Classes were wrapping up this week at CUHK and to commemorate, my grandparents and I took an overnight trip to Macau. Formerly a Portuguese colony, Macau is now a major resort city with a gaming industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. After my 4:30pm class ended, I took the train to Shatin and met my grandparents at 6:00pm. From there, we boarded a bus to the Hong Kong port. Due to poor weather and my grandmother easily getting seasick, we decided to take a bus from the Hong Kong port across the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. The HZMB is the longest sea crossing and open sea fixed link on earth at 55 kilometers long.
My grandparents and I arrived at The Parisian Macao, a 5-star hotel owned by Las Vegas Sands, which boasts a half-scale Eiffel Tower and 3,000 hotel rooms. We met with family friends at around 10:00pm for a yummy late dinner. They had helped book our hotel room and would later be going to Japan with my grandparents. After dinner, my grandmother and I spent some time exploring the hotel while my grandfather hung out in the casino. Unfortunately, at 19, I wasn’t old enough to enter the gaming premises, but instead got to take some photos with grandmother and the mini Eiffel Tower. Later, my grandfather ended up winning 2,000 HKD!
We woke up the heavy rain the next morning. After a filling breakfast at the food court in the hotel, we left to explore the other connected hotels to escape the rain. At around noon, the rain started to let up and we ventured out to the Historic Center of Macau, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We explored the Ruins of St. Paul’s, a 17th-century Portuguese church dedicated to Saint Paul the Apostle, and the Cathedral of Nativity of Our Lady before it it began pouring again. We called the nearest taxi and got a ride to the Macau port. My grandparents were quite impressed the the taxi driver was a female! We took the bus back across the HZMB and got a Thai dinner in Tsuen Wan, where my grandparents stayed during their visit in Hong Kong. While the weather was not optimal for exploring much of Macau, it was a great quick trip before I had to start studying for finals!
ABC in HK 