CARDRUNNERS

 

Andrew

It's time to wrap up my Asia blog. I've had some interesting things happen since I got back that include a double OT Bulls playoff game and the Kentucky Derby. I want to blog about those early this week, so let's get the Asia part out of the way.

When I left you, we were just recovering from a massive powdering. Thailand was a blast, but we were ready to move on and check out Hong Kong. We were supposed to travel to Bangkok for a day and then fly out of Bangkok. If you were following the news at all a few weeks ago, you probably heard about the massive political riots that occurred there. They were peaking in intensity right when we were supposed to go there. We had kept an eye on the news to see what the situation was like. When we started seeing soldiers fire into crowds, tanks getting tipped over and just a general presence of bloodied up people, we decided it would be best to skip. This screwed up our flights, but we were able to get a flight back through Kuala Lampor for a good price. The only downside was a 6 hour layover. At this point, I was already pretty numb to spending time in airports. I also figured it would give me a chance to get caught up on email and everything else that was going on in the world that I had neglected so I wasn't too concerned. The main downside to me was having to endure two more landings courtesy of Malaysian Airlines. They didn't disappoints either.

The first landing into Kuala Lampor wasn't too bad. We took two skips and then stayed on the ground. I was already used to skip landings. The second landing, however, was different. As we approached the ground, I was clutching the seats and looking out the window. I was looking for a sign that we would get our first standard landing. As we approached the ground, I knew it wasn't going to happen. The plane was not stabilizes. We were rocking back and forth. It reminded me of when I was 10 and trying to land on flight simulator. I was never very good at it and often had trouble stabilizing the plane as I approached the ground. When we finally touched down we landed on our left side. I can't say for sure, but it definitely seemed like the right side wheels were up in the air. We were really on a tilt. I was anticipating the plane overcorrecting and then just starting to barrel role. Thankfully, that didn't happen. We were able to get back on the ground with some bouncing back and forth, but no barrel roles.

We got to our hotel at about midnight and we were all starving. We decided to wander the streets to find somewhere to eat. There was a diner not too far from our hotel that was still open. They had an English menu too. I opted for chicken roman noodles. I was very surprised when they arrived along with a ham omelet. I'll never understand why my roman noodles came with an omelet, but I'm not complaining. Scott ordered a steak for some reason. His came along with a soup which was much more reasonable. However, our waiter didn't speak English and we thought the soup was the steak at first. It made for a humorous few minutes. In the end, his meal was pretty standard. Here is a picture of Scott with his soup. Notice the massive pile of silverware and the tiny water glasses (they love tiny glasses in Asia).



The first thing on our list of sights to see was the Big Buddha. We grabbed some lunch and headed out. We had one major problem. Scott's feet stank. I don't mean typical smelly feet. I'm talking the worst smelling feet I've ever smelled. That's saying a lot, because I was born with a smelly feet problem. Scott apparently has that problem too, but he mixed it with some old, nasty sandals that had taken a daylong assault from Thai water. It was a combination that I don't think can be rivaled. Luckily, in Hong Kong, there are American outlet stores everywhere. At the base of the mountain that Big Buddha was on, we found a ton of shops. Both Nike and Adidas failed to seal sandals. WTF? I guess sandals aren't popular in Asia. We were able to find some at a quicksilver shop. The weird thing there was they only had one pair of men's sandals and they were bright pink. Here is a pick of Scott wearing the new pink sandals and holding up the worst smelling sandals in the history of earth.



We took a cable car up to Buddha. The ride took us by a bunch of mountains. Somehow we got on the discussion of whether one of them was climbable. It was a fairly gentle slope, but a pretty big mountain (hill might be a better word). Taylor was convinced that it was not scalable. He was ready to offer 4:1 on a 10k bet. This created a heated debate, because I was completely confident I could climb it. We were in the middle of this debate when the cable car camera went off. I liked the picture because it captured the argument, so I bought it. They decided to add Easter decorations to it. Nice touch.



Here is the mountain that we were debating about. Looks pretty harmless doesn't it? In the end, the bet never happened. This was for a few reasons. I didn't want to take 40k from Taylor. That's a huge number. I also didn't want to risk getting arrested in a foreign country. I'm not sure they'd appreciate me climbing it. I also didn't want to waste the entire day in Hong Kong climbing a mountain for a dumb bet. Yea, I know, I'm a pussy. oh well.



Here is the Buddha. It was pretty cool.



Taylor snapped this picture when we were all standing around. I didn't realize it until I saw the picture, but we all had our arms crossed looking like badasses. I thought it was pretty funny since we didn't stage it at all.



Scott's dad works for Dick's Sporting goods and Dick's has an office in Hong Kong. His dad put us in touch with a girl who works in the office that is close to our age. She was nice enough to show us around town. We hit up a bunch of bars. Not a ton to note other than we had a good time and got pretty wasted.



There is a cool market in Hong Kong called Stanley's market. I'm not much of a souvenir guy, but I knew I had to get a few things for people back home. We hit up Stanley's and basically cleaned up. They had a lot of cool things for cheap. Here's a pick of me checking out some stuff.



The second night we headed over to the country of Macau to see "Vegas of the East." I gotta admit that it was disappointing. After all the hype, I expected something comparable to Vegas. It wasn't nearly as cool as Vegas. There was no real strip. There was an area that had about 3 or 4 casinos including the Wynn. The Venetian was a 15 minute cab ride away from everything. It was HUGE. I really wish I had taken a picture of it. It was much bigger than the Venetian in Vegas. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. I think they really screwed up by making it so big. There was just a ton of dead space inside the casino. It just felt way too wide open. I felt like I was in a warehouse rather than an action packed casino. The only thing good about the Venetian was the meal we had. We ate at a restaurant called Caton and it was excellent. It was one of the best meals we had in Asia.

The Wynn was smaller than the one in Vegas and didn't have the size problem that the Venetian had. We did all of our gambling at the Wynn. It just wasn't as fun as Vegas. Asians tend to not get into the gambling like Americans do in Vegas. We were trying to pump up the table to get some added excitement, but it just didn't happen. They do some crazy things too. I saw a guy split tens, he got dealt a few more tens and had to keep splitting. The dealer made a decent hand and he lost pretty big. I had never seen that before. I also saw things like hitting on 13 against a 5. I think they knew it was incorrect, but just wanted to gamble. I ended up breaking even and everyone else lost. I lost CC roulette at dinner so we all lost money that night. Standard night of gambling.

One interesting story is that when we were at dinner we noticed the price was in Macau dollars and not Hong Kong dollars. We had no idea what the conversion rate was. We debated if we should find out. I was in the camp for not finding out. I figured it would make CC roulette that much better. In the end, we decided to hold off. I ended up losing roulette. I was legitimately concerned, because the dinner was very nice and could have easily been very expensive. We also bought a bottle of wine that seemed expensive. However, I lucked out and the meal ended up being one of the best bargains of the trip. It came in at about $250.

The only picture I got was of the Wynn ceiling when you walk it. It was pretty awesome.



The last thing we did was a trip up to Victoria's peak. It has the best views of the city. Hong Kong has a ton of skyscrapers and we wanted to take them all in.



The last night we hit up the bars again. We went to a cool rooftop bar that had great views. Again, there wasn't a ton to mention. The only funny thing was at the end of the night we got into a heated argument about Pujols. Taylor and Anthony apparently thinks he juices. I don't. Anthony is a huge Barry fan, so the discussion headed there for awhile. The night ended with me and Anthony making a $500 bet about bonds making the hall of fame. I think he absolutely deserves to be in the hall, but I don't think he'll get in. It will be interesting to see how many votes he gets when hes nominated in a few years.





Oh and here is a picture of me dropping a box of empty glasses.



I didn't really drop the box, but I thought it'd make a good picture. Everyone around gave me weird looks. They didn't think it was as funny as I did.

Here is a picture of us ordering some Chinese food. I had been told prior to the trip that the authentic food we would eat would be different than what you find in America. After eating real Asian food, I've come to the conclusion that you can get very authentic Asian food in the US. Most of what I had was very similar to what you would get here.



So that pretty much wraps up the trip. Admittedly, we didn't do a ton in Hong Kong. We were so drained at that point. We slept in everyday and just hit up a few key things. I was fine with that. 2 weeks is probably a little too long to be on a trip. We were all ready to get home at the end. I'm very glad we did the trip though.

Thailand was easily my favorite part of the trip. If I was going to endure the extremely long plane ride back out to Asia, it would be to go to Thailand. I really enjoyed Hong Kong and Tokyo, but I don't think I'd go back anytime soon. The culture was just so different, that it wasn't really my kind of place.

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• Andrew
  

  Andrew
  Chicago, IL
  

  
  

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