Hotel Lisboa Macau Peninsula

Hello It was a 27 hour train journey from Shanghai to Hong Kong. The final leg of my trip. There were only two of us in the hard sleeper compartment (it has six berths) and time passed slowly. Although I have really enjoyed my train journeys I am glad there are no more for a while. Hong Kong is like a decompression chamber helping you to acclimatise to the West after being in China. Even though it is a Chinese city now there are pubs and sandwich shops, people do not spit in the street, peopl...

Macau is a city with two faces. One side is filled with horrendously loud casinos that threaten to crush you under the weight of all their garishness; the other side lures you in with its old world charm left over from the bygone Portugese colonial era. Both images seem like something I might have dreamed of, but still can't imagine they would exist in my waking hours. Matsuda-san, Wako and I boarded the China Ferry from the Hong Kong ferry terminal at 1:00pm for the 55 minute ride to Macau....

A tiny, tiny version of Las Vegas. Managed to turn 100 Hong Kong Dollars into a thousand...last of the big spenders! This covered the money for the doctor Craig called at 3am to come to the hotel. Worse food poisoning I have ever had in my life. Thank god we had treated ourselves to a lovely hotel with a decent bathroom! After having been up all night, called my mum for sympathy (as you do) and having been given anti-sickness jag and tons of tablets, we were on our way again. It was a long jo...

Arrived into Macau on time and breezed through immigration, thankful that I did not have to do the made dash to the border like my last trip to catch a bus. Also grateful that there were no headaches in telling the taxi driver where I needed to go, as I was staying at the most famous hotel in Macau, the Hotel Lisboa. Basically, I got a really good internet deal for a comfortable room in the old tower block with everything included. The place lived up to it's reputation as a maze. Instead of d...

.... Or at least a small part of Portugal in the far east. Went to their version of Hong Kong - It was pretty interesting and far more historic than HK (has 300 years more colanization..) We did a 10k walk around the place and saw many old style colourful colonial buildings, similar to the Dutch ones in Cape Town. Major contrast with the newer brash casino complexes that exist in the main town now.. Wandered round a fort and the Kun Iam temple. Bit weird, not really for tourists and the monks...