Just noticed how long that was. Holy cow!
And Justin, the ball is in your court for a blog post.
Mike
PS. Bunch of new pics up on our Facebook 'Tree Loose Moose' page!
Monday, October 20, 2008
One Hong Kong and a Macau later
So the Tree Loose Moose have split up. That's right. It's now Two Loose Moose and a Solo Loose Goose. Justin had a really good setup in Shanghai so he's sticking around there for now and Kyle and I took off on thursday afternoon. Wednesday night we ended that leg of the trip proper with an open mic performance of a few covers and a song we wrote on the trip that has been stuck in all of our heads. "Pretty pretty baby, your not my mommy so don't tell me what to do (what to do)". Then we boarded the overnight train to Hong Kong, and a crazy weekend ensued. Arrived and met a Chilian dude travelling alone, and found a hostel with him...the cheapest one in the book (about $11 CAD a night), on top of a mountain near downtown HK. Hoped in a cab, rode for a bit, only for the cabby to stop at the base of the mountain road that leads to our hostel, saying it is closed (turns out, because of construction the road is closed every weekday from 11 to 6). So we start hiking with our full packs on.....30 minutes later and about 5000 stairs, we walk into reception, the sweaty messes that we were. The view of all of Hong Kong more than made up for it...incredible. We cleaned up and headed back to town about 7pm, jumped into a high speed hydrofoil boat, and an hour later we were in Macau (different 'country'....so had to do the customs thing to get there....FYI Macau was a Portuguese colony so many streets, buildings, etc. have Portuguese names. Hit the first casino...weren't feeling it, so we stumbled upon another, which turned out the be the biggest casino known to man (probably)....an endless maze of chinging, dealing and yelling. Tried my hand at blackjack and was on fire for a while....people betting on my plays. Made up for my loses at the slots, then as we were gearing up to leave, noticed a few Craps tables, and we had heard that these were the best odds in a casino. Got the Chinese attendants to explain it to us, and starting playing alone. Before we knew it, we had a full table, full of people cheering and high fiving each other, and small fortunes were won and lost. I was on the 'lost' side hehe, but still managed to end up by a few bucks, and Kyle won a bunch. By the time the boat landed back in Hong Kong, it was 5 am and we had to sneak back into our hostel under the back gate.
Next day, we hit up a hiking trail about an hour away that we had heard about. Completely amazing views....the "Dragon's Back' trail takes you alone the ridge of a mountain, with a view of the ocean to the right, and a gulf to the left. At the summit, we spotted a beach with massive waves, and decided to try to make it down there. An hour of walking and jogging later, we found an incredibly long set of stairs that took us down to "Big Wave Beach", where we jumped in and body surfed on the gigantor waves, in the dark at this point. Had a beer and headed back.
Later at night, we headed back to town and went up a 45 degree tramway to a famous lookup point, where we could see a different view of the city lit up. Heard about a bar strip, took a cab there, and turns out it's more like a bar neighborhood, with like 200 bars within a couple of blocks, on a really steep hill. Drank among the hundreds/thousands of people until the wee hours of the morning, met a bunch of travellers, got separated from each other, and somehow pulled into the hostel at the same time as the sun was coming up. We went to sleep (in the dorm room with about 38 other beds).
I woke up in the morning, and casually glanced at my watch....it was 12:10. Our flight was leaving from the Hong Kong airport, over an hour away, at 1:45, and we had slept through our 9am alarms. I thought about it for a while...was it worth panicking and trying to make it, or was it a lost cause? Once you put that kind of thing in motion, theres no stopping. Decided we had to try, and it quickly turned into the begining of "Home Alone", bags been stuffed, things being left behind because there was no time. We got there at 1:20, after the most expensive cab ride of my life, and the front desk tells us they don't let you check in after 40 minutes pre flight. So there. She put us on the 3:30 flight and we had time to relax finally.
Later that night, we land in Taipei, go to the visa office, and find out not only did we need to have an onward flight booked from taiwan before they'd let us in, but we also needed to get our visas before arriving. So rather than staying for 2 or 3 months and working, now we must leave the country before 30 days goes by, and get the 'visitor' visa to come back with. The airline helped us out and whippped up an imaginary itinerary to show the customs officials that we had an exit flight booked, which they never even asked for in the end, and a high speed train later put us in Tainan, where we have made a good contact already and are joining a soccer team later this week. Staying in a $15 CAD a night hotel right now and starting the job, apartment, motorcycle, guitar, cell phone, djembe and mandarin lesson hunting process now. Looks like we'll be here for a month, then will hit up Japan before coming back for another month with the proper visa. Oh yes, and throughout all that, Kyle's been walking around with a sprained ankle. AND, they wouldn't let him leave the train station at first, because you need your original ticket to open the exit gates, and he had lost his, and apparently that's a 'big deal' and he would have had to pay for another whole ticket just to open the gate. After like an hour of detainment, I found his ticket that somehow ended up in my pocket, and the security guards let him leave. Ok that's it. More updates to come! And good pictures, lots of them, I swear.
Ciao
Mike
Next day, we hit up a hiking trail about an hour away that we had heard about. Completely amazing views....the "Dragon's Back' trail takes you alone the ridge of a mountain, with a view of the ocean to the right, and a gulf to the left. At the summit, we spotted a beach with massive waves, and decided to try to make it down there. An hour of walking and jogging later, we found an incredibly long set of stairs that took us down to "Big Wave Beach", where we jumped in and body surfed on the gigantor waves, in the dark at this point. Had a beer and headed back.
Later at night, we headed back to town and went up a 45 degree tramway to a famous lookup point, where we could see a different view of the city lit up. Heard about a bar strip, took a cab there, and turns out it's more like a bar neighborhood, with like 200 bars within a couple of blocks, on a really steep hill. Drank among the hundreds/thousands of people until the wee hours of the morning, met a bunch of travellers, got separated from each other, and somehow pulled into the hostel at the same time as the sun was coming up. We went to sleep (in the dorm room with about 38 other beds).
I woke up in the morning, and casually glanced at my watch....it was 12:10. Our flight was leaving from the Hong Kong airport, over an hour away, at 1:45, and we had slept through our 9am alarms. I thought about it for a while...was it worth panicking and trying to make it, or was it a lost cause? Once you put that kind of thing in motion, theres no stopping. Decided we had to try, and it quickly turned into the begining of "Home Alone", bags been stuffed, things being left behind because there was no time. We got there at 1:20, after the most expensive cab ride of my life, and the front desk tells us they don't let you check in after 40 minutes pre flight. So there. She put us on the 3:30 flight and we had time to relax finally.
Later that night, we land in Taipei, go to the visa office, and find out not only did we need to have an onward flight booked from taiwan before they'd let us in, but we also needed to get our visas before arriving. So rather than staying for 2 or 3 months and working, now we must leave the country before 30 days goes by, and get the 'visitor' visa to come back with. The airline helped us out and whippped up an imaginary itinerary to show the customs officials that we had an exit flight booked, which they never even asked for in the end, and a high speed train later put us in Tainan, where we have made a good contact already and are joining a soccer team later this week. Staying in a $15 CAD a night hotel right now and starting the job, apartment, motorcycle, guitar, cell phone, djembe and mandarin lesson hunting process now. Looks like we'll be here for a month, then will hit up Japan before coming back for another month with the proper visa. Oh yes, and throughout all that, Kyle's been walking around with a sprained ankle. AND, they wouldn't let him leave the train station at first, because you need your original ticket to open the exit gates, and he had lost his, and apparently that's a 'big deal' and he would have had to pay for another whole ticket just to open the gate. After like an hour of detainment, I found his ticket that somehow ended up in my pocket, and the security guards let him leave. Ok that's it. More updates to come! And good pictures, lots of them, I swear.
Ciao
Mike
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)