Day 9 - Macau, MJ, and Ferry Rides

Today started out with our going to Macau.  This is also know as the "gambling city" of Asia.  Apparently Macau generates as much or more gambling money than Las Vegas.  People from our last trip encouraged us to go there but we never made it.  Another motivation to go there this time was to see the famous sequined glove that Michael Jackson wore on his "moonwalk".  My Asheville friend, Allen, who is a huge MJ fan as I am, said that it was exhibited at some Macau casino.  Upon research, I found that  this is the Sofitel in the older part of Macau.  So we took an hour long ferry ride to Macau for today's adventure.

I noticed more pollution when I stepped out of the cab.  It also appears to be a much poorer city than Hong Kong.  We started out looking at some old relics of the town.  The Portuguese settled here in the 1500's, so these included an old fort.  We looked at this from the bottom, as it was closed.  We then went to an old Chinese style garden, which seemed to serve as a peaceful resting place for the locals to enjoy.  We saw the old St.Paul Church, which had attracted numerous tourists.  There were were several other relics on Rich's 's list, but I wanted to move on to MJ's glove.

We took a taxi to Sofitel Hotel and went up to the second floor - the MJ gallery.  To my dismay, I was told that the exhibit is closed until May!  This information was not on their web site, and I had checked every day.  This news was certainly no "thriller" for me.  The gift shop was  open, including a fake sequined glove - had my picture made beside it.  Although the tee shirts were okay, there was not a full video of MJ singing, as I had expected.  Over all, I would say the MJ gallery was "bad, really bad - you know it's bad".  I suspected that the glove might be hiding behind this velvet curtain
 I confronted the shopkeeper, who said that it was stashed away somewhere that no one knew.  After
 buying my tee shirt, I tried to hide my great disappointment, but then decided that Allen and I could open a much better MJ venue  -"I Wanna be Startin Something" in Asheville!  Rich and I then "beat it" and headed to other Macau sights.

We enjoyed the pedestrian walking area, filled with Chinese New Year decorations.  It was very colorful and crowded with tourists.  From there we went to the Macau Tower, one of the tallest building in Asia.  We went to the observation point at the top,and saw wonderful city views.  We also saw an opportunity to bungee jump - many young Japanese were strapped, but ended up not doing it.  I decided that this would be on my bucket list if I knew I didn't have long left.  I think it could be fun!

We finally ended up at a Portuguese restaurant called Guincho a Galera.  The menu had traditional
dishes from Portugal, including black pork, which I had never eaten.  The setting was beautiful, and we enjoyed our meal, particularly the bread.  Then got on the ferry to return to Hong Kong.  Overall, my impressions of Macau are not the wonderful ones I have experienced in Hong Kong.  The casinos are somewhat interesting, but probably less so to one who is not a gambler.  It seems much more like a "plastic" city as opposed to Hong Kong and Kowloon.  Macau just does not have the rich culture and lively people.  But I suppose it is good to have a look at everything while we are here  If not, we might have regrets about things we didn't do.  After all, that's only "human nature"