Speeding toward exhaustion

Last Saturday, I took a trip to Macau, which like Hong Kong, used to be a European colony before being returned to China. Macau was once part of former nautical superpower Portugal.

I'll post more about Macau and the cultural mix later, but first a little more about why it was important for me to go to the neighboring region made up of a peninsula and islands (like Hong Kong). I just got my work visa and in order to activate it so I could stay and work in Hong Kong, I had to leave Hong Kong. Macau is the closest and cheapest place I could go without applying for a tourist visa, so we jumped on the Turbojet ferry and sped off to Macau.

By "we", I mean one of my roommates, David, and I... glassy and classy, eh?

We picked Saturday for our trip because David got free tickets to an Olympic warm up game featuring Lithuania and Turkey. Unfortunately, we missed the two previous games which featured Team USA whipping these two teams.

But the tickets were free and we enjoyed an international match up and some really poor officiating. Other highlights were the annoying Lithuanian fan with the flag and the pre-game exodus of people moving to better seats right before tip off... and then the ensuing hijinx as late-arriving ticket holders had to boot people out of their seats.

We left for the ferry around 8:15 AM and after a full and hot day in Macua topped off with some "transportation issues" upon our return to Hong Kong, we arrived back at home around 2:00 AM... exhausted.

But I got my visa stamp and had a full day in Macau (pictures to follow).