shanghai!
Category: china
macau: to make pleasure with gambo o no fun by no gambo – that’s the question
from hong kong i took a ferry to the world’s foremost gambling mecca, macau, for a day! macau was historically a portuguese colony and was recently returned to china. like hong kong, it is also a “special administrative region” with its own immigration policy, laws and currency. it is the world’s number one gambling city, with ten times more being spent there each day than in las vegas – most of the cash comes from mainland china. most of the older casinos are downtown, the most iconic of them being the grand lisboa, which is shaped like a sprouting flower. recently a huge area of land to the south of downtown has been reclaimed from the ocean, hugely increasing the jurisdiction’s small land area. this new space is being used to build the “cotai strip,” a modern gambling artery to rival or indeed eventually overshadow the las vegas strip. the casinos here are integrated resorts on a truly massive scale. integrated meaning that they are essentially cities in a building – you could live your life in one of these resorts and never get bored: hotels, gyms, restaurants, food courts, malls, wave pools, theme parks, cinemas, etc. the current largest, the galaxy, is the largest entertainment destination in the world, and awe-inspiringly houses the world’s largest chandelier in one of its lobbies. others include the venetian, which dwarfs the vegas venetian many times over.
the older area of macau has some interesting things to see as well. there is the façade of a church called st. paul’s. on it there are countless fascinating motifs and layers of meaning; for example a hard-to-find image of mary crushing a seven-headed chinese dragon under her foot. a nearby fort provides nice views over the city and has an interesting little museum highlighting the jurisdiction’s history. portuguese egg custard tarts prevent hypoglycemia, as do herb-flavored juice concoctions, the varieties of which are endless.
asia’s global city!
i was lucky to be able to arrange a five day stop in hong kong on the way from the philippines back to israel! it was superb. i hung out a few times during the week with my sister’s friend janae and a bunch of her friends, who were all very welcoming – thanks janae! on sunday we attended her church, which was so nice. there is much more religious freedom in hong kong than in mainland china, where attending a church of one’s own choosing is essentially not allowed. also went karaoking for janae’s birthday, and swing dancing, a sport in which janae is revered as a local celebrity! the food in hong kong was excellent, especially after exclusively rice and pork for two months in the philippines. i stayed in the cheapest option in the city, a tiny room (just about three square feet that wasn’t bed) in one of the two dozen or so hotels that exist in the bowels of a large apartment tenement in kowloon called “chungking mansions.” it is definitely hong kong’s gritty underbelly and the destination of choice for the procurement of illicit drugs and prostitutes, but i found the place actually rather endearing as it is profoundly multicultural (lots of south asians); indeed it has been described by people in the know as “the best example of globalization in asia.” good pakistani food for sure. assaults in the elevators have significantly decreased since they installed security cameras; you can watch the screens as you wait for 10 minutes with dozens of others for the single elevator that serves each “block” in the sprawling complex.
kowloon is a peninsula just north of hong kong island, the latter of which is the epicenter of hong kong. a pleasant old-school ferry boat ride or the subway connect the two. then there are the more expansive new territories further north, areas of which remain forested, and a smattering of outlying islands. hong kong used to be a british colony, and was ceded to china in 1997. it is now termed a “special administrative region” (s.a.r.) of china, retaining its own laws, immigration and customs policies, currency and democratic process under the so called “one country, two systems” policy. in recent months there were major ongoing demonstrations by university students, as the chinese government wanted to select the candidate options for elections. the protests have since been quelled.
one day i went out into hong kong’s new territories to visit the off-key “temple of 10 000 buddhas.” it is at the crest of a large hill, and despite the name, actually contains over 12 000 unique buddha statues. many of them flank the one kilometer path that ascends to the temple complex. as each are unique, naturally some of them have some very strange facial impressions and are doing some strange things – which is what makes it interesting! i also went to another elaborate taoist temple, wong tai sin.
one day i took the metro out to hong kong’s largest outer island called lantau and took a new cable car up a mountain. at the top was a giant buddha statue called ngong ping; which was beautifully cloaked in fog. the cable car ride was also quite impressive in itself as among other things it provided amazing views of aircraft movement action from high above hong kong international airport, which is on a reclaimed island.
mostly i just wandered around hong kong which was brilliant. there are countless amazing malls. in central hong kong there exists the longest series of escalators in the world, used by many thousands to commute to work each day. under one overpass, there is a spectacle where dozens of self-proclaimed sorceresses will beat a voodoo doll representing someone you hate for $5. they’ll provide the shoe, or they can use your stilettos if you prefer. i passed. there are entire streets devoted to selling fish in plastic bags and streets just selling pets, with cat-themed cafes. there are night markets in which to wander forever. best city ever!
also while in hong kong i pretended i was american hero edward snowden. i watched the excellent documentary “citizenfour” while there to discover that his first week in hong kong after leaving the united states and before being identified by the media was spent at the mira hotel, just blocks from where i was staying. then, i happened to take the same flight as snowden did to leave hong kong – aeroflot’s flight to moscow’s sheremetyevo airport! during my four hours at the airport in moscow i entered every airside restroom facility just so can now definitively say that i used a restroom that edward snowden used (he lived in the airside terminal for over a month). everyone watch citizenfour if you haven’t.
yeeeeee-how!
the next leg of the trip was a train through the gobi desert from ulaanbaatar to the chinese border. we prepped ourselves because we had heard horror stories about mongolian trains – people being robbed as they slept and how the sheets would reek of mutton. but it was quite nice – probably the nicest train ride all summer in fact! we arrived in the chinese border city of erlian and spent the day wandering the streets until late afternoon when the sleeper buses starting their trips to beijing. these chinese sleeper buses were one of a kind – i’d recommend trying one if you ever get the chance! very early the next morning we arrived in beijing!… at an unknown location. we allied ourselves with a group of austrian bros and sweatily set out down a dark beijing street. a number of hours later, we made it to our destination – tiananmen square! just in time for the morning flag raising! there were tens of thousands of people there at 6 am, and most of them wanted a picture with us, the pasty whites! i knew i was going to love china!
beijing is an amazing city! a few highlights:
-ate scorpions which were six inches long!
-bubble tea!
-great wall of china! (my sister got groped on the bus, had a very uncharacteristic yet retrospectively funny hypoglycemic breakdown because we didn’t get a chance to eat for 13 hours, and i had some very serious and very unfunny issues of my own that resulted from chugging three liters of water immediately before a long bus ride, but overall still a pretty good day!)
-some gritty punk rock live in some underground venue in some suburb that took me four hours to get to, but it was worth it!
-temple of heaven
-finally tracking down the elusive peking duck!
-oriental plaza shopping mall: kind of – i know i overuse this word especially regarding malls but its because i mean it – amazing!!!
-food, food, and food!
-hanging out with some of my sister’s friends who are in china to teach english – it was a lot of fun!
-forbidden city!
basically beijing was super enjoyable and compared to the locales we had spent the rest of the summer in, quite luxurious and very easy to get around! i mean, subway stops labeled in english? beijing 1, moscow 0! it was wonderful and 30 days would have been better than four, but life must go on!
