There's no trip complete without a visit to the Avenue of Stars at night.
The moment we reach there, it was already pack with people and interestingly
there's quite a few buildings with the skyscraper facade light shows. However,
capturing it without the proper setup of camera and tripod could be a
bit tricky in low lights. After much walking, our stomachs are calling
and we manage to grab some cuttle fish snacks from a kiosk there. It tasted
quite good too. We also got a chance to have a morning Dim Sum breakfast at 'Dou Heung' the next day. It's quite a nice ambience and reasonable price restaurant. Our next stop is Causeway Bay, the so called Fashiion Walk area via the Tramp. Causeway Bay is crowded with people which reminded me Dongdaemon in South Korea. My destination is to go to UML Hobby but ended up buying my wife collectible Mickey and Minnie Mouse instead of mine.
Later part of the evening, we manage to drop by Harbour City Shopping Mall located at Tsim Tsa Tsui, Hong Kong. If you are looking for branded couture/boutique, this is a place that you want to be. My wife manage to get a Longchamp and a Guess bag which were value for money compared to what we can get back here in Malaysia. I also got myself a Guees sweater not that I'm into branded stuff which I'm not but after much consideration I had to buy maybe for a momento.
The following day was pretty cool and decided to try porridge in Mongkok which is also around our place where we are staying. The porridge tasted so thick and creamy and we are rather surprised by how good it is compared to all the porridges we have eaten thus far. Our next excursion was to Lantau Island (Chinese: 大嶼山) and it was indeed a pleasing one. It won't be complete without a ride to the Ngong Ping 360, the gondola cable car from Tung Chung to Ngong Ping at about 5.7km within 20 minutes. There are 2 choices of cable car to take in order to reach Ngong Ping namely the crystal cabin and the standard cabin. We decided to try one of each cabin types with the crystal cabin (Glass Floor overlooking below) for a trip on our way down. The main attractions here are the seated Tian Tan Bronze Buddha at 85 foot tall and the Po Lin monastery. Disneyland is not far from here but we had to skip our visit to Mickey's castle this time around as we are short of time staying in Hong Kong.
We
headed to Macau Fisherman's Wharf early on the next morning to catch a
glimpse of what it has to offer as a theme park. It was surprisingly
deserted as there is practically nobody when we arrived but our
intentions was not to have fun inside the amusement park but to take
some photos. I later found out that the volcano roller coaster had an
accident and was closed since then but not too sure about now. However,
it was a nice outing especially the huge building structures with
various kind of themes like the Tibet setting, 1,001 nights village,
Middle East War setting and not forgetting the train ride, bumper cars,
camel carousel, etc.
Taken the above Panorama View while we were aboard the Ferry on our way to Macau.
Macau is always a must visit for any trip
to Hong Kong. It is a territory for tourism, gambling and not forgetting
manufacturing hub for various goods. Our visit here was merely 1 day and
we sort of missed out on a lot of attractions where Macau has to offer.
One of the 1st places which we visit is the Venetian Macau Resort Hotel.
It is a very huge resort with a combination of dining, shopping, entertainment,
accommodation, convention and exhibition facilities in one single location.
We sort of sidetrack for 2 of the main exhibitions which was available
at the time namely the Titanic Experience and The Human Body exhibition.
Both are really impressive exhibitions and having visit both exhibits really
kill off 1/2 of our day trip in Macau. The Titanic exhibition featured
some of the highly detailed and accurate replicas of 400 artifacts recovered
from the ocean liner’s wreckage. It also recreated various iconic sections
of the Titanic ship. One of which was the ship deck exterior with the decking
incline/sloping at one side with strong cold winds and night skies complete
with stars. We have to cross this path to enter the door on the opposite
side of the exhibit which was quite surprising as we need to balance our
body to move toward the door on the other side. Some of the Titanic interior
set pieces recreated are very accurate especially The Grand Staircase and
The VIP room. The wood works and crafting are dead on precise to the originals.
Unfortunately, we are not allowed to enter these areas to take our shots
posing as Jack or Rose but we manage to take a few shots at these areas.
The other interesting part of the exhibit is the obvious prejudice classification
of society as the cabin/sleeping quarters of 3rd class to 1st class are
glaringly obvious and similarly to the dining tableware which they used
from ceramic plates to silver plates for any meals aboard the ship. Oh
well, I believe it's no difference in present day life of the year 2013.
However, based on the Class Life Aboard tickets, the 3rd class passenger
cost about $40 (equals to $900 today) while the 1st class luxury tickets
cost $2,500(equals to $55,750 today). I'm not sure what currency it depicts
from the info as shown but if it's USD, it's one heck of an expensive trip!
By the way, I'd almost forgotten to mention that we are given a class
life ticket aboard when we enter and it's the actual ticket depicting the
actual person aboard the Titanic when it sank. We get to compare our tickets
to see the outcome from the huge Titanic passenger list whether we survive
or otherwise prior to the exit which was a surprising end to the show.
After triggering all our senses, we also
had our lunch here with some pork steak rice and cuttle fish with meatballs. It was a reasonable lunch
and later we proceeded to Rua De St Paulo street and it's pack with people along
our way to the Senado Square, St. Dominic church and St. Paul Ruin landmark.
Since Macau is also famous for its biscuits, we manage to buy quite a variety
of them here including the famous almond flavoured ones which is called 'Hang Yan' biscuits. There are also huge amount of dry meats variety to choose
ranging from ostrich, fillet, pork, beef, wild boar and veal. We bought
a few of the dry meat combinations with one of it is wild boar. Frankly,
I prefer the local Malaysian dry meat over Macau as the latter is rather
stiff for my taste. Anyway, I guess that's only our taste.
After more than an hour of info fun filled
experience on the RMS Titanic ship, we continued our 2nd exhibit to the
Human Body exhibition. Well, this ain't any more fun for us as it's eerily
spooky truth of our human body. I do recalled that this exhibition was
held locally here back in Malaysia Museum Negara some years back but I
missed out on that one. Over here, the exhibit are not recreation of the
artifacts but most of all we see here are actual real human body from the
top of your brains till the toes of your foot's blood vessels literally.
The interesting part which we manage to see is the dark speckles/spots
development of dying cells on the lungs and forming of cancerous cells
due to smoking. It also shows the development of the lungs of a heavy smoker
in his later part of life with almost 70% of the lungs are mostly black/darkened
cancerous cells! I think I'll probably show the photos to tell the remaining
part of the story for this exhibit. *Gasp!*.
1. Write down the planned itineraries of your trip as this will help to chart out your blog's framework before
blogging.
2. Take as much photos as possible whether it's a scenery, signboard, something funny, landmark, etc. and try to
categorize all your photos in folders on your PC based on the Date/Day and places. (E.g Folder can be
categorize as DAY 1/Macau/...)
3. Keep your entrance tickets to a show/event/exhibit, maps, food locations, expenditure,etc which can be a
valuable info for others.
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