That's right... halfway there! I'll be home in less than two months and only one (giant) ocean. Hong Kong under the Canter's wings has been the perfect break and recovery.
My train ride to Xi'an was wonderfully uneventful. A woman in my compartment spoke some English and talked to me briefly, then I watched 17 Again for the zillionth time and slept. We arrived at 8am and I rode the bus to the hostel. After dumping my stuff off and nearly falling asleep, I jumped back on the bus and headed out for the Terracotta Warriors, the reason I went to Xi'an at all. The warriors are exactly the way you envision them, all standing at attention in an airplane hangar-type building, but I was too tired at that point to be able to handle the crowds of matching-hat Chinese tourists. As I approached the main overlook, a group of these men around me got so giddy they started running and trampling me and so I decided to call it a day.
 the Warriors |
I arrived in Hong Kong on Monday and met the Canters, and spent the next two days decompressing and eating as much cereal as possible.
On Wednesday I went to Macau, an interesting mix of Portugal, China, and Vegas, where I wandered from casino to casino trying, nearly in vain, to get a glass of sangria. Why was it so hard to get a drink in a casino?? Granted it was a Wednesday afternoon, and the Chinese get plenty riled up over baccarat without the fuel of alcohol, but I was still surprised. In the MGM I saw old ladies dozing in front of their 2 cent slot machines (2 cents MOP is .2 cents US) and in the smoky Hotel Lisboa, the one that started it all, "escorts" trawled the hallways in pastel suits with small, sparkly handbags. In the lobby of the StarWorld casino, people in futuristic pleather clothes did "the robot" everytime they moved and I could not help laughing. The Wynn was the classiest (although I did not make it down to Taipa to the Venetian) and there I finally found sangria. I thought it was a good way to tap the Iberian heritage of the island and keep myself far away from the Macau tower.
Wednesday night Todd and I went to a race by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. People here take their horse racing very seriously! We were both rookies and it took us a while to get the hang of the betting but we did eventually both choose winners.
Downtown Hong Kong, or Central as it is known, is a maze of covered walkways that shelter business people's suits from the humidity as they cross between skyscrapers. As Todd and I traversed a half-dozen blocks' worth of these corridors, we were led through an Armani mall. As in, an entire mall devoted almost exclusively to Armani stores: clothes, of course, but also Armani makeup, Armani chocolate, Armani books, and Armani florist. This makes a good example of the type of unbelievable shopping to be found here. How one small city can support a Gucci/Versace/Burberry on every other corner, I can still hardly fathom.
 Todd and me |
There is some really cool architecture here. I know very little about architecture, but I enjoy the Grand Lisboa hotel in Macau and the IFC tower in Central. The two main attractions in Hong Kong seem to be the views and the shopping. Today the smog finally cleared enough for blue sky to appear and so I rode the tram up to Victoria Peak and looked down on HK. On Thursday night we went out to an amazing waterfront dinner where we had the perfect view of Hong Kong's nightly light show, when all the skyscrapers dance.
An enormous thank-you to the Canters for treating me like (royal) family and to my aunt Jan for fixing us up. Today I leave for Bangkok; I will be in Thailand for nearly three weeks!
Lauren
