey we arrived in Hong Kong to be greeted by Hilary and her sister Jil. Straight away we were to get an hour long ferry ride (aptly named 'Turbojet') to Macau - the Las Vegas of Asia. We got picked up by Jil's boyfriend Sergio and his friends in their sports cars - as if it was a scene from The Fast and the Furious. We were escorted in their Japanese tech sports cars through the three Islands of Macao (Macau, Cotai and Taipa) where we looked in awe at the huge neon lights illuminating the giant casinos and surrounding streets. We went for a barbeque where once again we encountered a language barrier - Sergio could speak pretty good English but his friends, such as Wa Jai, couldn't really speak any. Nonetheless we had a good meal - then we checked into our hotel for the 2 nights. From then it was time to hit the casinos - we started at the Grand Lisboa casino before visiting Wynn, MGM Grand and L'Arc casino. Walmo, Felly and I all tried our hands at blackjack, with various different results - I was worst off by being down about 80pounds. At about 4am we decided to call it quits on our casino-crawl and went to bed.
About 12hours later we woke up and went go karting with our boy racer escorts. This was followed by a quick tour of the streets of Macau and a visit to their main historical site - the frame of a cathedral that burned down.. this was coupled with the fact that Hilary and myself might have lost my camera by leaving it on top of the car - fortunately it was left in the back seat of one of the cars. After a Portuguese style dinner we went for a round of bowling - with Mr. Fell coming out with the best score of the day. Afterwards we headed to the Grand Waldo casino followed by the gigantic Venetian casino - where I went on to practically win all the money back I lost the previous night. Once again we lost track of time after a busy day and went to bed again quite late.
The following day we got a ferry ride back to Hong Kong where we went to the police athletics championships to watch Hilary's mum, Sandra, in a cheerleading contest. After her team won the event with a beautiful rendition of Steps - 5, 6, 7, 8 she took us back to the Kowloon side of the river police headquarters where we were gifted with some great police 'stash' - including two polo tops and another t-shirt. With the knowledge we were going out that night with Hilary's friends, we insisted we were to be taken to a cheap place to buy some reasonably nice clothes (compared to the tracksuits/swimming shorts we've continuously been wearing prior to HK). We each bought jeans and a shirt in the market area of HK, called Mong Kok (meaning Crowded Corner), then finally reached Hilary's house outside of the city in a residential suburb called Sai Kung. We had a family meal and then proceeded to encounter 'Ladies night' in the area of Wan Chai. The next day was a bit of a write off, where we mainly watched films on Hilary's projecter screen, but in the evening we went to the Hong Kong yacht club for dinner courtesy of one of Hilary's friends and then it was time for Ladies' night in the area of Lan Kwai Fong! Again, the next day we literally lay about the house and did a little swimming in the pool. We went for a 3rd night out in a row but for the first time we actually had to pay for drinks rather than get the girls to give us their free ones as sadly there were no Ladies Nights going on in the city. After spending Wednesday, Thursday and Friday all witnessing the nightlife - Saturday was actually an open house at Hilary's, as her parents were having about 40guests over. It was really well done with a massive spread of food and drinks - however once again there was quite a language barrier with many of the guests, and moreover we couldn't join in their gambling games as we had absolutely no idea how to play (some sort of mixture of cards and dominoes it seemed). We ended up spending most of our time with some family friends who spoke English and Hilary had a couple of English friends over too.
Today was probably our most productive day since arriving on Wednesday. We went down to the Sai Kung marina for a dim sum breakfast. Then we travelled to a place known as 'Monkey Hill' which was exactly what the name suggests. We walked up a hill which had loads of monkeys around... however quite a few of the monkeys can get quite violent and protective of their territory/family... so when I tried to sneak up to a big monkey that was lying on a picnic table to get a great photo of a chilled out monkey - said monkey became distinctly less chilled, got up and ran at me and Hilary - we both ran off and it took Felly and Walmo a little longer to realise what was going on - and Walmo was hiding behind our newfound alpha male Felly who was waving a stick in the direction of the monkey who'd gone bananas (no pun intended?) whilst rapidly backing away. The monkey then stopped chasing us (perhaps because I decided to put my camera away) and as we all sighed in relief the monkey suddenly started doing some crazy war dance and then ran at us again. This time we decided not to hang around (it was arguably the biggest monkey we encountered) and walked down the mountain extra cautious of the cute monkeys who now menacingly lined the road. After this adrenaline fuelled experience we went to another part of Mong Kok to do visit the night market, then went to the harbour where there is a fantastic view of Hong Kong from across the river. We then walked down the Hong Kong walk of fame (where famous residents have their handprints in the ground) before retiring back to Hilary's - watched the epic Lord of the Rings 2 on the massive projecter screen then everyone went to bed and I wrote this.
It's now hit us how we're going to be back in England in 3 days! Do we really want to go back?
