Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Apr 15 - May 04
- 13 hours ago
- 10 min read
Hong Kong Sevens Rugby Tournament!!!
One Guy - Two Rugby Sevens - Two sights we can't unsee
Check out the costumes and turn up the sound!
This video is long but give it 20 seconds and look in the front row...the world it is a-changin!!!
M+ - The Excellent Hong Kong Museum of Modern Art
Macau
Taiwan (The home of Din Tai Fung and Xiao Long Bao!!!)
Not enough time in any of these places!!
This big world keeps getting smaller and smaller…or maybe it’s this small world is getting bigger and bigger???
After two magnificent months in Vietnam we hopped over to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan for a much too-short three weeks. I could easily have stayed in Hong Kong a few weeks longer but wife would have had to go back to work to afford that city! I’m unemployable now, so any new funding is on her.
One of the places I've been really looking forward to is Hong Kong. I've been oddly fascinated with it since I was a kid because of the old 100 year lease that the British took on it with China. It is a true representation of West meets East...a world class city and now one of my favorites. The financial capital of Asia, it ranks alongside New York and London and I'd wager it will be the top in the next 50 years or so. I’m noticing this more and more across great cities and countries, and it especially comes to light here, but great cities spend the money on great infrastructure. Because of that, it's an easy city to manage and get around in. It's definitely not cheap, but with fantastic transit systems (bus, train and ferry) and infrastructure, it's a great place to spend a few days...or a lot of days if you have the cash.
Our first night there we got on a Victoria Harbour sightseeing boat. From our base in Kowloon (across the bay from HK island) we toured both sides of the waterfront and got treated to a fantastic light show once dark set in. Many of the skyscrapers lining either side of the bay are fitted with laser lights and compete to show who has the most brilliant displays. It's a beautiful sight from the water and especially so if you luck into the drone light show that floats in the middle of the bay. One of the videos gives a quick view of the drones - thousands of synchronized little lights flying in precise formations and making cool 10 story dragons and ladies hovering in the air. Those nightime pics are some of my favorites from the entire trip, so far.
Travel bonus, for the second time in recent months, we checked into our hotel and noticed a bunch of large people with costumes and funny accents - that can mean only a few things, with the top being there's a rugby tournament in town! We lucked into one of the most famous tourneys in the world, The HK Sevens. Which is also why our room rates were so expensive, we realized! After seeing the Dubai Sevens in November we weren't going to pass up this opportunity, especially since BOTH the U.S. women's and men's teams were competing.
What an amazing event and what a cool group of people to party with! Sevens means they play on a regular sized pitch with only seven players per team (about half a team), for seven minute halves. Since they're so spread out, the play is really quick and there can be some dramatic action. We were only able to make it to Day 1 on Friday, so the early crowds were a little sparse but started filling up as the day progressed. The South stands are a famous party zone with people in crazy costumes and large alcohol budgets. There was a group of women clad in pink boxing outfits with big pink gloves. Some Scots in Hairy Coo shirts and kilts. A group in serapes and sombreros. At one point the big screen focused in on a guy with a stack of empty beer cups that must have been 12 feet tall and people two rows behind him were lining up to add more to it. If you turn up the sound on one of the videos below you can even get a great rendition of Sweet Caroline - funny how some things are popular everywhere! Another funny thing, we saw this same US supporter at both tournaments (we even put his pic in the Dubai post last year), but this time, thankfully, he WAS NOT wearing the tight red and blue pleather Daisy Dukes with fishnet stockings! Ragged and torn Daisy Dukes this time...
The US Women are beasts and look to be a force in the near future. They won both of their games on Friday and did quite well on the weekend. The US men, unfortunately, didn't fare so well...but it looks like they are gaining ground on other nations. We cheered loudly, nevertheless, and made a lot of new friends!
The world is changing quickly and one of the more incredible things we saw was ROBOT CHEERLEADERS at the rugby tournament. The cheerleading video is long but the entire front row of cheerleaders is all robots - amazing!
HK is not cheap. And when you throw in a couple of days in Macau it gets even less cheap. Since there is a free visa entrance to Macau, we decided to head over and took the hour bus ride over and the ferry ride back a few days later. I decided it’s not a good thing to gamble when I can’t read the instructions on the table or the slot machines. Even the Blackjack tables, where I know how to count to 21, are confusing as there is a line of people standing behind the seated players placing side bets on the seated players hands. I know that sounded confusing and it was even more so watching it in person. Picture yourself, minding your own business in a seat playing Blackjack. Now picture five to ten little Chinese aunties standing behind you, reaching over your shoulder and plunking down chips on your hand, both on the actual hand and on sidebets that you get two matching cards or if your 1st two cards total under or over 13. Hell, I get nervous trying to count to 21 without another person eyeing me but when someone has $50 riding on my ability to count correctly I flip out and my counting dysfunction magnifies. And then I go broke. So, I just watched. And it was pandemonium. And a pandemonium that I couldn't comprehend because I understood not a damn word of the shrill voices at that table. I just pictured some little 5'0" tall Chinese auntie yelling in Cantonese "No, you dumb honky, YOU DON'T HIT ON 19!!!" and I walked away. Ended up losing $40 on the Buddha slots (seriously, there is a fat Buddha slot machine) but I think I might have won at least a couple of spins even though I couldn't tell if two dragons beat two Buddha's or if three Buddha's might have won me enlightenment.
Macau was an interesting place - colonized by the Portuguese and the influence was still everywhere - street signs were in Chinese and Portuguese, Portuguese restaurants everywhere, Portuguese architecture including marble mosaic streets everywhere. But it's also a lot like Vegas, on steroids. Apparently it does almost 10X the revenue that Vegas does, so there were glitzy sparkly casinos all over the place. It was an easy city to see everything in a day or two and then get back to HK to explore some more.
So back to HK. If you really want to know how great it is, it boasts five or so bars in the Top 100 in the World list. It had the Number 1 Bar in the World for a couple of years, Bar Leone, but I personally don't feel it was worthy of that top spot. It was wonderful and the food was amazing, but in terms of who makes a best and or craziest craft cocktails, my vote would go elsewhere. Was it worth the three hour wait to get in? In retrospect, no, but at least there were quite a few other amazing bars in the near vicinity to help pass the time! Was it a waste of time? Definitely not. But if I had to wait in the street that whole time for a $20 drink I'd expect something with smoke and flames that made me want three more. As it turned out, I was one and done on the drink but really wanted four more of the amazing little $20 sandwiches they brought us.
A few of the surprising sides of HK that I didn't expect are the natural beauty of the area and the cleanliness and orderly nature of the city. After the craziness of the past few months, seeing cars actually stop for red lights and pedestrians and motorcycles not running rampant on the streets and the sidewalks was pretty shocking. I noticed that the ONLY people jaywalking were the foreigners - the locals all waited patiently and orderly for the walk sign to change. The island of HK is also much larger than I thought, with the other side full of beautiful beaches, hiking trails and expensive communities that were originally populated with western expats. Hong Kong city is pretty crowded, with nonstop high rise financial institutions morphing into high rise apartment complexes that go on forever, but once you get out of the city it changes into wilderness pretty soon. It's made even more interesting in that everything is so hilly, so walking a few blocks can torture your calves. Buildings might enter on the ground floor on one side but the steep hills they are built into might mean that the fourth floor is actually ground level on the other side. And high above the financial district sits a beautiful and modern overlook that you need to take a funicular to reach. Some of the shots looking down on a clear day were breathtaking.
I mentioned the infrastructure earlier...but one of the other things that truly great cities do is spend on the arts. And do it with a vision. HK has one of the best modern museum complexes we've been to, including the excellent M+ Museum. I didn't expect to like it so much, as I'm not crazy about modern art, but there were some wonderful exhibits. They still had the necessary "I am expressing the neverending vastness of my soul with this white painting on a white canvas on a white wall" stuff that every modern museum is required to have but much of the other stuff was fun to see. Check out the pics for some of our favorites.
From HK we went to Taiwan for a week, landing in Taipei. Taipei was a bit grittier than Hong Kong but had the same level of cleanliness and order going on, if not a bit more order. Still no jaywalkers - I'm not positive but I think they actually gave out tickets to jaywalkers so it was discouraged. Taipei also had one of those travel restaurants that you remember for years to come. We hadn't heard about Din Tai Fung before but if you are in California or NYC, you really need to try and go to one. The wait was bonkers - sometimes over three hours, but it was so worth it we went back again. I would have gone again if we weren't so guilt stricken about giving other restaurants a fair shot. They are known, among other things, for a dish called Xiao Long Bao, or Soup Dumplings. I'm getting stomach pangs writing this, dammit, but these are dumplings that, when steamed, develop a pocket of juice inside so when you pop the dumpling into your mouth you get all the things at once...dumpling, pork, soup and fire if you add in the hot sauce. Normally I'm somewhat chivalrous with wife when we are eating and offer her the last bite of something...but not here. It's every chopstick for themselves here! Wife found a story on the restaurant chain on Facebook after we left Taiwan that was really interesting - if you get a chance check it out. They are actually among the highest grossing restaurants per location, in the world, apparently.
One day we hopped on the train and just took it to the end of the line, basically the north coast. It's easy to get around and the coastal towns were picturesque and completely developed. As we walked along this one beautiful coastal town I strolled jealously past a group of kids in wetsuits, all gearing up for a dive. The water was blue and clear and didn't look too cold and I could almost taste the rubber from the regulator...but they didn't have porters and had to carry their heavy tanks over some rocks, so I wasn't too too jealous!
One of best stops on the train line used to be a mining town that was becoming abandoned, so town leaders decided to market it as the Cat Village, due to all of the friendly feral cats adopted by the city. Rumor was that as people were leaving the city they left their cats, so eventually there were more cats than people, which made a marketing campaign. The tiny little town was cute as hell, with cats lounging about everywhere...on train ticket counters, on ice cream carts, next to the butcher. All had tags and were more completely cared for - sort of a little cat heaven.
One of the other things I've noticed is the Asian love of the claw machines. There are shops all over the place that are solely populated by those old (now new) claw machines, where you drop in a coin and try to steer the claw to pick up a toy and drop it into the chute. In every Asian country we've been in there are shops that have wall-to-wall claw game machines. But the really interesting thing is that they aren't just for stuffed animals and toys, anymore. Now, it seems they add in everything from household items like toilet paper to diapers, Doritos and pillows to even the local Drano equivalents. I saw whole families playing side-by-side machines for a variety of items and filling up shopping baskets. I wanted to play, but I REALLY don't need anything else to add to my luggage. Unless they had a Wine Claw game, that is...
Like HK, Taipei has an excellent infrastructure with easy travel around the island. As I wrote this we were on an HSR (high speed train) from Taipei to Tainan. Even with 7 stops it only takes 2 hours to get 200 miles to the south of the island. The infrastructure and technology here is fantastic. Anyway, the more distance we cover the more we find that there are wonderful places out there!!!
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