Day 5- December 4, 2008

We woke up checked out of our hotel room to head off to Macau. We took a speed boat over to the island, which took about an hour. Once there we debated whether to take a bus or taxi to our hotel. We ended up taking a taxi after waiting for a bus for over 20 min. I will post about all our hotels on another post, but I'll just say our goal was to stay out of our room as much as possible. Macau is a lot like Vegas. Casinos aren't allowed in Hong Kong or China, so people come here to gamble. They have a lot of the same big Vegas hotels like the MGM Grand, The Venetian, Sands, etc... The funny thing about Macau is they speak Portuguese and Cantonese. As opposed to Hong Kong which speaks Cantonese and English. Also on the island are ruins of old churches. Jake found the way to the St. Paul ruins and we walked around there for a little bit. Then we decided to head out to the Venetian and see the show Cirque De Soleil. We got there and had a lot of time to kill. We ate at this place called Fat Burger, which had the best chocolate shakes...mmmm, tasty. Then we ended up walking around and looking at all the high end shops. We were a little worried about how the show was going to be, but it ended up being really good. It was pretty artsy, but we were amazed at everything.

Can you see me?Here were the 3 Musketeers singing Christmas carols...it was a little weird

Day 4- December 3, 2008

The Hong Kong Temple

We woke up and went down to the visa office to pick up my passport. We then decided to take the ferry across the harbor and hop on a subway to the temple. We were pretty pressed for time when we got across the harbor so we jumped in a taxi and headed off to the temple Once there we went to go in and the guy told Jake his recommend had expired on the 30th of November. He was bummed, but told me to go ahead and do a session. So I went and did a session and it was so nice and peaceful. After that we tried to find the distribution center...we found it but was like an hour out of the way. We then got back to our hotel and changed and then went out and looked at shops and ate at California Pizza Kitchen...man was that tasty. I found some pants and some hair products that I had been looking for. That night went out to the Temple St. Night market. We were pretty exhausted, so we didn't get anything but looked all around and were stopped by a number of people wanting us to buy watches and purses.

Day 3-December 2, 2008

Well I let Jake choose whether he wanted to go to Disneyland for his birthday or Ocean Park. We had planned on Disneyland, but after looking more into it, they only had a like 1 roller coaster and so Jake decided on Ocean Park. This amusement park is in the mountains right next to the ocean. On one of the roller coasters you feel like you are going to fly off into the ocean. They also had an aquarium, dolphin show, and a panda exhibit. This was the perfect time to go, you could walk right on to every ride. The weather was just perfect.

We took a 30-40 min bus ride out there.

A long escalator up to the top of the mountain where the rides were.

Jake and I on a ride that spun all around.

Jake and his friend the elephant.

Here is us on our way over to the panda exhibit. They had cable cars that went alongside the mountain. The view was absolutely gorgeous.

The picture of me is because one of the pandas and I shared the same birthday.