Day 22 - Friggin' Patacas (Macau)

Day 22 - Friggin’ Patacas!

This day deserves its own entire entry because of how epically terrible it was. The title really sums up a lot of rage toward Day 22. The beginning, which was technically still in Hong Kong, went perfectly smoothly. We bought our Turbojet ferry tickets and had to wait a couple hours, which was an inconvenience, but not really that bad. We found a Pacific Coffee Company and chilled. I continued my personal cheesecake crawl. It was only okay once again.

The ferry itself was similar to a plane-though the seats were considerably more roomy. Our next task as always was to find a hostel or cheap hotel in Macau. We’d researched the night before for a handful of options, and so we took a taxi to an area away from the casinos (in fact, crossing the water onto a different island of Macau), hoping we could spend some time near the beaches. We also found that we could pay for virtually anything in either MOP or HKD. Convenient, but silly. We found our first hostel easily, but we were told we needed a membership card which of course you can’t buy in Macau, but in China or Hong Kong. He said he hoped to see us again soon. Um, sure dude, when we magically whisk back to HK and get this magical card. So no. We took a bus this time back to the casino-area since the taxi cost over 100MOP. Also, don’t ask me what the O in MOP means. We never figured it out.

We tried the recommended hostel, Augusters, finally found it after a few turnarounds, (it was said to be near the Grand Lisboa) and they were full. Well, okay, let’s go to the others that Lonely Planet has listed. Both of those, also full. Also two we randomly tried on the Street of Happiness. That’s 6 now, and I was getting very testy because my shoulders have had enough torture done upon them from this trip, and we were probably pushing a couple hours now searching for somewhere to stay. Our last attempt in the area was Central Hotel, a huge towering inn. Surely... but no, nothing.

We finally tried Josh’s suggestion of the Best Western he spotted (it had outdated Christmas decorations on it) and they were also not available. The guy there even told us “Macau is full.” How in the world is an entire city FULL? We decided to try our usual Plan B of wifi at McDonalds we spotted a few blocks back. They didn’t have any, but we were so hungry and uncertain where we would eat that night and had our very late dinner there anyway. By the time we left the McDonalds, it was 10pm. We were in agreement that we should just say “eff Macau, it’s Zhuhai time(and thus back to mainland China) now.” So we found the bus to bring us to the Border Central (something something Cerco in Portuguese. We were also fed up with Portuguese by then too and wanted our Chinglish back) but we accidentally took it the wrong way, and we were on the bus for far longer than we meant. The driver made angry gestures at us to get off, but we just stayed on and rode it around to the stop we actually needed. We’d also paid over the amount needed for the bus, which we’d started being forced to do because we were running out of both HKD and patacas (Macau currency shorthand).

Getting back into China proper wasn’t bad- just lines and realizing that yes, we are really going back to China now. Macau and especially Hong Kong are NOT China. They’re really their own mini-countries, since you have to go through immigration and customs to enter both. Macau is to a much lesser extent, since it only exists for gambling and prostitution (not that we experienced either, as you’ve read).

We got to Zhuhai by literally walking there, and it was getting quite late. We decided (which I regretted later) NOT to take a taxi because they would charge us an exorbitant amount (true) because it was after hours, and so we walked to where we saw on our map there was a hostel. It took near two hours to get there, and we actually never FOUND it. Instead we ended up staying at what must have been a love hotel, or at least used as one often since it was filled with condoms and other sexual extras (just like the one in Zhengzhou over New Years).

I bought orange juice because I felt awful and had pulled several muscles from the very full day of walking. It was about 1am once we settled into bed. We also think because we passed by their place once before we came back and resigned ourselves to not finding the hotel, that they let us stay three- to a clearly two-person room. There was a nice-ish bathroom, and one queen-sized bed. It was the first and only time Marlie and I shared a bed. Josh found some extra comforters and slept on the floor. I have no pictures from Macau whatsoever.

Next up... the "Beautiful" Zhuhai