Two words: Francesinha. Macau is a former Portuguese colony and as such it has a very European feel. We stopped here and in Hong Kong only briefly – mostly cause the weather was crap when we arrived and projected to remain crap long after our intended departure. Macau is a huge gambling destination, I think it was in a James Bond film once. Yeah it was the first one with Daniel Craig and the second half of the move was just him dicking around playing poker. It was probably kind of a rip off if you pay for movies, but I don’t know anyone under 70 who does that anymore. But they do casinos they way we do in Vegas, like making an entire working model of a Venetian canal through the middle of a shopping mall inside a casino. I’d like to say I threw down a few hundo and beat the house but we all know I only spend obscene amounts of money on either fly kicks or things I can poop out afterward. Hong Kong was good, but super expensive – compared to all the other places we had been in SE Asia the case of acute sticker shock was especially pronounced. Also, this winter has been pretty cold (not sure if you guys noticed at home) and they just don’t have a solution for that here. It’s normally so comfortable in the winter here I guess they never thought they’d need heat. We left pretty quickly and figured we’d cop a few days somewhere cheaper and wait for our Japan rail passes. We settled on Taiwan, of which the only things I know is that 1) something obscene, like 90% of our semiconductor chips come out of Taiwan and 2) the inventor of General Tso’s chicken was possibly Taiwanese. We also met a real cool Taiwanese kid in Berlin, and he swears it’s great there. That’s good enough for me. So… on with the show!
Vijay
[1] Macau Pictures
[2] Hong Kong Pictures